Surroundings

I have not been diagnosed with epilepsy, hypofocus, or a learning disability. However, if anyone with those above listed are here now, I feel for them. I do believe that I have (undiagnosed) ADHD, and as I sit here in the airport at 3:56am, I have only proven myself correct. And I will tell you why: there are 48 screens visible in my eyeline. Forty eight. And all I did was look up without turning my head.

There are 24 seats at this table. At every seat on this table there is an Ipad that is flashing, "Eat this combo on the plane", "Buy this for a more comfortable ride", "Listen to this music to relax". At every Ipad, there is a credit card machine (instant gratification at it's best). There are 11 people on their phones. There are 9 people, including myself, on their computers. There are 2 tv screens hanging from the ceiling, one showing the news and the other showing an animal documentary. There's also a voiceover playing every 10ish minutes with airport announcements. There is a woman behind me that is talking with her credit card company. There is a toddler babbling. There is a man arguing with the front desk. And it's not even 4am.

The amount of unmistakable sensory overload that is in this terminal is absolutely paralyzing. I find myself trying to write, respond to an email, or focus on reading, or even scroll Instagram, but 10 seconds later, I am fascinated by the game that the person next to me is playing or mezmerized by the graphics of the iPads.

Is this the instant gratification that our generation longed for? I don't think we can get more immediate than this.

I saw a video on TikTok (source unknown) where the narrator put screen clips of old cartoons and Cocomelon together and counted the seconds until the scene changed. The older cartoons camera pan went up to 5/6 seconds. The new cartoon's camera pan was constantly "1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1". Meaning that the "camera" would be on a different image every 1 or 2 seconds. This is mind boggling to me because this constant change of images and sounds are being imprinted into a child's brain as a constant flow of information. When a child is not used to constant changing images, and they have to sit in the same immovable environment, such as an airport, their attention span is out of wack.

How do we change this? Of course, my solution would be to sit in nature. Or read a book. Or read a book in nature. Or to go somewhere, not necessarily a physical place, but a mental place- where the focus shifts and time stands still.

I scroll through instagram probably once a day for an averge of an hour. Instagram uses 6 second- 90 second videos to grab your attention. TikTok recently changed their maximum video length from 15 seconds in 2016 to 10 minutes in 2022. (Source: Flixier.com) Sometimes, if I'm not intrigued by the first 1 second, I scroll past. So, as a viewer, I am giving the content creator my undivided attention for 1 second until I move onto something else. I don't usually sympathize with influencers, but that would be difficult to grab someone's attention that quickly, especially in a world building on content.

If we go out in the world without technology, what purpose is such a short video giving us? What else can we focus on that is 6 seconds?

For me personally, audio and visual learning is what I thrive in. I cannot concentrate on just reading, I have to see, hear, touch, and learn. Especially in subjects that I have no interest in, I get distracted very easily. I believe that this came from the technology that surrounded me when I was a child. What worries me is that from the 90's, technology that I grew up with has exponentially blew out of the water. Today, "ipad kid" is a term used, which only goes to show how much young people are affected. Unfortunately, I cannot find a reliable source that shows how much learning and learning disabilites have correlated with the rise in technology. However, I have found a lot of articles where technology is praised for assisting learning.

Maybe I'm just a cynical millenial who likes the outdoors too much.