Falling reading attention reflects stimulus-addiction, not laziness

Evidence

The most frequent complaint teachers hear is that it’s boring. It is not so much the content of the written material that is at issue here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be ‘boring’. What we are facing here is not just time–honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate ‘New Flesh’ that is ‘too wired to concentrate’ and the confining, concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored simply means to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, YouTube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 51

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘depressive hedonia’ and interpassivity themes of the chapter and prefigures the digital-attention-decline arguments in later literature. — connects to: Rapid reading and advertising skimming reflect a broader erosion of sustained attention — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 647; Attention operates as an addictive wealth of increasing returns — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe:…, 347

Related

• Sustained reading is experienced as boring by students wired to constant stimulus gratification. (similarity 0.83)
• Rapid reading and advertising skimming reflect a broader erosion of sustained attention (similarity 0.81)
• A generational shift from deep attention to hyper-attention is underway (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Rapid reading and advertising skimming reflect a broader erosion of sustained attention #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 647
• Attention operates as an addictive wealth of increasing returns #corroborates (0.75) — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe, 347