‘We move quickly from one site to another on the
web,’ says Doctor Ted Selker, a computer scientist
from Massachusetts, ‘and we are losing the ability
to concentrate.’ With millions of websites to choose
from, the attention span of the average internet user
is just seconds. There are other digital distractions
too: email, instant messaging and quickie movies on
websites like shortspan.com.
Some people are worried about the effect on
young people. ‘You need time to understand and
think about what you read,’ says secondary school
teacher, Julia Wood, from London. ‘Young people
move from one website to another all the time and
their brains become full of useless information but
there is no time to make sense of it. I am trying to
persuade my pupils to read more books, so that they
concentrate on one subject for longer.’
Other teachers are trying more unusual methods
to improve students’ concentration. Welsh secondary
school teacher Anne Savan was so worried about one
class of fi fteen-year-old boys that she started playing
Mozart during her Science lessons. She says that it
had an amazing effect: ‘The music made them calmer,
and their concentration was much better.’
In some Scottish schools, they have a
technological solution to the problem. Pupils start
their school day with brain-training games, using
Nintendo games consoles. Again, teachers say that
there is a big improvement in pupils’ concentration.
But not everyone believes that there is a problem.
Professor Ray Cole, an educational psychologist
says: ‘On the web, young people learn to make quick
decisions about what is and isn’t worth reading. They
might look at fi ve unhelpful websites very quickly,
before stopping and reading a sixth useful website
more carefully. In a world with so much information
available, this is an important skill.’
Are you becoming a . . .
digital goldfi sh?
1.8
A
1.9
SAMPLE