We're all doomed.
Every member of the 21st century has been trapped inside the soul-sucking vortex; a never-ending, insatiable need for attention.
We crave it. We are an entire society of attention-starved, desperate individuals bent on demonstrating our unique individuality at any and every opportunity.
Don't believe me?
When was the last time you looked at how many likes your last Facebook post received? Or how many times your YouTube video has been viewed?
When was the last time you spent a day without using your phone to call or text or communicate with anyone?
When was the last time you went an hour without looking at your phone?
If you're anything like me, going an extended period of time without fulfilling the habit of frequently checking your phone for updates produces withdrawal-like symptoms.
I even get phantom phone buzzes when I'm separated from the virtual world for even a few minutes.
The urge is strong.
But, this is certainly not an anti-phone, anti-communication, anti-social network post. Not at all.
It is, however, a commentary on how we are all wired for attention.
We need it. Without attention, we feel excluded, alone, and eventually depressed and distressed.
We need human interaction.
Yet, despite our basic human need for attention, the ability to gain it has become increasingly difficult.
I suspect this is why our need for attention has become more and more pronounced, frequent and intense.
** The average human attention span 50 years ago was roughly 20 minutes.**
You can do and say a lot in 20 minutes. The need for attention can be satisfied much more completely when someone is devoting large amounts of time to you. We feel valuable when we receive such large amounts of undivided attention.
Care to take a guess at what the average attention span is today?
8 Seconds.
That's right. A measly 8 seconds.
How fulfilling can 8 seconds be? How meaningful can one make a 9 second period of time?
Not much.
Because of this, to gain a large block of attention, we have to regain someones attention every 9 seconds. That's a lot of pressure and a lot of work.
So, instead of doing that, we seek to rectify this attention deficit with volume. We find more people who will listen to us. The Internet has fulfilled that need, while simultaneously advancing the need for increased and intensified volume of attention.
This has resulted in attributing vast amounts of value to followers, views, Facebook "friends", likes, and other forms of meaningless tokens that represent tiny amounts of attention.
If someone has 10 million subscribers on YouTube, we value that number because it represents a large amount of attention volume.
But, if someone has 25 friends on Facebook. We tend to pity them.
The truth is, 25 meaningful relationships is far more valuable than 10 million attention fragments.
The businessman inside me will disagree and say that 10 million eyeballs is more valuable because the potential for monetization is far greater.
This is another problem caused by our desire to replace meaningful relationships with a high volume of attention fragments. We tend to reduce people to faceless online avatars - relationships are as shallow as the Internet they are hosted on.
This is all well and good for acquaintances and online relationships. Their place should rarely extend beyond the attention fragmentation phase.
However, the problem arises when we merge our virtual world habits with our real world relationships.
Dates with your significant other become distracted periods of meaningless, unfulfilling blips of fragmented attention.
Holidays with family members are doomed to the same fate.
Intentional, meaningful time is all but a thing of the past. A relic of a simpler time.
So, how do we fight it?
Simple.
Refuse to trade quantity for quality. See attention fragmentation for what it is and fight for quality time that means something.
Help your friends and family overcome their attention addiction by putting in the work to gain their attention over and over again. It takes work, but it's worth it.
Maybe, one day, we can increase our collective attention span again and get off this speeding train towards empty, hollow relationships.
Then, and only then, can the path to true unity and community begin.
