short attention span?

Gen Y who have come of age, are shaping the current social & technological environment.  I also note that as regards relationships & partners as a culture we may be suffering from a short attention span?  I was recently speaking with a guy who told me that their 17 year old daughter’s boyfriend broke up with her via email and I asked was she upset.  ’No not so much, she wasn’t really interested anyway, she is focusing on her studies!’  To me something is missing here, wot about some human courage & contact to finish as you started, but heh that’s just me!  Maybe as a culture we are suffering ADD???

“Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.” Andy Warhol

I was reading a great post this week in the Wall Street Journal titled ‘Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues: An emphasis on social networking puts younger people at a face-to-face disadvantage.’ quote from below:

In September 2008, when Nielsen Mobile announced that teenagers with cellphones each sent and received, on average, 1,742 text messages a month, the number sounded high, but just a few months later Nielsen raised the tally to 2,272. A year earlier, the National School Boards Association estimated that middle- and high-school students devoted an average of nine hours to social networking each week. Add email, blogging, IM, tweets and other digital customs and you realize what kind of hurried, 24/7 communications system young people experience today.

Unfortunately, nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone. At least phones, cellular and otherwise, allow the transmission of tone of voice, pauses and the like. But even these clues are absent in the text-dependent world. Users insert smiley-faces into emails, but they don’t see each others’ actual faces. They read comments on Facebook, but they don’t “read” each others’ posture, hand gestures, eye movements, shifts in personal space and other nonverbal—and expressive—behaviors.

Back in 1959, anthropologist Edward T. Hall labeled these expressive human attributes “the Silent Language.”the “silent language” is acquired through acculturation, not schooling. Not only is it unspoken; it is largely unconscious. The meanings that pass through it remain implicit, more felt than understood.

They are, however, operative. Much of our social and workplace lives runs on them.

I have written before about this challenge with the virtual & real worlds: danger of virtual when there is not enough real & online to offline relationships & virtual body language and also about generations in boomer, gen x or y differing needs.  These young people are definitely the path finders in pushing this technology to its limits and not blindly following old rules.  But where they fail as most young people fail, is that they do not have life & people experience.  In breaking this new ground it is important not to forget ‘to call home’!

“All people know the same truth, our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.” Woody Allen

“In my young mind, I saw the human body as a kind of billboard that transmitted (advertised) what a person was thinking via gestures, facial expressions, and physical movements that I could read.” Joe Navarro ‘What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People’

An older article in the Guardian ‘Generation expects’ opened with this paragraph:

Recently a new and very talented employee I had hired three months earlier came into my office and shut the door. She had a question: “What’s it going to take for me to be the chief exec?” I had to restrain myself from blurting out the response that was running through my mind: “I’ll have to be run over by a truck.”

This was echoed in my experiences with 20 somethings who altho often talented & smart appear not to have any respect for experience or age or anyone that may happen to be in the way of their ambitions.  In fact if you check out blogs on the net, you can find a list of points about how to do anything, even find a mate.  This sort of simplified version to life & people can easily miss the point and other’s humanity.  There is a childlike quality to the technology trends which allows for playfulness & fun which personally I love.  But when relating to others we also need to be able to see them with compassion &  understanding rather than abuse or judgment as ‘stupid’ if they don’t hold the same opinions as we do.  140 characters cannot really express anything meaningful in a ‘realationship’ altho I know there have been a few marriage proposals via Twitter.  However the development of those relationships would have required more than Tweets and required real human contact & learning about each other.  We are more than just brands to be followed or retweeted or quoted and it doesn’t matter how much data we have human nature cannot be reduced to statistics & predictability.   Surprise & otherness is what makes relationships interesting & fun & of course is what creates intimacy between others.  Whilst my grandmother was alive, I spent as much time with her as I could even as a teenager & 20 something because she came from another era & country (so much to learn!)  & was fun too!

I’ll leave you with this funny video with Ellen Degeneres on short attention spans on tv, enjoy…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Do You Speak Body Language? (lifescript.com)
• I Don’t Buy the Attention-Span Excuse for Quick Editing (cinematical.com)
• The Expanding Void (abusiveviews.wordpress.com)
• 15 Rocking Ideas to Communicate Clearly (yourdreammovement.co.cc)
• 7 Scientific Ways to Promote Sharing on Facebook (briansolis.com)
• Quick Sparks (raleighpublicrelations.com)
• Language & Communication across Cultures (slideshare.net)
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media (markevanstech.com)
• What “What ___ Can Teach us about blogging” can teach us about blogging. (jeremymeyers.com)