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

Mass media and the internet have certainly played a very significant role in the way people's attention spans function in our current society. Because of all of the information available at our disposal now, it's true that one can sort through large quantities of information to find what's more efficient and useful for our purpose. However, the effect isn't entirely positive overall because such a prompt way of attaining information also brings the risk of us looking past information that could be useful, as well as limiting our breadth of knowledge.

Because our society moves at such a rapid pace, there is always the great risk of speeding through all of the information available without really looking at all of the information. Although it's hopeful to guess that any individual can then find what's important by going through so many resources, one can also easily miss what's important. Let's take the case of a student who is planning on writing an essay on marine life. His job is to find the five most useful articles he can in an online database. Because the database is so easy to navigate, and opens up thousands of articles, he may brisk through every page, just quickly glancing at the titles. By moving so fast, he may certainly miss any article that may have great importance to the subject. Even worse than that, he may allude himself to thinking that he has glances at all of the article titles, but in reality he probably may not have. by doing so, he has looked past countless number of articles that would've only served so strengthen his incoming essay.

Related to the brisk pace that we function in in our daily lives, we are also limiting the amount of information that we have the ability to look through. In the case of the student, because he is working in such a speedy manner in how he's just looking at the most important articles, he's not allowing himself the opportunity to read through various articles. Perhaps not all articles would've turned out to be the best for his particular essay, but surely the articles would've given him just a little more information. In essence, because, if he was going through articles in the library he wouldn't have the option to look past them, so he would've had to read more in detail, this improving his scholarly knowledge. By doing so in a consistent basis, he might've turned into a more well-rounded intellectual. Mass media would serve the same function as well, in that someone who's just fleetingly changing the pages or channels of a newspaper or television may miss important information relevant to our environment, as well as may have skimmed through a television program that the individual may have actually liked, but now never got the opportunity to check out.

Of course, such an assortment of information may sometimes become too overwhelming to take one's time with. Someone who's in a hurry to write an essay that is due in a few hours needs that efficient, quick way of assorting through information. In that case, it is imperative. The mass media and internet being as prompt as they are in their pace only relates to how busy the world has become. In general, our lives have also become a new kind of existence, one where our lives becomes easier every decade due to the inventions and resources created, like the spoon o the fan. But in general, the overall effect is of mass media and internet can be said to be, if not negative, then questionable.