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

Some people believe that even though mass media has led to the decrease of people's attention spans, it has been more beneficial than destructive as it has also eneabled individuals to be more readily able to identify important information. Whilst I agree that mass media has decreased our attention spans I do not believe that it has made us any better at sorting through large volumes of information. In fact I contend that it has made us worse and has had an overall negative effect on human beings.

The mass media has decreased our attention spans by overwhelming our senses with a barrage of stimulation in rapid succession. For example, It is said that through masss media, each person is exposed to about two thousand advertisements per day. This type of rapid stimulation discourages deep thinking and instead encourages attention deficit as people are unconsciously conditioned to beieve that quantity is more important than quality.

Even worse than this conditioned belief is the addictive quality of mass media such as television. For example, people get a rush of dopamine in their brains whenever they are stimulated by the quick, rapid succession of images and other forms of stimulation that are used by television and other forms off mass media. It is this dopamine rush that causes television addiction especially among our youth.

Lastly, whilst some may argue that even though mass media is addictive people can choose what they watch and listen too and in this way mass media may help to enhance our ability to extract information. I disagree with this line of reasoning because in this day and age most of the information that appears important is actually not. For example, people all over the world celebrate kim kardashian's birthday, buy her books and watch her television show regardless of the fact that Kim has not contributed anything of significance to society. This occurs becasue people are tricked into believing that Kim kardashian is important.

In conclusion mass media has had a detrimental effect not only our attention spans but on our ability to differentiate what is important and what is not. Whilst people may feel as though they are extracting high quality information from the media this is often not the case as they are in fact extracting garbage that has been portrayed to appear important.