I don’t play video games very often any more. This isn’t to say that I don’t still enjoy them (although I don’t play games like Call of Duty anymore because I’m not a huge fan of getting cursed out by 11 year old kids). When I was younger, I would play video games all the time. From 8 to 14, I was the poster child for hyper attention. But, now that I’m older and don’t have nearly enough time to spend 3 hours a day slaying monsters or shooting Nazis, I don’t really miss it very much. However, for as long as I’ve liked video games, I’ve always loved reading. From Stephen King to Suzanne Collins, reading has been something that has stuck with since I was a little kid and got my first Harry Potter book. Unfortunately, I feel like I’m in the minority.
When I come home from college, I occasionally hang out with a couple of my neighborhood friends. However, when I say hang out, I don’t really mean the normal definition. Usually, when this group of friends gets together, we either do one of two things: watch something mind numbing on Netflix or play something mind numbing on Xbox. And they seem okay with it. All of these guys are one or two years younger than me, but they remind me so much of myself when I was age 8-14. When we get together, everything is hyper-attentive. Deeper meaning be damned. I mean, why think when you can shoot your friend in the face and make jokes at his expense? While I’m fine with playing video games every once in a while, the constant desire for hyper-attentive media overloads me, and I’m almost glad whenever I am able to leave their company to spend time with my family or other friends who don’t do that. I’m not saying that hyper-attentiveness is a problem; I just personally can’t handle nearly as much of it as some other people can. But maybe I’m just weird.
Now for some questions. Does this story ring a bell with anyone? Do you feel as though the over-saturation of hyper-attentive media has had any negative impacts on the desire of our generation or younger generations to spend time on deep attention media? Also, is it just me or does this overflowing amount of desire for hyper attention mainly come from high school age people and younger?
I never played video games as a kid. I did play Sims (I feel like most people, at least girls anyway, also did) but I don’t think that can compare to the quick changes that happen in a video game. It’s interesting to me that you were really into video games for a time in your life and now you’re not. Do you think that has something to do with maturity? Maybe you’re not interested in the concept of shooting fake people anymore or maybe you’re just much more intellectual now (meaning you have too much school work to spend time on things like video games). I’m not sure what the answer to that is.
I think as interests change maybe our attention changes too. It is clear that you have always been capable of deep attention because you liked to read even when you were younger and still more interested in video games that require attention to a lot of movement. After talking in class today I am even more sure that everyone is capable of both types of attention; some people are just more prone to one type than another. It is possible that you are just more capable of deep attention than your friends and that is why you find hanging out with them too much annoying.
I played a variety of video games as a kid, my favorite being Brawl, Super Mario Brothers, Sonic, and the like. All of these would require hyper attention in my opinion because of the quick reflexes and button mashing that they required. Like OP, I also enjoyed reading a lot as a child (don’t worry, I don’t think you’re in the minority). Now I still enjoy playing video games, although my tastes have evolved slightly. I still enjoy Brawl (now also Smash Bros.) and other hyper attention games like League of Legends and BioShock, but I now also like Roller Coaster Tycoon, a game which I had no patience for when I was younger. I don’t think I would say that Roller Coaster Tycoon uses deep attention necessarily even though it is goal driven, but it definitely requires more focus and planning than the other games. I still enjoy reading now as well. I agree with not being able to handle hyper attention media as much now. I feel like now after a certain point, I’m able to say “no more” to myself and stop, whereas when I was younger, I would continue to play hour after hour and not get tired at all. I think this might just be a result of growing up however because children in general have shorter attention spans than adults. Deep attention is a skill that you develop over time, mostly when you are a young adult in or after college. I realize that there can be “over-saturation” of hyper attention media but I feel like this is a result of adults in charge of making these decisions believe that younger children need constant stimulus. This carries over to teachers trying so hard to incorporate the same about of stimuli in their classroom environments because for whatever reason they are led to believe that students are completely incapable of deep attention. So in a way I do think that there are negative impacts as a result of the constant hyper attention media because deep attention is not being taught in schools, but I don’t think it is the younger generations’ fault. By this I don’t mean to say that deep attention is better than hyper attention or vice-versa, but I do think that cultivating both are useful.
While I was a very hyper-attention minded child, I didn’t have video games to satisfy these goals. Instead, I relied on Legos and games that my friends made up to indulge myself in the rapid-attention paced life I was drawn to. Since they were not very taxing activities on mind, I never really got “desensitized” to them. To this day I still have a million things that go through my head, and I always have the desire to join something or take on something that is new to me. Occasionally, I can focus myself to keep on something for a period of time, but it usually does not last long. So in this case, maybe having no video games could be actually “worse” (depending on what context your in). I didn’t focus my attention on a new video game or a new level, but a completely different situation. The process of desensitization never affected me because I always had a new and different exposure. So maybe it is the way we use our hyper-attention, then an issue of maturity and “desensitization”.
Today I was assisting in an 8th grade English class and wanted to write some information on the blackboard, only to turn around and see a smartboard drilled right in the middle of the writing space. It took 2 minutes to power it up so I could jot down the talking points of our discussion.
When I wrote on the board, I was surprised to see something of my writing erased. The words themselves stayed there, but this board has a feature that corrects handwriting–it rounds out curves in letters so they will be most legible. I have an issue with this–I don’t make any curves in my handwriting–it’s a lot like a Greek font, but this board turned it into something closer to comic sans.
I don’t see the purpose of this kind of board in an English classroom. Changing my writing took away my personality from what was being written. It’s difficult to tell students that their voice matters and they should strive to develop a personal style when my style was homogenized right in front of them. Hyper attentive media seems to have that effect of removing an individual from an experience, making everything passive and the same.
I think of study “supplements” like Spark Notes that take the place of actually reading a novel by giving people bullet points of the content. It doesn’t necessarily help a person come to an understanding of the novel on their own terms, but to accept the general consensus of what the book means.