In present-day society, we have so much accessibility to things that take our attention away from real life. Having access to all of this technology and apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc., causes most people to be distracted from their lives and things that really matter. When things get stressful, most people’s first reaction is to distract themselves by using technology and social media. Social media has the power to completely take our minds off of real life, for hours at a time, without us even noticing it. This week, I have paid attention to and tracked what I give my attention to and how often my attention was interrupted, redirected, or captured by other things. I kept track in my journal files each day about what I intentionally chose to focus on and what demanded my attention. This exercise taught me a lot about myself and how much or what things take my attention away. It is easy to assume that distractions come from me being lazy or procrastinating, but it was important to remind myself throughout this process that a lot of the things that take my attention are designed to do just that.
My Attention this Past Week:
One category I made sure to focus on was when I would focus my attention on something intentionally. When I sat down to do schoolwork this past week, I was intentionally putting my attention towards it. I would say doing schoolwork is something I feel forced to attend to, rather than agreeing to attend to, which definitely has an effect on my attention span while doing it. My assignments I have had this week were pretty light, like one-page papers, or filling out graphic organizers. These assignments would typically take me about forty-five minutes if I had full attention consistently throughout doing them. I chose to do these assignments in my living room, while the television was on, my phone was beside me, and my roommates were there. While focusing my attention on my schoolwork, it had gotten drawn away many times to the television and to talking to my friends. An assignment that would usually take me forty-five minutes ended up taking me an hour and a half, just because of these distractions. It makes me curious if I would’ve made my time more useful if I focused only on my schoolwork and got it done quicker and then hung out in the living room after, or if doing my assignment the way I did it made my time more useful because I could hang out with friends and do schoolwork at the same time.
As I mentioned earlier in the introduction, social media is a huge attention grabber in society nowadays. I made sure to track my social media usage throughout this week, and it was definitely an eye-opening experience. I spend multiple hours of my day on social media, averaging about three hours a day, more specifically, on TikTok. TikTok is the main social media app that takes my attention, as it is designed in a way to keep your attention for long periods of time without you realizing it. It gives you exact videos that it knows you’ll enjoy, and shows you these videos one after another at a fast pace, which are qualities that cause me to spend hours at a time on the app. I find that it is much harder to take my attention away from TikTok, than it is from my schoolwork, which I assume is because schoolwork isn’t designed to take your attention, while TikTok is. It is also very clear after observing my social media usage that a lot of my life is being used for watching other people’s lives, instead of experiencing my own. This is something that most people experience at this current time, and it does make me feel uneasy about the direction we are going in as a society. I think a common thought that people have, including myself sometimes, is that we think that we’re still having experiences while watching social media, as there are good qualities like connecting with others, educational content, etc. And although these qualities of social media are good and can be beneficial, it is still very clear that social media, for the most part, takes away from our lives more than it adds to them. After observing my social media usage throughout this week, I will be paying more attention to how often I am using social media as a distraction, and I will be working towards using it a lot less.
What I Learned:
Life really is what we make it, and life consists of what we put our attention towards. The hardest part of redirecting where you put your attention in your everyday life isn’t identifying that there is a problem, but it is actually making changes that stay consistent. I firmly believe that social media is an addiction, and I know that a lot of my attention in my life goes to social media, instead of real-life experiences. This experience has taught me how much I want to make these changes, because I want to experience my life to the fullest. It is easier said than done, but I think society would improve tremendously if everyone made at least some improvements to what they put their attention towards and how we live our lives.