Just quick bursts

You whetted my curiosity but you will not have my attention.

March 05, 2017 12:38 am | Updated 12:38 am IST

Magnified illustration with the word Social Media on white background.

Magnified illustration with the word Social Media on white background.

When was the last time you actually read a lengthy article? Could you finish it in one go? Were you checking your Twitter feed or email in between? Could you remain attentive for that length of time?

Attention has become a luxury in this era of quick information dissemination. The fear of missing out is so strong out there that we have compromised on our ability to actually process information. What is left is just a momentary burst of curiosity, no patience for attention.

According to researchers in Canada, the attention span of humans has been decreasing continuously over the last decade. It has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2013 according to one report. I am no expert to comment on the reasons for this change. But the consequences of this change have had a massive impact on our lives as individuals and as citizens of this country.

First up, this has subjugated our critical thinking capabilities. No longer are we able to analyse an issue, be it political, economic or social in nature, by looking at different perspectives. We lack the attention span to invest time on any topic, reading up from different sources. We want everything to be summarised in fewer words or maybe in few characters.

A case in point is the success of various news aggregators and content summarisers. We are spending less and less time questioning things. We have this strong urge to conveniently put everything in black or white boxes. This is correct or this is wrong. There is no scope left for a grey area or for any kind of conflicts. It happens because it is convenient for us. We have access to so much information that it is not humanly possible to actually process all of that and so we choose the easier path of making superficial judgments at either end of the good or bad spectrum.

Consider an example. The Prime Minister, during one of his election rallies in Uttar Pradesh, talks about electricity supply during Ramzan and Deepavali. This is quickly picked up by all forms of mainstream media, a narrative for secularism is created and floated around. All the leaders, both in government and in opposition, start giving out responses to this remark and as a reader we have too much information to process.

Now, how should an unbiased, educated voter who has no affiliation to any political party form an opinion on this? The easy way is to react to the first bit of information you receive, maybe a tweet or some highly exaggerated headline to a media report, and you go ahead and dump your opinion on some social platform — “Damn you XX, I hate you”, or “Bravo XX, lone crusader for secularism.” The other, more difficult, way would be to actually try and understand the context, read through multiple news reports, maybe for a change try and think over it, look at what secularism means in the Indian context (I know I am pushing it here), see if the statements were appropriate considering it is a sensitive issue and then if there is a clear answer, express your opinion publicly. If you are not able to decide, then be brave enough to say I do not have the complete understanding so I will not comment. I am not saying whether what Mr. Modi said was appropriate or not. I am merely outlining a way to counter the polarity we see on every issue which tries to completely eliminate the complexity attached to these issues. These issues are sensitive, they require a lot of attention and that is what we lack.

Second, at an individual level, this falling attention span is increasingly affecting the way we interact with other people. Our core inner self that thrives on stereotyping (because it is easy) is getting more and more pronounced, which translates into an acute lack of empathy. All the interactions have become a reaction to what we see or witness during our short attention span. Salil Chaturvedi, an award-winning writer and disability campaigner, who suffers from a spinal cord injury, was subjected to harassment at the hands of a couple when they did not see him standing up for the national anthem in a movie theatre. The confidence with which the couple resorted to violence for something that was so trivial and non-offensive is depressing. This is an embarrassing example of our reactionary responses. The couple in this case had no political affiliations (this was before the patriotic government introduced alertness indicator mechanism to gauge patriotism for differently abled), but they just reacted violently to what they observed. This is an alarming situation!

So how do we get out of it? There has been a behavioural shift in all of us which somewhere has been driven by the ever-expanding social media and access to a tsunami of information through technology. I am not saying technology is bad for us. But we must go bring the focus back on things that are important for us, maybe filter out all other distractions. Spend time reading a real book, thinking on issues that concern us, avoiding borrowed opinions or following the crowd, having a real conversation, understanding the complexities of the human personality, avoiding judgments and stereotypes, showing some empathy and maybe becoming more patient and understanding. Till then maybe I will conclude this as it is already well beyond my attention span!

(The author is a post graduate student at IIM Bangalore. rishabh.raj15@iimb.ernet.in )

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