COLUMN: Attention Span

Last weekend, I watched the "Wonka" movie.

I was expecting to discover a quirky kid's movie with enough nostalgia to make a cynical adult smile. It delivered. What I was NOT expecting to discover was the self-diagnosis of a potential mental health disorder. 

Here is precisely how I watched "Wonka":

Press play. Movie runs for precisely eleven minutes. I get a text. Pause movie. Text is from friend informing me of an upcoming concert. I reply. Press play. Seven minutes later, another text. Pause movie. "No, I don't who's playing guitar on this tour." Press play. Four minutes later, press pause. Open laptop. Spend the next fourteen minutes researching who's playing guitar on this tour. Reply to text. Press play. Six minutes later, press pause and open Spotify to listen to one of the band's songs. Text: "Ooh the new album's good. We should go."

Press play. Six minutes later, press pause. Run a load of laundry downstairs. Wonder what I should make for dinner? Come back upstairs. Press play. Eleven minutes later, press pause. Open laptop and Google "what should I make for dinner?" Spend next 17 minutes looking for recipes. Find one that looks good. Press play, but immediately stand up and go to kitchen. Spend next 35 minutes ignoring movie and making food. Sit down with dinner. Rewind film 35 minutes. Press play. Immediately press pause and run back downstairs to put laundry in dryer. Come upstairs. Press play. Eat. Seven minutes pass. Realize there's a football game on, press pause. Switch to Bills v. Chiefs. Where's Taylor? Ahh, there she is. 

Halftime. Switch back to Wonka. Press play. Four minutes. I recognize that actor. What's he from? One minute. Press pause. Go to IMDB and research "Wonka" cast list. Discover the actor was in an episode of my favorite British sitcom, Peep Show. What a great show. Press pause. Switch to watch one episode of Peep Show. Switch back to "Wonka." No, wait, the football game! Switch back to football, watch Buffalo blow the field goal. Back to "Wonka." Press pause, eat some chocolate. Press play. Watch eighteen minutes before picking up phone and surfing TikTok for 1.5 hours. Back to "Wonka." Watch fourteen minutes while getting ready for bed. Lie down. Remember clothes in dryer. Get up and stomp downstairs in a huff. Fold clothes while surfing TikTok. Come upstairs and fall asleep with phone in hand. Wake up to four missed texts.

Why do I suddenly have the attention span of a squirrel? These days, I can barely do a thing without also wanting to do seventeen other things at the same time. And it's not the fault of poor "Wonka," either. It was a decent enough movie, and I enjoyed it -- but it shouldn't have taken me the entirety of my Sunday to watch a two-hour movie. But lately, this happens every time I try to sit back and focus on pretty much any task at hand. Don't believe me? Between the last sentence and this sentence, I just watched an entire episode of "True Detective" on HBO. Do I have middle-aged onset ADHD?

When I was a kid, I remember fuddy-duddy adults saying things like "kids today have no attention span" while we just rolled our eyes. The blame was usually focused squarely on MTV. Parents had no idea why their children suddenly wanted to watch a string of five-minute-long music videos instead of a whole movie. "It's rotting their brains!" 

These days, a five-minute pop song is something of a rarity. In 2018, Lil Nas X sold 10 million copies of his smash single "Old Town Road." It topped the charts for a record-setting 19 consecutive weeks. "Old Town Road" is 1 minute, 52 seconds long. You could play "Old Town Road" thirty times in a row and it wouldn't take you an hour. Many of today's biggest hits are shorter than three minutes in length.

I spend my weekends DJing in bars and clubs around town. From behind the DJ booth, you can actually see today's generation getting bored in real time if you let a song play for longer than three minutes. After one verse and one chorus, people lose interest. Half the floor stops dancing and just stands around chatting like some DJ nightmare. Last month, I caught myself thinking, "Man, this feels like it's twice the work it once was. Maybe I'm getting too old to DJ." I realize now that I'm not too old -- DJing really IS twice the work it once was because I'm playing TWICE the songs in the same amount of time. As soon as I pull off a mix, I'm already reaching for the next track because it's about to end.

This isn't MTV's fault. This isn't ADHD. Fuddy-duddy me puts the blame squarely on social media. J'accuse, TikTok! I fall under its lurid spell far too often. The moment your brain registers boredom, you can now just flick your thumb and be instantly watching something different on your phone. Before my lips can even form the words "I'M BORED," I've scrolled through 3 other videos. Last weekend when I was housebound and snowed in, I livestreamed a DJ set from my basement on TikTok for fun. While I'm proud to say I had a handful of viewers stick around and check it out, the average viewer watched my livestream for... eight seconds.  

I'm not the only one worried. According to a recent article in Time magazine, psychiatrists are inundated these days by patients convinced they have ADHD and seeking medical help. Usually all they need is a break from the internet. A study was done in the 2000s that tracked people using electronic devices and discovered their focus changed every 2.5 minutes. They repeated the study last year and found the average was now 47 seconds before boredom set in.

I'm a fan AND a victim of social media addiction. You won't catch me bad-mouthing the internet, but maybe we all DO need occasional sanity breaks and reality checks. If we're not careful, we could be heading towards a world where movies are ten minutes long and the #1 song in the country is just someone singing "aaaah!" for 3.5 seconds. I'd say more, but frankly, I'm bored of writing. There's TikToks to watch, people.