As much as I am wary of being negative towards children's behaviours that don't match my own, focus related criticism is something that I feel is really valid. I've watched children below the age of 13 Snapchat and watched any number of children aged 2 and above using YouTube. The same behavior shows up where before a video has finished, the children are reaching out to tap to another one. I try not to judge but I do cringe when I see 2 year olds spending 1 minute on a baby rhymes video, then reaching forward, tapping to another one while the first still has 15 minutes to go, and then doing that again and again and again. The older children swiping without fully watching even a Snapchat video is equally bothersome for me. I'm seeing swipes and taps happen in the range of 2 to 3 seconds.
This behaviour is not unique to children though. I watch adults at the hospital using Facebook and it's the same. It's almost like they just want to swipe rather than look at the content for real.
I have no idea what the long term effects of this behaviour are. Perhaps it's nothing and I'm fretting over it needlessly. But I've experienced it myself and it took behaviour similar to rehab to come out of it and be able to slowly enjoy content again. And it always feels easy to slip back into. It's terrifying.
It isn't qualitatively different. I appreciate the term there. Quantitatively however, the abundance of information and the way networks choose to constantly show new content (that is more likely to appeal to you too) makes for a very different scenario from decades ago.
Pick up the news paper, and it's the same thing you have to browse/skim through. Pick up the phone and it's tens of new items every few minutes.
This behaviour is not unique to children though. I watch adults at the hospital using Facebook and it's the same. It's almost like they just want to swipe rather than look at the content for real.
I have no idea what the long term effects of this behaviour are. Perhaps it's nothing and I'm fretting over it needlessly. But I've experienced it myself and it took behaviour similar to rehab to come out of it and be able to slowly enjoy content again. And it always feels easy to slip back into. It's terrifying.