It’s almost impossible to talk about attention spans, the modern media environment, and “kids these days” without sounding like a self-righteous prig who’s read too much Marshall McLuhan. So let me start by saying that I’m writing this for myself, about myself, with no judgment towards myself or others. I’ve identified a pattern in my own life that I don’t like, recognize that it aligns with broader trends in attentional habits, and am trying to come up with solutions for myself—without moralizing or prescribing rules for anyone else.
Here goes:
When I was a kid, I read voraciously. I devoured anything I could get my hands on, reading widely and with enthusiasm.
Then, sometime in the last 15-20 years, I stopped. I lost the ability or the desire. Maybe I lost the desire, and when I regained it, found I had lost the ability.
A recent piece in The Atlantic discussed how incoming college students struggle to read full works, leading professors to assign smaller and smaller chunks. Students have gone from reading The Iliad to reading SparkNotes that cover one section of The Iliad.
It would be easy—and lazy—to blame our current media environment. Having access to all the world’s information in our pockets makes it impossible to be bored, and our brains are out of practice at dealing with discomfort. Reading deeply and at length requires some discomfort—most things worth doing, in fact, require overcoming friction. That struggle is part of what makes them valuable.
Regardless, I’ve realized that I no longer have the attention span I once did. I’m not illiterate, per se—I can still read, don’t worry—but I might be alliterate, in that when given the choice between reading and something else, I’ll almost always choose the “something else.”
I can barely sit through a TV show without also scrolling something unrelated on my phone.
The constant pull of Reddit and Instagram is hard to resist. Who wants to wait for the osso buco to cook when there’s a bowl of Skittles at hand?
Our whole society leans away from deep literacy. We prefer faster, more visual media to reading.
Of course, every generation says this about the next. In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, a character bemoans how the written word will destroy people’s capacity to remember. This anxiety is as old as time.
But there are reasons I think it’s important to reclaim deep reading.
My professional life depends on my ability to sink deeply into problems. Design, writing, and programming all require reaching a state of flow; the most obvious and superficial solutions are the only ones accessible when bombarded with interruptions.
My personal life depends on my ability to give full attention to my family, friends, and the people and things I care about.
My spiritual life depends on my ability to think and meditate deeply—to read Scripture, to pray, and to spend time with God at length.
Different media cultivate different habits of mind. Reading cultivates focus and clear thinking; social media cultivates the ability to flit from thing to thing without context or retention. Reading builds the skills on which a meaningful life is built, while unchecked media consumption can erode those skills.
So what to do? Is it even possible to reclaim deep literacy in a media environment like ours?
I think a good start is inverting the mix of media I consume. Instead of mostly visual content with a sliver of long-form reading, it should be the opposite:
I think we can formulate it similarly to Michael Pollan’s famous food rules:
Consume media intentionally. Favor texts. Mostly long-form.
Deep reading isn’t a relic of the past—it’s a skill worth fighting for. It’s about more than just consuming words; it’s about reclaiming focus, creativity, and meaningful engagement with the world around us. I know it won’t happen overnight, but with small, deliberate shifts in my media habits, I believe I can rebuild the ability to read deeply and think clearly. And maybe, just maybe, by turning more pages and scrolling less, I’ll rediscover the joy that reading once brought me.