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Comment by bronlund | Hacker News Reader

There is no attention-span crisis, it’s just that the younger generation find a lot of stuff utterly boring. If they do something they love, they have no issue focusing for hours and hours.

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This is reductive. It's true that interest conquers inattention, but the attention span crisis really represents a prioritization of exploitation over exploration. That is to say that many people are far less able to seek value in things which require more effort in the finding (e.g., long-form media such as books and movies). You could reasonably argue that this is not a real problem, but it is undeniably happening.

This is just not true. My daughter, who finds school boring to the point of depression, has no problem spending hours reading the complete Akira manga in a foreign language. The crisis you are talking about is not in the people, but in the system.

It can be both. I went through a very similar experience with school -- it was miserably boring to me, and I found solace in valuable and educational experiences I sought out myself at home. In this way I empathize strongly and I agree that the schooling system is massively flawed in this regard.

Still, from my just-as-anecdotal observations, it seems to me that social media addiction exacerbates the issues. I and many peers of mine fell out of reading for fun around the beginning of high school, and this was due in part to both technology and burnout from school. Screen addiction can be an obstruction to activities that one actually loves doing, just as school can.

Good point.

Being easily bored is the same thing as having a poor attention span. Of course they have no issue spending time on the things they love. If they struggle to focus on something, they probably will find themselves unable to enjoy it very much. I don't think any of the film students who spend the whole movie on their phones go home afterward to read Moby Dick.

Not too long ago, reading books was also considered evil. It was argued that they were addictive and antisocial.

You sound like those people who think Battleship Potemkin is the greatest movie of all time.

> Not too long ago, reading books was also considered evil.

Yeah, well, they were wrong and I'm right.

> You sound like those people who think Battleship Potemkin is the greatest movie of all time.

100% critic & 86% user approval on Rotten Tomatoes, 97/100 on Metacritic. Universally acclaimed, massively influential. Have you considered that Battleship Potemkin might just be a good movie? Have you tried watching it?

That's right. Just over a decade ago, reading magazines like "Story Club" was considered a waste of time and energy.

I have watched it multiple times, and I do understand that in order to understand what is great art, you have to be familiar with art history.

That being said, blaming the kids for a failed education system, is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. It is not their attention which is the problem, but the out-dated methods they use trying to grab it. Being bitter and blaming everything, but themselves, is just showing how irrelevant they have all become.

Multiple teachers in my family report there is an attention crisis. And worse, the kids are addicted to their screens and even show signs of withdrawal in class. One case required professional intervention and the parents didn't seem bothered about it.

Just because the kids aren’t paying attention to the teachers, doesn’t mean they are having problem focusing. They are probably learning more from their screens, than from the teachers. When the only book in town was the bible and the only guy who had it was the priest, it made sense to have him front and center giving out all the answers. This is not the reality anymore and now kids can probably learn better by themselves. You should look into the work of Sugata Mitra.

Drug addicts can enjoy drugs for hours and hours /s

They can make movies more enjoyable too! I think you are on to something :)

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