The 10 Minute YouTube Attention Span
Over the last year I have realized that I just feel uneasy if not anxious after watching television. Whether it is YouTube, Netflix, or my Disney/Hulu subscription.
After I came to this epiphany I started to decrease my watch hours. First I started with YouTube. This was one of the biggest time sucks. So, I tried the next best thing, movies. Unfortunately this turned out to be just as fruitless. I would scroll through trailer after trailer and before I knew it half an hour had passed by. I also found that when I did watch a movie I still felt unsettled.
You might be thinking that I would catch on and tear the batteries out of my remote, throw them away, so that I may move on to a more enjoyable activity. Well I couldn’t. My T.V. remote is solar powered, interestingly enough.
Trying to move on, I sat back down on my couch in front of my T.V. and did some more reflecting. Eventually I came to a deeper realization that I yearned for the late nineties and early to mid two thousands movies. The ones that would be considered low budget by today’s standards. Movies like National Treasure, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Meet the Parents, Shrek, and Elf.
With this newfound knowledge I began seeking these movies out. It helped. Thank goodness, T.V. was saved now that I felt less unsettled. I began to wonder if these movies were better in some way? Maybe their plots moved slower, or they had more substance. I don’t know, but one can guess.
It would take me a day or two to watch a movie. Is this normal?
The minimum two hour time commitment of these movies wreaked havoc on my ten minute YouTube starved brain. I found myself consistently leaving a movie nineteen minutes in. Eventually I just started setting a timer for twenty minutes and calling it quits.
What was the point? With my frustration mounting to a head I turned to my Kindle e-reader and began reading. After all what else was I going to do? The virtual pages flipped by leaving me relaxed. The constant tension in my shoulders eased and my brain eventually began to crave the immersion into another world and time.
What about my ten minute YouTube brain?
Well, for better or for worse it has stubbornly stuck. Some days I am able to push beyond it with ease. Heck I read for an hour straight the other day, though this is still a rarity.
If I string multiple ten minute reading episodes together throughout a day I obtain more times of calm and escape points. So it works out.
Good writing allows you to enter another world seamlessly for however long you need. We all have stressors in our lives. Reading has helped me reset from some of these.
So, I implore you dear reader to get out there, or actually, just stay in and cuddle up with a good book.
-Abe
