Salaam Haroon, you made a lot of very deep and interesting points. I think you hit the nail on the head about the smartphones’ ubiquity and their vice grip on our attention spans. Introducing reading to younger audiences who are increasingly making use of AI, plugging and chugging summaries of texts online and just in general using shortcuts instead of developing their ability to concentrate and read is definitely an uphill battle. Maybe you could talk about smartphone usage and attention span. It seems you’ve also experienced life before smartphones. High school students today haven’t. They think it’s normal to be constantly on their phones, and even many of us older folks are too. You said it yourself, you’re listening to books rather than reading. Honestly, we hardly have the mental freedom to just think and just be. We’re constantly inundated by media — all of which is trying to grab our attention.
And regarding your point about your childhood, don’t forget that people today are increasingly always online. Young people especially are living curated lives, where they share intensely personal details about their lives to their peers. If something isn’t cool or accepted, it’s risky to engage in it. And if it’s not shareable…
Just some food for thought. Looking forward to reading more of your work.
Hi Haroon. i enjoy all your substacks, but especially this one. i teach grad students at a major university and i too see this distraction among students. it's hard to get them to read a book. many of them won't even read news -- and they want to be journalists and writers! And, as you note, the problem extends to us. we have so many distractions. it is hard to sit down to a book or a newspaper without being pulled away by the next shiny thing. i appreciate your efforts to stay focused. i may be one of your few Jewish readers, but i have found the sabbath to be a great escape. i do not use my computer or my cellphone. it is a day i actually read books. i'll pick up the New Yorker and read it cover-to-cover. i don't know if there is any equivalent in Islam. But escaping the digital madness is something we should also try to build into our lives.
Hi Ari, so good to hear from you (and hope you are well!)
The first part of my comment is just an extended aside--
There's not exactly a similar kind of Sabbath in Islam, but I'll share an example that's become quite instructive to me. On Fridays, of course, Muslims gather for congregational prayers (jumuah). But the ordinary afternoon prayer is halved, with the first part replaced by a sermon and the second is a prayer
Effectively, the sermon is then part of the prayer
As a result, Muslims are not supposed to talk during the sermon, or do anything but pay attention to the sermon. Naturally folks zone out, from time to time, or doze off even, but when I was growing up, we'd all just sit quietly and listen. As anyone from a religious space knows, sermons aren't always captivating, but we'd have to sit quietly through them and deal. The idea of talking, or even reading Qur'an, would've been totally taboo
Nowadays, though, I notice close to half the congregation is on their phones, not checking for anything urgent, but scrolling through websites, happily texting away, when based on the age of these folks it's unlikely they're first responders or have any urgent business to attend to. What I mean is, maybe some folks don't know probably, but more broadly, I think it's rather that many don't have an ability to get off their phone... even for twenty minutes
Worse still, this has become entirely normalized. If someone started chatting, I'm sure they'd get some stares. But we've become so inured to our dependency that we don't even try to uphold a norm if it involves a phone, because we're all complicit. I think that's frankly concerning--I mean, if we can't sit for twenty minutes without needing a fix, that's a problem. But that's all a preface to my two questions
How do you adjust your classes as a result of this new reality?
And... do you try to use your classes to help students recover a kind of attention?
Salaam Haroon, you made a lot of very deep and interesting points. I think you hit the nail on the head about the smartphones’ ubiquity and their vice grip on our attention spans. Introducing reading to younger audiences who are increasingly making use of AI, plugging and chugging summaries of texts online and just in general using shortcuts instead of developing their ability to concentrate and read is definitely an uphill battle. Maybe you could talk about smartphone usage and attention span. It seems you’ve also experienced life before smartphones. High school students today haven’t. They think it’s normal to be constantly on their phones, and even many of us older folks are too. You said it yourself, you’re listening to books rather than reading. Honestly, we hardly have the mental freedom to just think and just be. We’re constantly inundated by media — all of which is trying to grab our attention.
And regarding your point about your childhood, don’t forget that people today are increasingly always online. Young people especially are living curated lives, where they share intensely personal details about their lives to their peers. If something isn’t cool or accepted, it’s risky to engage in it. And if it’s not shareable…
Just some food for thought. Looking forward to reading more of your work.
Hi Haroon. i enjoy all your substacks, but especially this one. i teach grad students at a major university and i too see this distraction among students. it's hard to get them to read a book. many of them won't even read news -- and they want to be journalists and writers! And, as you note, the problem extends to us. we have so many distractions. it is hard to sit down to a book or a newspaper without being pulled away by the next shiny thing. i appreciate your efforts to stay focused. i may be one of your few Jewish readers, but i have found the sabbath to be a great escape. i do not use my computer or my cellphone. it is a day i actually read books. i'll pick up the New Yorker and read it cover-to-cover. i don't know if there is any equivalent in Islam. But escaping the digital madness is something we should also try to build into our lives.
Hi Ari, so good to hear from you (and hope you are well!)
The first part of my comment is just an extended aside--
There's not exactly a similar kind of Sabbath in Islam, but I'll share an example that's become quite instructive to me. On Fridays, of course, Muslims gather for congregational prayers (jumuah). But the ordinary afternoon prayer is halved, with the first part replaced by a sermon and the second is a prayer
Effectively, the sermon is then part of the prayer
As a result, Muslims are not supposed to talk during the sermon, or do anything but pay attention to the sermon. Naturally folks zone out, from time to time, or doze off even, but when I was growing up, we'd all just sit quietly and listen. As anyone from a religious space knows, sermons aren't always captivating, but we'd have to sit quietly through them and deal. The idea of talking, or even reading Qur'an, would've been totally taboo
Nowadays, though, I notice close to half the congregation is on their phones, not checking for anything urgent, but scrolling through websites, happily texting away, when based on the age of these folks it's unlikely they're first responders or have any urgent business to attend to. What I mean is, maybe some folks don't know probably, but more broadly, I think it's rather that many don't have an ability to get off their phone... even for twenty minutes
Worse still, this has become entirely normalized. If someone started chatting, I'm sure they'd get some stares. But we've become so inured to our dependency that we don't even try to uphold a norm if it involves a phone, because we're all complicit. I think that's frankly concerning--I mean, if we can't sit for twenty minutes without needing a fix, that's a problem. But that's all a preface to my two questions
How do you adjust your classes as a result of this new reality?
And... do you try to use your classes to help students recover a kind of attention?