Book Review: Distracted

"Distracted" is not a book specifically about or addressed to families, but it serves as good food for thought about family life and how it is changing along with the advances in intelligent communications devices and technologies. Homes today are awash in technologies that command our attention. These include the old standards of television, telephones, and radios, along with the new digital hardware of computers, video games, and cell phones and the myriad types of content and paths of connection they provide.

Award-winning journalist and author Maggie Jackson writes a regular Distracted: By Maggie JacksonEnlarge this imagecolumn, "Balancing Acts" for the Boston Globe. Her work has been published in national media outlets including NPR and The New York Times (http://maggie-jackson.com/about/). In this book, Jackson makes the argument that a culture of distraction is upon us and that if we do not stop to consider the implications of lost focus and mindfulness that accompany immersion in these technologies, our society is likely to plunge into a new dark age--one in which deep thought and meaning are lost. Attention is examined in-depth in light of developments in technology from the telegraph through today.

Jackson maintains that "...we are nurturing a culture of social diffusion, intellectual fragmentation, sensory detachment" and it is directly connected to the loss of attention which is "...the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress," (p. 13)

Jackson posits that a dark age is encroaching in direct relation to our waning powers of attention.  She wonders aloud if we "...are we missing the slow extinction of our capacity to think and feel and bond deeply?" (p. 26)  

Jackson's research on attention is broad. The chapters delve into recent studies of relevance on attention and raise topics including: wired love, attention deficit disorder, the attentional pull of the screen, self-control and delay of gratification, surveillance culture and its suffocating consequences and consequent loss of trust, fast food, and intelligent tools, i.e. robots and the post-human age. Multitasking is indicted as an inferior way of interacting with the world. According to recent studies cited, engaging in one activity at a time creates high quality, richer experience.

That ours is a culture of distraction is no surprise. Anyone who has watched drivers who are simultaneously texters, eaters, and cell phone talkers is well aware that something has changed. Increased portability, mobility and virtual reality have led to notions of space, time, and place that are disengaged from reality.

With constant access to information and entertainment though a vast array of devices, we can be and many are perpetually connected. But, Jackson asks: at what price? Does being connected necessitate the fragmentation of attention? As we multitask our way through the days, what is lost in terms of learning? Is communicating in digital snippets anathema to authentic connection between individuals? What are the costs and benefits when individuals are absorbed in over-busyness? Is the critical thinking needed by an active citizenry in a democracy a casualty of our distracted culture?

The final chapter asks if we may have reached the limits of distraction and if so what it will take to pull back from the brink. Rather than socializing children in a culture of distraction, the way to nurture their attentional powers is with the attention of the adults in their lives. Jackson's analysis should give families reason to consider how and when the outside world is invited into the home, if the home is to be a sanctuary, a place to unwind and recharge. Calling for a renaissance of attention, neuro-cognitive research is highlighted and the case is made for the elasticity of the attentional powers in children and adults. 

But what power or control can families have in a ubiquitous culture of distraction? This is a question worthy of discussion in families. Habits of media and technology use are learned first at home. Parents and caregivers control children's early access to and uses of television, computers, phones, electronic games, and other devices. They also model use of these technologies and mediate and make rules as children develop. But each family does this on its own and in its own way. And while some consciously see home as the place for quiet and focus, the allure of virtual connectivity can seem too much for families to resist. And a market that ceaselessly encourages families to adopt the latest, the fastest, the most visceral product to increase enjoyment, learning, and convenience makes it ever more difficult to set limits. Claiming time for living in real space and place is vital, but how to reclaim that will take a rethinking of our values and a restructuring of our engagement with these technologies for the well-being of individuals, families, and society.