Attention Span Myth Summary

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What is the connection between attention spans and ADD and ADHD? What is the science behind it all? When does media come into play in this scenario? The main points of “The Attention-Span Myth” were: the culture's standard on attention spans, and the weight attention spans have on the diagnosis of attention disorders. In this essay, she fails to mention the science behind it all and never goes into detail about what media does to our brains. She blames culture instead of considering that we rely on medical tests because they are scientific and usually accurate. The questions she fails to answer with this article are, what actual scientific tests are used to test attention and do they have merit? In author Virginia Heffernan’s essay she mentions certain topics of importance, but goes off on tangents and uses weak …show more content…
However, she does a very poor job at pulling all of her examples together to make a coherent argument. At one point, a part of her argument got lost, never to be elaborated. Does the internet and media have an effect on attention spans, possibly. Does the internet have any place in Heffernan’s argument, probably not. “Maybe my own brain is faltering in a Web wasteland, but I don’t get it. Whether the Web is making us smarter or dumber, isn’t there something just unconvincing about the idea that an occult “span” in the brain makes certain cultural objects more compelling than others?” (Heffernan 113). This is the last mention of the web in the article, it seems strange to start with this point and then never mention it again throughout the essay. It makes this point feel unfinished, she could have explained further or even omitted this from the essay, this was definitely some information that was left