Mass media and the internet have caused people s attention spans to get shorter However the overall effect has been positive while people are less able to focus on one thing they more than make up for it with an enhanced ability to sort through large quan

In this new age of mass media, especially social media, the population has never had access to so much information. At the swipe of our fingers we can go from live videos of a volcano erupting on an island in Japan to a cute video about a cat and dog friendship with 2 million views on TikTok. The amount of content that is put of the internet and other media forms is overwhelming. As a result, the modern attention span has definitely decreased from what it was a few decades ago, but this should not be viewed with the second half of the prompt as a “net positive”. We must see the issue for what it is a degradation of cognitive skills and an ability to concentrate.

As more and more children have begun to adopt technology from early ages, some as young as 2 or 3, the amount of satisfaction that can be derived from one piece of media will continue to decrease. This has to be countered from a parental aspect by limiting the amount of “screen time” that children are exposed to but this cannot be the only measure. If a society of people arise that cannot concentrate on a certain task for up to 30 minutes without becoming bored, unconcerned or whipping out their phones, to scroll through Twitter the road ahead will be rough. The negative impact this will have on research, scientific advancement and development of ideas will be profound. Assuming the positive of an enhanced ability to dive through and analyze large portions of information does not stop the detrimental effects of this change from being widespread.

The ability to extrapolate the important pieces of information from a pile of data or sources has arisen due to the enormous mountain of misinformation that has been allowed to grow. On sites such as Facebook where elections and other important matters have been swayed by mountains of bots, the information that might be deemed important could be wrong. The more important skill should be able to discern fact from fiction. On several media platforms lies are being paraded as truths and the effects have been felt in the real world. From coups to stolen elections the real issues are not being challenged. If one can swim well through muddy water to the other side of the bank, their clothes will still be dirty once emerged. Guardrails must be put in place by these platforms that curtail the endless stream of misinformation and measures must be put in place to ensure they are stopped.

Taking the prompt above at face value and seeing the net positive, the question of which is more important for human functioning can arise. Is it more important to be able to separate useless bits of information from necessary ones if you can only stay on a particular task for thirty minutes at a time? Is there a threshold that must be breached before the problem becomes more apparent? There must be conscious steps taken starting from the home, to the classroom and society at large to ensure that the eradication of cognitive function is curtailed in the nearest future. News networks and the industry that is journalism must band together and kick out the hold misinformation is taking on the minds of the populace both young and old.

The minimized attention span of the general population is not something that can be taken with a supposed positive and then viewed with rose tinted glasses. There are real issues arising from the changes in how we consume mass media and how those that package that media present it to us. Without such we can never know the positive or negative impact of any one standpoint.