How We Absorb Information

I get incredibly tired of the same complaints and concerns about attention spans in the younger generations. People are constantly commenting that younger people are too easily distracted and not able to focus all their energy on one thing for an extended amount of time. My dad often calls this a "fast food" culture meaning our expectations about how quickly we should get things has gone up and not in a good way. Here's how a "young person" sees this phenomenon:

I can see how this particular subject might be upsetting to older generations. Radical change is often something viewed with apprehension, and I will be the first one to say that change for the sake of change will do little good. However, this is an evolution. New technology has made it possible to get more information than ever and at a faster rate than could have ever been predicted. In about five minutes I can check up on my friends' lives on Facebook, catch up on celebrity gossip on twitter, check world news headlines from The New York Times, and send a text to my mom about dinner tonight. Give me another ten minutes, and I can explain to you what the Higgs Boson particle is and why it matters.

I think what is so concerning about having everything at your fingertips is the idea that you may be exposed to a lot of information, but you are not absorbing any of it. This is a valid point.The information we have obtained a week ago may be getting shoved aside for the massive amount of new information we've consumed since then.

I don't see this as a problem necessarily, though. The benefit of having all this information coming at us is that we are exposed to so many things. Something is bound to catch your attention and motivate you to explore further. For example, I am an English major, but I find astronomy absolutely fascinating. I will watch any television show or documentary made about the stars or the universe. I read books explaining how we're all made of stardust and how everything is connected despite the universe being so large and getting bigger every second. The internet has been a great source for me to delve deeper into this subject. I can watch YouTube videos or TED talks about it any time I want and at my own pace. In the end, the democratization of information is what is the best thing about the internet age, and I don't think we'd want to give that up for anything.