To me, attention span was made "short" the day we stopped memorizing entire epic tales to recount to our children and instead learned how to read. Historically, nothing has done more damage to long-term memory and attention span than the incorporation of reading into society. Plato knew this.
The article is true. We're becoming an instant-gratification, anti-social, objectifying society. Many of us have forgotten how to interact with other human beings and have hidden under the guise that we're misunderstood and that our individuality should be entirely tolerated without correction.
That's very true, but to what degree is it videogames/porn? I don't follow why these are the culprit and not, say, TV, iPods, etc. No one talks walking around because they're all listening to music. No one talks sitting down unless it's about something on TV. I think there's absolutely something to the trend you're talking about, but videogames and porn are just another formulation of these things.
Also, I don't follow how videogames = instant gratification. Maybe our dear professor just assumes all games are like Call of Duty, but most of my games are RPGs. They take a good amount of thinking, a lot of planning and foresight, and I stick to one goal for over a hundred hours to accomplish it. When I was a raid leader in World of Warcraft, my guild would spent 3-4 hours three times a week practicing to down new content. I'll have my MA in a week and have worked as a legislative office manager, and leading those raids was still the most challenging thing I've done in my life. Anyone who has done serious raiding in World of Warcraft, or any other MMO, absolutely has to laugh at the idea of "instant gratification" being an inherent component of videogames. That stuff takes a lot of hard work. Heck, people even grind out boring, repetitive tasks over and over again just for some reward. That sounds a lot like the kinds of things we're supposedly losing the capacity for.
I'm not a socialist, or a Marxist, but I think people should take a look at the things Karl Marx had to say about labor. People are becoming less interested in living their lives because it doesn't feel like their life anymore. Most people are slaving away at some thankless job without any other opportunity. So heck,
why not go to a world where you get to be a free creature? Plenty of people I know play World of Warcraft purely for community, because as a team player in a guild they are
someone important. More importantly, your labor is your own and something you can be proud of. You can look at your character and say "this is what I made". How many jobs today can say let someone say that?
There's more of those too, lol.Yep, I'll agree with that. As a public school teacher myself, I'm seeing a lot more ADD kids today than ever before. I've seen some of my fellow teachers with stacks (STACKS!) of IEP papers and accommodations, it's crazy.
What's an IEP paper?
Articles will often use ridiculous hyperbole in their titles to attract attention (it has certainly worked on GAF). Still, the article here makes some good points. Video games and porn do condition the brain to constant stimulation. When you put boys in a boring, dry environment (e.g. a classroom), it's simply more difficult for them to succeed. Obviously it's not ruining a generation as the article may claim, but it is having an effect. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.
Why not view classrooms as the problem? I was identified as a gifted student from a young age, and the only reason I only did "okay" through school was that I was constantly bored. Maybe my brain is just a little
too good to sit in a chair for 3 hours straight and listen to someone else talk. Maybe my brain wants to do things, be involved,
create. There's a fine line between teaching patience, and teaching boredom. I have a lot of patience, but I really dislike being bored. I can think about my next move in a chess game for half an hour, easy. But if you want me to listen to someone else lecture on a minute point that I already understand because I did the reading for today, or you want me to practice homework problems that I already know how to do for two hours after school, you've lost my interest. Aren't there ways we can have learning environments that are active? I'm not trying to attack you, I'm just talking with you about this - I have a hunch that you might agree with me.