I’m not trying to sound smart but I actually noticed that the internet has changed howwe read or, at least, how I read. When I was a kid I could pick up a book and in under a minute be so deeply immersed in the book that I didn’t know what was happening around me. My mom actually had to come out of the kitchen and almost literally shake me awake when she wanted to tell me something. People could be sitting right next to me and I would be totally oblivious.
But now everything has changed. I used to read almost every day. I would sit there and read book after book without stop unless I was told to or I had to do something. Now I almost never read books unless it’s a new one in a series I really like, and even then it takes me almost 20 minutes to immerse myself in it and it’s nowhere near as deep as it used to be.
“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
Just so you know I didn’t even see this paragraph until after I wrote everything before it. But it is really similar to what’s been happening to me. I think the problem is that with the internet you can jump to something else anytime you want. This hasn’t just changed how I read. One example is videogames. At one time I could play a single videogame several times before I stopped, but now I don’t even play it more than once because I already know what is going to happen. None of it is new and because of that it doesn’t interest me anymore.
The internet has changed me, no longer do I look for something good I can read/play several times, now I look for something new, something different, and even then after such a short time they lose their appeal, because they are no longer mysterious, no longer interesting.
if anyone else has had a similar expirience i would love it if you posted a comment about how the internet has or hasnt changed you.
No, the internet has changed me too. I used to be like you, I could spend hours at a time leisurely reading. Now I can't do that any longer; my mind starts to wander. This summer, I was so excited that I could finally read books that I actually wanted to read (instead of ones that had been assigned by professors), and I developed a long list that I hoped to finish by the end of the summer. I only finished two. And I know the internet is in large part to blame, because it's done something to my attention span -- I can't immerse myself in anything for very long anymore.
ReplyDeleteI've had that same experience, Amanda, of looking forward to reading what I want to read and then only getting maybe one or two books done. I hope the books at the top of your list were the best ones.
ReplyDeleteone time i picked up about 20 books from the library expecting to read them all during the week and i ended up not reading any of them
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