“No one can concentrate on anything for long these days. It’s completely ruining society.”
That’s quite a comment from my philosophically minded Uber driver, and it caught my attention. It had the ring of truth, something about which I’ve been thinking, but I was startled to hear this coming from a stranger. So I asked him to elaborate.
“It’s social media. Everyone is spending their days scrolling to get 3 and 4-second hits of instant gratification from content that has no meaning. We’ve lost patience for extended and meaningful narratives.”
You mean long movies?
“Not really. I mean big and important books, classics, well-constructed books, literary masterpieces put together with care that have stood the test of time.”
Intrigued by this, I thought further. It does have the ring of truth. To think that social media has done this to everyone in varying degrees is rather shocking. I do not exclude myself. The time I spend with long narratives that stretch over hundreds of pages and a reading time of many days has become ever less.