Hacker News Reader

Comment by kpw94 | Hacker News Reader

My non-controversial theory: It's all the attention-span-shortening stuff.

- tech apps starting with infinite scroll (facebook, 9gag, Instagram, etc.)

- media/tech shortened content: shorter tv shows, short video content, etc.

(Tiktok is the "state of the art" of those 2 trends pushed to the max)

Specifically, we're getting more & more addicted to things that increase the dopamine spikes frequency, making it increasingly difficult to go in deep focus work.

View on HN

Absolutely, we are feeding kids so much attention-span killing things. Even as an adult I'm having hard time with YouTube shorts, and i cannot imagine a kids brain having the ways to deal with all that.

I am _fighting_ with elderly relatives to adjust their YouTube habits. They didn't even know it comes on autopilot by default. They don't even check sources, they just let the garbage in.

Also the parents using too many attention-span killing things which is hurting the attention they give their children.

I wonder if there's research on short form but educational content or if that's fundamentally impossible.

For example I remember reading a lot of science magazines / articles growing up (granted popsci but for a kid it still teaches some things) and as I grew up things like the Economist.

Similarly I also played games like math blaster as a kid and have realized I need to intentionally provide games like this to my kids that ideally teach something (the bar being greater than zero learning) rather than playing one of those infinite running games or whatever.

I think we're probably talking about the exact same thing but am curious where content vs. short form media is.

Thanks for sharing :)

Last time I dove into its research, I found that Math Blaster had no impact on student learning.

That doesn't line up though. See if you're 13 and meeting the level in 2012 your scores don't decline. So the levels would lag a few years. The 8 year-olds show up and miss the mark in 2017 that indicate the infinite scroll problem was having a toll on them. Additionally this would start to show in class specific measurements (those kids with access to home internet, personal devices, etc. would have worse scores). I think the argument about social media has merit in discussion of children, but it seems more of a social distinction rather than an objective indicator for academic performance.

I certainly feel several degrees dumber than I did as a teenager without that stuff

Reply on news.ycombinator.com