Every once in a while, I’ll delete social media apps from my phone. The reason is I want to reduce the amount of time I spend mindlessly scrolling. I have this theory that if a man can maintain a long attention span in an increasingly distracted world, it won’t be long before he’s considered superhuman.
If I shared all the idiosyncratic machinations that I employ to help with discipline and time-management, the list would be long yet distinguished, not unlike this sentence (and “Slider’s” johnson in Top Gun).
My “attention hacks” don’t always work. Every day I’m on Instagram, checking stocks, scores, HAR and Twitter. Any red light is an opportunity to impulsively check work-email or take a seatbelt-selfie. I’m kidding, of course—work email can wait.
Some people schedule their app usage—Duolingo comes to mind. But most scrolling is compulsive. I even scroll while taking a piss. For readers across the pond, that is, those who speak English-English, “taking a piss” is slang for when a man (or a degeneres lesbian) says they’re going to urinate. For stateside readers, “taking the piss” is when someone across the pond gives another a hard time, regardless of gender or sexual preference.
The Future of “Mindless Scrollers” (Year 2049)
Imagine it’s the year 2049. All social classes and castes are replaced with two groups—an elite upperclass of “Superhumans” (homo sapiens who’ve maintained a long attention span) and an underclass of “Mindless Scrollers.”
Mindless Scrollers are characterized by an inability to focus their attention. Their lives are lived almost entirely online. They are the unwashed masses, hailing from a lineage and legacy of people with poor Internet habits—Youtube commenters, Instagram hiney-models, purveyors of alt-right & ctrl-left movements—who’ve inadvertently passed their “scrolling and trolling” habits down through generations.
Back in 2018, a study showed that adolescents with ADHD averaged 5.31 hours of screen-time after 9pm. iPhone time increased across the populace in subsequent years. Then adults’ average screen-time would reach 2018 “teenager-with-ADHD”-levels by 2032. Productivity would nose-dive worldwide as smartphone addiction centers proliferated.
United States would experienced negative GDP growth for the first time since 2009. Artificial Intelligence (AI) robots surpassed the economic contributions of Mindless Scrollers in 2037, and Mindless Scrollers were officially relegated to underclass status.
The underclass co-opted the term, Underclass Scrollers, and formed their own political party. They demanded universal basic duel-income (UBDI), and pledged unwavering support for FEED US (Free Everything Except Diamonds for Underclass Scrollers), a bill proposed by “Lioness of the Senate,” Alexandria Occasio-Cortez.
If man doesn’t value his own attention as currency, he will mindlessly and freely give away what should be priceless. – Man Overseas, 2018
In 2048 (last year), Occasio-Cortez became the first childless-by-choice majority-minority feminist-binary person of color with Puerto Rican ancestry to run for president. Her campaign slogan, “Still Slaying Lewks” was popular among “very uneducated voters,” a category CNN began tracking in 2020 after successfully promoting “uneducated voters” as a legitimate category in 2016, while her contention that “Superhumans” needed to “check their privilege” resonated with her base.
Ms. Cortez lost the presidential race to incumbent North West, who carried Texas, Mexifornia and Florida, thanks to better memes and a vast majority of the Superhuman vote.
Superhumans are the progeny of those raised with technology restrictions, only attending schools where screens were disallowed. At home, parents limited screen time to an hour a day—rules passed down through generations.
Other popular world leaders who won their respective countries’ Superhuman vote include: Daishem Won Yoo of Unified Korea (62% of Superhumans) and Анатолий Putin of Motherland Russia (99% of Superhumans, 102% of total vote).
Back to Reality (2018)
Current executives at tech giants like Google, Facebook & Apple, know that a long attention span is becoming increasingly rare in the smartphone era. Many have said they notice a “malaise of scrolling,” which leads to a low-grade misery of boredom and restlessness.
As one chief AI engineer put it, “You can’t stick your kid’s face in a device and expect them to develop a long attention span.”
Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker, said recently in regards to social media:
- “The thought process that went into building these applications was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?”
- “… the dopamine hit … because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever … that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.”
- “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
- “It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, now worth an estimated $74 billion, posted on Facebook a few years ago, “Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books.”
Even Steve Jobs, before he died in 2012, said that he prohibited his kids from using an iPad; he wanted them to read books instead. Unsurprisingly, technology-free schools started popping up in Silicon Valley to accommodate tech execs’ kids.
“The difference between the people you admire and everybody else [is that the former are] the people who read.” – Bryan Callen
A prescient Eazy-E once said on NWA’s pioneering gangsta rap album, Straight Outta Compton, referring to the dopeman, “Don’t get high off your own supply.”
That was 1988. Zuckerberg & Parker were born in 1983 & 1979, respectively. Although we can’t be sure whether the Facebook billionaires were influenced by Eazy’s worldly wisdom, it’d be a remarkable coincidence if not.
The Future is Now (Still 2018)
Just before the twenty-first century (1990s), the Internet changed the world more than anything in our lifetimes. Now it’s as if social media companies are telling founding fathers of the Internet, “Hold my beer.”
When I was a kid, we were told “knowledge is power.” That was back when information was scarce.
Information overload and social media are now reducing our cognitive abilities. We’re scatter-brained and unable to focus our attention, which has considerable economic value to technology companies.
Social media is positive and profitable for a narrow set of creators and stockholders; it’s probably a net negative for most others.
Superhumans, my fictional future folks currently fighting Facebook fixations [and admire alliteration], serve as an example of those who will thrive in the future. They’ll retain control of their attention even as the pace of technology accelerates. But don’t take it from me, it was something I saw scrolling Twitter this morning while I was
So good. I’ve been trying to be on a phone diet as well. It’s hard. I try to limit myself. I was being a hypocrite telling my kids not to get on and giving them restrictions on time and days. (We have no electronic Monday’s & not aloud to use devices in public) I need to do it as well. I need to lead by example.
I refuse to go to digital readers for my kids and myself. I still love holding real books.
I do worry about the new trend in public schools with having an iPad for every child and all work done on technology. Many studies are out there on how detrimental it is to learning and comprehension. Yet, schools keep pushing for more technology and wonder why kids aren’t learning. Let’s shove more technology at them. I’m hoping we can from our mistakes quickly.
Thank you! Interesting to know others’ phone habits.
I also prefer regular books for the feel, smell and better engagement. More importantly, I find reg books help with me remembering where in a book or on a page I read something, whereas kindles/nooks it’s all jumbled together. When traveling, I usually bring 2-3 books plus nook.
Schools are always behind the times it seems. Once the world is run by Silicon Valley tycoons who “don’t get high off their own supply” (and own all the data), the rest of society will finally model their school curriculum…or home school!