How long has this deterioration of attention span been going on? Maybe longer than we realize. I read an interesting analysis of Sesame Street about 20 years ago where the point was made that there’s really no plot to follow. There’s a continuity of characters but it’s primarily short bursts of number counting, the alphabet and two to th…
How long has this deterioration of attention span been going on? Maybe longer than we realize. I read an interesting analysis of Sesame Street about 20 years ago where the point was made that there’s really no plot to follow. There’s a continuity of characters but it’s primarily short bursts of number counting, the alphabet and two to three minutes of characters talking to each other but no sustained story for children to focus on. Children’s programs in the fifties and sixties—like Lassie, Sky King and longer cartoons— engaged the children in a plot to follow and required a longer attention span.
The critique of Sesame Street is by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves To Death published in 1985. The whole thesis of the book is that the media we use to communicate are intertwined with our consciousness and how we think. Postman was alarmed by short form vignettes on television because they can’t communicate complex or subtle ideas. There is just no space for it on that expensive medium. The watcher’s attention span and mind doesn’t get trained to focus on story or argument that’s longer than the most simplistic, bare statement. The result is that raised with new media people just can’t understand law, literature and history. They haven’t created a mind capable of understanding how the ideas of the past were formed. Imagine what Mr. Postman would think of the media we use today. I suspect he would build a cabin deep in the woods like Ted Kaczynski.
How long has this deterioration of attention span been going on? Maybe longer than we realize. I read an interesting analysis of Sesame Street about 20 years ago where the point was made that there’s really no plot to follow. There’s a continuity of characters but it’s primarily short bursts of number counting, the alphabet and two to three minutes of characters talking to each other but no sustained story for children to focus on. Children’s programs in the fifties and sixties—like Lassie, Sky King and longer cartoons— engaged the children in a plot to follow and required a longer attention span.
The critique of Sesame Street is by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves To Death published in 1985. The whole thesis of the book is that the media we use to communicate are intertwined with our consciousness and how we think. Postman was alarmed by short form vignettes on television because they can’t communicate complex or subtle ideas. There is just no space for it on that expensive medium. The watcher’s attention span and mind doesn’t get trained to focus on story or argument that’s longer than the most simplistic, bare statement. The result is that raised with new media people just can’t understand law, literature and history. They haven’t created a mind capable of understanding how the ideas of the past were formed. Imagine what Mr. Postman would think of the media we use today. I suspect he would build a cabin deep in the woods like Ted Kaczynski.
There was a sane alternative, Mr. Rogers! My children were never exposed to the mind numbing Sesame Street.
I loved Sky King!
Me too
And on the cartoon end Betty Boop and Bosco walking through a totally abstract landscape to the Cab Calloway singing the St. James Infirmary Blues.
What? No Rin Tin Tin?
I remember the Song Bird. Flew with Sky every Saturday.