Has gaming and the modern world reduced your attention span?

Recommended Videos

Sigmund Av Volsung

Hella noided
Dec 11, 2009
2,999
0
0
Maybe a little bit. I get book burnout if I read consistently for more than 40 minutes. Afterwards, I have to do something else: the text stops making sense, unless the text in question is incredibly and consistently engaging. Even then though it can rarely match the intensity of movies or the interactivity of games.

I also tend to prefer lower time investments. I can blaze through a 20 min/episode anime fairly quickly, but a 40 min/episode TV show takes more investment for me to continue watching.

I don't mind writing though. That I can do for very long time periods, provided I have sufficient motivation/reason to write. Then, I only need to take a break once every 3 hours of so with typing, or every hour with pen(more due to cramps though) :p

However, many studies have confirmed that humans tend to have an attention span ranging at about 15 minutes. In order for evolutionary digression(disregarding biological pre-dispositions or individual differences) to happen, then we need to be bombarded with constant stimuli for the next 100 years at an increasingly rapid pace.

I'd say that it's more of a 'spoilt for choice' affair. I mean, you could sit patiently, waiting for a game to install, but chances are that you will open up your browser on your phone or on your PC for a few minutes until it finishes installing. You have so many options that your standards for sufficiently entertaining media have risen, to the point where you're less likely to provide attention beyond a certain, self-imposed time limit, resulting in what might look like a 'lesser attention span'.

To bring up a more contemporary example, the reason why Dark Souls is heralded as 'incredibly difficult' is because a lot of people don't feel like investing the proper amount of time and energy to truly get into the game. In comparison to other games that provide, not necessarily instant, but certainly quicker, gratification, most people tend to pass up on things that require investment in order to properly enjoy. But that's just what I think :p
 

mitchell271

New member
Sep 3, 2010
1,457
0
0
Oh my god, yes. The only thing I can sit and do consistently now is read, listen to an album or play an instrument. I can't even sit and play a single game for more than a couple of hours at a time anymore!

But, the important thing is that I can still sit and work for hours. Especially since my job will involve staring at unusable code for hours at a time.
 

MHR

New member
Apr 3, 2010
939
0
0
Not at all. My patience has increased if anything. After you've spent hours doing things like hunting deathclaws by sneaking around and sniping them in the leg with a BB gun, eventually there's just a point of no return. You're as patient as patient gets. I don't really like doing more than one thing at once, and I try to partition out time where I can focus on getting one thing done at a time.

I can sit in one place and do nothing for hours and just entertain myself with my own thoughts and without drugs or anything. I'm just that kind of person.