• ameancow@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Almost everything has become media entertainment, media is about capturing attention-spans because attention is monetized via commercials and clicks on affiliates and the like. This has led to an arms-race in grabbing attention faster and faster, so now the general population, and I mean MOST people, pay less attention to anything that requires patience or does not provide immediate dopamine hits.

    This is just the state we’re in, it’s widespread and it’s a massive problem and AI is making it even worse every day.

    The average grade-school teacher reports they have to design curriculums around 3 - 7 minutes maximum attention-spans, that anything more than a few minutes at a time and kids will start fidgeting, looking around and acting disinterested, nor can teachers even give kids homework anymore because they use ChatGTP to finish it most of the time. Adults aren’t in much better shape. About a full quarter of America’s adult population are functionally illiterate, meaning while they can usually work out words and text messages via context, they can’t read an article or a book, they can’t assemble paragraphs to form narration in their minds.

    This is why we’re in this mess right now, because many people are exploiting this trend and only a handful of people are raising awareness about it and trying to get us broadly to put the electronic devices down. Which nobody wants to do, nor can we all do because of the need to use smartphones and computers in our daily lives.