You've got 9 seconds

[Trouble]

After that you may as well be talking to a goldfish.
http://www.educationnews.org/techno...attention-spans-shrinking-less-than-goldfish/

Having a 7 year old grand daughter along with five others slightly older, I suspect these findings are reasonably accurate.

Often when posting in forums around the web I suspect that sometimes after the first nine words or so, the folks I'm trying to help may be hearing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

 

[Dipsy]

Our world of communication is changing and as an old school old guy it makes me kind of sad. Not sad over the advancement of technology but sad over its effect on the slowly disappearing ability to spell, punctuate and construct sentences according to the rules of grammar. Seems everyone's life is being ruled by electronic media and the ability to focus attention on anything other than a cell phone or other electronic device is disappearing. Try having a conversation with a young person with a cell phone in their hand. They will constantly divert their attention from the conversation to the cell phone to check for text messages.

 

[Ian]

Yup, I think it's probably quite true! On balance, having instant access to loads of information is fantastic - but the downsides that @Dipsy mentions are very true. I'm sure we'll be wearing "Google Glass" augmented reality glasses very soon, so we can make sure our attention span is zero soon enough .

Try having a conversation with a young person with a cell phone in their hand. They will constantly divert their attention from the conversation to the cell phone to check for text messages.

Next time that happens, send them a text message and tell them to pay attention .

 

[clifford_cooley]

Send them the iPhone killer text to get their attention.

Side note: I have a Blackberry so the text doesn't work on my phone.
Another side note: If I was bad about this myself, I might not have a blackberry.