Those incessant distractions don’t bode well for the brain, wrote journalist Nicholas Carr in a controversial cover story in The Atlantic in 2008, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” With our attention constantly splintered, he wrote, our brains might be subtly rewired, leading to a younger generation less and less capable of thinking deep thoughts. And for 12 percent, the interruptions occur so often that they’ve lost count. With all the emails, tweets, chats, and status updates continually vying for brain space, young people these days are slave to what’s been called “continuous partial attention.” One study of college students found that 84 percent get instant messages, Facebook updates, texts, or other interruptions at least once in any given hour 19 percent get them at least six times every hour. Robin Henig has written several articles for Scientific American, including "When Does Life Belong to the Living?" and "How Depressed Is That Mouse?". Copyright © Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig.
Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the book, Twentysomething: Why Do Young Adults Seem Stuck ?, by Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig (Hudson Street Press, 2012).
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