Virginia Heffernan Attention Span Myth

My main problem that I possess when it comes to my phone dependency is how to fill my free time with efficient activities like reading, homework, or other things. When I went through school without using social media, I was much more attentive in class and I did not really miss the connection I had with my phone. I also discovered that I do not deal with the “fear of missing out” because in actuality I did not miss out on a single thing. Identifying this fact enabled me to understand that thinking I need my phone because something important could potentially arise is a complete lie that I feed to myself to give a “valid” excuse that I need to be connected to my phone at all times of the day. This challenge revealed to me how detrimental social media could become if I keep using it extensively. I have read several articles about how media are physically altering our brain in a bad way and leading to a lack of essential skills in people, mainly in the millennial generation. This made me question if new media has contributed to the rise of social anxiety in individuals or aided the downfall of literacy in America today. This project has truly opened my eyes with my personal media use and the potential risks that can spawn from abusing

Nowadays it seems there is a constant riff between those who love social media and those who do not; usually between older and younger generations. The classroom, emblematic of this struggle, is where the appropriateness of social media comes into question. Jane Mathison Fife, a professor at Western Kentucky University wrote, “Using Facebook to Teach Rhetorical Analysis,” in Pedagogy argues that frequent Facebook users have strong classical rhetorical analytical skills relating to Ethos, Logos and Pathos. Rhetorical analytical elements were originally described by Aristotle as the writer’s credibility being ethos, an appeal to emotion being pathos and evidence and reason as logos. Like most successful authors, Fife employs the use of rhetorical elements. Throughout the article, she excels in establishing pathos during the beginning of her paper which helps her connect with the audience and establish a good ethos; however, she falls short in building logos as her paper lacks organization and using evidence from familiar sources.

Sam Anderson book reviewer for New York magazine and writer of many articles like, In Defense of Distraction, Anderson has primarily become interested in the way culture and our habits of reading has drastically changed with technology. In the article In Defense of Distraction, Anderson explores the poor attention one has developed throughout the decades and how this attention has distracted the human mind in a way that it has centered to our cultural attention. It is an inevitable habit we seem to apply in our everyday life’s, in our yoga class one a week, the cancer slowly spreading across our body, the pretty little liars show that is shown every Tuesday that seems to not be enough. We seem to pay attention all the time

Each time we write an essay or read a book we have to find a way to concentrate on one area for a long period of time. Heffernan’s fervent interest in the distraction-glorifying past is deceptive. She presents the case of Moby-Dick and Ahab’s “monomania” (114) as if it is pro-distraction, when really it just recognizes the danger of obsession. Focus does not equal obsession. Even Tom Sawyer’s interest in beetles is a case for the opportunity for focus interest presents, not distraction. The German Bertolt Brecht and his anti-boredom theater again simply stress the importance of interest and constant contemplation. The attention span is not the enemy, but rather a resource for great thinking. The inability to understand how to use it properly does not render it null and void as Heffernan would have you believe. If anything, the attention span is imperative for getting the most out of the human mind by understanding its limits. No attention span can last

From a few seconds to respond to a friend’s text, countless hours spent gramming, snapchatting, tweeting, posting on Facebook, pinning on Pinterest, and many other forms of social media, teenagers today are non-stop connected to their phones, laptops, tablets, computers, etc., creating or strengthening social bonds. Your social identity is very important today, and the mount of friends you have on facebook, or amount of retweets or likes you get are a sign of your social superiority. This paper aims to evaluate Melissa Healy’s use of rhetorical strategies, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, in “Teenage social media butterflies may not be such a bad idea.” Healy uses rhetorical appeals effectively in her causal argument about adolescents and social relationships teenagers have that deal in result to social media.

He begins to use logic and says that you never know what people are going through so do not be too quick to respond. “Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.” This quote is an example of logos because it uses statistics, bias, and reasoning. From both of Wallace’s stories readers can logically infer that the characters suffer from

Both authors point out the negative reasons of using “too much” internet and less interaction with people. Because people lose their focus from doing the work. Carr offers concern by stating how writing few pages is hard and reading long articles has become difficult. Car writes, “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it” (55). Even he has become the victim of online browsing and not able to write long articles, which shows how he has problems focusing on writing a blog. More easiness has made people lazier because people do not have to put extra effort to do any tasks. Therefore, Carr says that some people would save a long article to read it later, but the chances are less that people actually go back and finish it (55). He also shows how people may forget to work on something they had saved for later while doing something online. However, they tend to forget it because some may get distracted from scrolling through one link to another which slips out of their mind. Bauerlein would strongly agree with Carr that people are becoming more distracted and technology-like. Bauerlein also shows the concern that people use fake facial expression to describe their expression. He argues that people send “smileys” and “emoji’s” when they send text messages on phones or inserts an emoji on Facebook, but their actual expression could be completely different and no one would figure it out (77). It prevents people from knowing a person very well because they could have a totally different perspective about them over the phones. Bauerlein describes his concern that people are not at their benefits when they talk through “emoji’s” on the phone because they would not be able to figure out a person’s hand movements when they talk about certain things or their actual facial

In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr discusses the distraction of the internet and other technologies connected to the internet. When Carr published The Shallows, social media was not incredibly common or popular and Carr did not deeply discuss the idea that social media is or can be distracting and damaging. Since The Shallows was published social media has become increasingly available, used, and prevalent in most people’s daily lives. Because of social media’s current popularity, I wanted to look into social media’s impact on our lives. I will be exploring if social media is distracting and damaging to us.

Within Jenna Wortham's article, "Turn Off the Phone (and the Tension)," Wortham discusses the impact that social media possesses, in which Wortham believes that technology is responsible for shaping people's lives negatively. From Wortham's previous experiences, she shares a moment in her life that made her realize that people often compare their lives to others excessively- one of the reasons why people have social media attachment issues. Wortham also expresses how social media users brag about their lives being better than others through exaggerated posts- something that shouldn't be encouraged. With effort to resolve this issue, Wortham considers and suggests Mr. Hofmann's advice to readers: go screenless for a certain

Technology and Social Media In the essays, “Technology Taking Over?” by Yzzy Gonzalez, “The Parent Trap” by Clive Thomas and “This Is Not About You” by Andrew Santella, each of the authors write about the impact technology and social networking have on our schedules and the images of ourselves. How technology and social media can be a big part of our life distraction, we put more attention to our cell phones. Half of the time when we are doing homework, talking to our parents or in class all we do is be on our phones, we won’t pay attention to what we supposed to do or not end up listening.

Also, by appealing to ethos he also appeals to logos. For example, when he claims that people do not possess the concentration nor patience to read a book. Or when he said that people have become too lazy to research facts themselves. So instead, they just browse the Internet. By saying this, he appeals to the logical because it seems to be logical that people would simply browse on Google instead of obtaining their knowledge from elsewhere and, henceforth, they become lazier. Additionally, he can be quoted to saying

They’re selling your attention span.” (Are You Addicted to Your Phone?) Instead of reading books and finding hobbies, youth today are absorbed in social media. We are so addicted to it, we created a new phobia, the fear and anxiety of being without a phone. These mindless distractions turn us away from what’s happening in the world.

How often do we use social media? Teenagers spend at least nine hours a day on social networking sites. That’s thirty percent of all time spent online dedicated to social media. These numbers are constantly increasing every day. Many of the tweets and posts that we see on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter use arguments and we don’t even realize it. All of these arguments use ethos, pathos, and logos to make a point. Let’s examine how these three concepts are used on social media.

A study by Harvard Business Review found that team performance went up 50% when teams socialized more and limited email and eventually, anyone or “operational-only” issues. Clearly, there’s a theme here. We don’t just “become lonelier” as a human race over time. It seems that with the advent of social media, laptops, and apps, we’re choosing screens over personal interactions. According to Time, most Americans from age 18 to 24 check their phone 74 times a day on average. Use of internet has certainly increased the quantity of our mental stimulation, but we lack the quality. According to Forbes, The American Academy of Pediatrics aware the possibility of negative effects of social media in young kids and teens, including cyber-bullying and Facebook depression. Using social media disturbs make deep relationship with others. When they are using social-media we do not need to move a lot. It is okay just to stay. We do not need to active a lot. As a result, it leads naturally mental and physical disabilities. Although social media can connect teens to the world and friends and family around them, it is actually one of the highest-ranking cause of suicide among teenagers in 21st century. People sometimes talks about how social media is becoming part of their world, it is becoming their world. They are unaware of the fact that social media encourages the false images of how everything should be in a perfect world. This not only increases stresses and changes in a normal human life but, it leads to depression and some mental diseases. When it comes to study, a study conducted by Liberty Voice shows that, children have become more dumb, lazier, rude and depressed due to the use of social media. They have been spending

Our lives seem to be more and more consumed by technology as great advances in this area have continue to be made, especially when it comes to social media. Many researchers have begun to notice that depending on how much time individuals spend on these social media sites, they can negatively affect their daily lifestyle in very significant ways.  For example, social networking has become a huge distraction for students and it can affect their grades depending on how often they check their various accounts while doing class work.  Researchers have also come to find out that social media can contribute to the development of psychological symptoms