@melroy@mastodon.melroy.org @jon@vivaldi.net I wonder how much damage smartphones, now being most people’s main interface to the world, have done to discourse and reading. I’ve heard that most people don’t own computers. And I know that trying to read any documents or longform articles on a phone is cumbersome and irritating. If someone sends me a link, I email it to myself and read on a real screen. Most people don’t have real screens… so they only read tweet length content. Have smartphones destroyed attention spans?
@stevenaleach@jon Definitely. The smartphone decreased the attention span, if only because of the “social media”.
We went from books to newspaper, to mainly online posts and blogs or articles. And now you see most people consume their news from small headlines alone, like on X.
And like you said, reading long in depth stories. Or news. Or other kind of material, only using a small screen on the phone isn’t the same. It’s so small, you get eye strain. Most people didn’t read this last line…
@stevenaleach@sigmoid.social @jon@vivaldi.net I also dislike the default mastodon character limit! Why? Because we are afraid of any arbitrary lengthy text? It’s the fediverse, not X or Facebook!
@melroy@mastodon.melroy.org @jon@vivaldi.net Yea, it’s funny - Twitter started out with the tiny character limit because of SMS. But then “micro” became a thing and we mistook a limitation for a feature… now we’re inflicting it on ourselves for no reason.
@melroy@mastodon.melroy.org @jon@vivaldi.net I wonder how much damage smartphones, now being most people’s main interface to the world, have done to discourse and reading. I’ve heard that most people don’t own computers. And I know that trying to read any documents or longform articles on a phone is cumbersome and irritating. If someone sends me a link, I email it to myself and read on a real screen. Most people don’t have real screens… so they only read tweet length content. Have smartphones destroyed attention spans?
@stevenaleach @jon Definitely. The smartphone decreased the attention span, if only because of the “social media”.
We went from books to newspaper, to mainly online posts and blogs or articles. And now you see most people consume their news from small headlines alone, like on X.
And like you said, reading long in depth stories. Or news. Or other kind of material, only using a small screen on the phone isn’t the same. It’s so small, you get eye strain. Most people didn’t read this last line…
@stevenaleach@sigmoid.social @jon@vivaldi.net I also dislike the default mastodon character limit! Why? Because we are afraid of any arbitrary lengthy text? It’s the fediverse, not X or Facebook!
@melroy@mastodon.melroy.org @jon@vivaldi.net Yea, it’s funny - Twitter started out with the tiny character limit because of SMS. But then “micro” became a thing and we mistook a limitation for a feature… now we’re inflicting it on ourselves for no reason.