Summer 2006… Four years into married life and both of our children are Earth-side. The most recent arrival was a Little Ms. to add to Mr. Toddler’s antics. Watching a movie was the typical evening activity after dinner and settling the kids. Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs were on the brink of an ‘optical disc format’ war that would take another 2 years to resolve and Netflix, as we know it, was still about a decade away. At that time, DVD was a staple form of entertainment. Most people we knew owned a physical stockpile of DVD’s, which whether or not they’d care to admit, were illegally ‘burned’ and wrapped with a home-printed version of the cover. Of course, you could still rent from the huge library of titles at your local Blockbuster or VideoEzy video store. While the movie screening selections changed nightly, one thing stayed constant: whether we put on a 90-minute classic like “Eurotrip” (Ahh, mi scusi!), or a 3-hour long LOTR epic, we always finished watching the entire film. I even remember hosting a Star Wars ‘original trilogy’ marathon one night for around 20 of our close friends and relatives. Not only did we go the distance, but I remember being just as pumped when the second Death Star exploded in the final minutes of ROTJ, six-hours after pressing play.
Fast-forward to Winter 2020. Large parts of the world are in lockdown and the uncertainty of a global COVID-19 pandemic takes hold. The equation was simple; humanity needed to bunker down and minimise close contact by “social distancing” (a total misnomer!) in an attempt to “flatten the curve”. For those like me whose work could be done remotely, “Working from home” was a fun option until the novelty wore off (more on the WFH / office balance in a subsequent blog post). Outside of that, most people used their free time / lockdown (depending on your viewpoint), to catch up on projects around the home, spend quality time with family and of course, binge on as much Netflix as possible – and that’s when the problems surfaced for me, like a breaching f*cking whale…
It always took no less than fifteen minutes of menu scrolling to choose something to watch. Even with an abundance of popular new TV series across multiple platforms like Netflix, Stan and Disney+ it was a real struggle to settle on something. That daily indecision begged the question: “were we so spoiled for choice on streaming services that we couldn’t decide what to watch?”. I noticed a second trend very soon after; Whenever we did eventually agree on what to watch, I could never finish it. I’m talking whether an hour-long documentary, or 22-minute sitcom episodes, I could no longer watch them through to the end. Within 10 minutes I’d be disengaged and off the couch. My attention would divert to my phone for a YouTube fix, Spotify music session or podcast – and this diversion from various forms of digital entertainment still happens until this day.
So, do I put this down to sh!t content or too much content? Is my attention span shrinking? I believe it’s the latter and I think the main reason is due to conditioning, over time, to frequent dopamine hits – the type we get from instant gratification on today’s social platforms and their short-form highlight reels. Even as I sit and write this blog content, I’m constantly distracted by the sounds of the Grey’s Anatomy theme song and wailing sirens on the TV nearby. I put my headphones on and listen to my favourite Spotify playlist. The track starts and it fills the background like a satisfying canvas of ‘white noise’, allowing me to stay focussed on writing. Then, like clockwork, I reach for my phone and skip the next 4 songs before the preceeding one finishes…