We decry the declining attention spans of young people for good reason, but what about our own? Are we not also losing the ability to sustain concentration and wrestle with complex ideas? Before turning the mirror on ourselves, consider today’s students and Generation Z, those aged about 15 to 39. Every generation has been accused of ineptitude and poor attitudes, but things were not always “better in our day”. What is now different is the scale and speed of disruption. The internet, social media and AI are reshaping daily life, and Generation Z is in the front line. Anecdotally, a University of Otago lecturer told Civis students were struggling much more than ever to tackle reading requests. A November 2024 article, The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books, highlighted the issue. Even Columbia students weren’t reading books. Many had not been tackling full books at school. Teachers had recognised their proclivities and worked around them. The problem was not comprehension but stamina. They stumbled on sustained attention. Digital content dominates. Phones deliver endless streams of short, bite-sized material. Exposure to these streams has conditioned people to favour brevity. TikTok’s average video length dropped from 34 seconds in 2022 to 22 seconds in 2025. Algorithms reward succinctness. Brains adapt to short bursts and lose the capacity for extended linear concentration. Yet the young can still concentrate, as evidenced in lengthy gaming sessions or long podcasts (if advertisements don’t intrude). Meanwhile, AI summaries allow students to look as though they have read the papers, the books or the other material. AI ``research’’ accelerates short-burst study. And when AI writes, or structures, answers and essays, the need for prolonged mental labour diminishes. As Kevin Van Paassen wrote last month in Canadian News and Lifestyle, young adults aren’t lacking raw intelligence; the foundation of their cognitive skills is crumbling under the constant digital overload. Algorithmic feeds actively rewarded short attention spans. The brain received a dopamine hit every 15 seconds, training the mind to hate deep, prolonged effort. Slow hobbies and long-form reading lost out to instant entertainment. Tasks were skipped. Instead of tolerating frustration on complex problems, these were outsourced to AI and quick searches. Working memory shrank as the cloud became the default. This changing world is also a matter for most of the rest of us. Older generations are sliding the same way, usually without realising the dangers. Facebook, Instagram Reels, and AI shortcuts undermine hard-thinking slog. The temptations abound. The friction that once strained our brains is avoided. Attention spans atrophy. Even full-page Otago Daily Times articles look overwhelming. In this environment, the ODT plays an unfashionable but important role. It still offers serious longer articles that require patience, context and steady attention. Longer-form reading is one of the few remaining antidotes to the flickering, fragmented diet served by digital feeds. * * * * * Further to the cute things small children say. A grandmother had been at an event in the park with her granddaughter, a precocious 3-year-old not long toilet-trained. After some time, Grandma suggested they both visit the toilet. ``I need to go to the toilet,’’ she said. ``Will you come with me?’’ ``No thank you,’’ the little girl replied. ``You can go on your own. You’ll be okay.’’ Grandma took the reassurance in good grace. * * * * * Reader Michael Anderson has chipped in with a language ``pet hate’’, one that uses more words than necessary. Before major sporting events, spectators are often told to ``Please be upstanding’’. Personally, Michael says he’s happy being mediocre: ``Just say, ‘Please stand’.’’ Civis had previously been blind to the pompous ``Please be upstanding’’. Now, however, having been alerted to the shocker, it will stand out forever. civis@odt.co.nz
