DIGITAL MEDIA MADE IT HARD TO SLOW DOWN

From August Lamm, author of “You Don’t Need a Smartphone (affiliate link).”

Digital media stimulates us at a level that most routine analog activities cannot match. Once we adjust to this level it becomes difficult to appreciate the subtlety of offline moments.

This is why it’s so hard for me to pick up a book, or play a CD, because of the slowness. From the time I digitized my CDs and was able to switch between songs and albums and genres as fast as I could click, yeah, of course the idea of a five disc CD changer sound terrible, but that’s what we did back in the day!

Why watch one movie when you could scroll through 100 short form videos of just the best scenes?

Watching a movie, listening to a record, playing a video game – those used to be offline pursuits, where we “mono-tasked,” and now it just feels “hard” to sit still long enough to listen to a full CD and read a chapter in a book.