Our Inability to Sit with Our Thoughts

by Chloe Plummer

The material for this week reminded me of a new practice that I am currently trying to implement in my life, mindfulness. The ending of The Attention Merchants, warns us of making the decision of when and where advertisements and technology can invade our lives. In order to lead fulfilling lives, we must create boundaries for ourselves, and ask ourselves where we are directing our attention. I really like the quote “William James [...] held that our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to” (Wu, 2016, p. 352). Coincidentally, I did a mediation this morning that explained that mindfulness is not about paying attention to everything, but being careful and considerate in the things we deem are important to pay attention to. Mindfulness and mediation are akin to Tim Wu’s arguments, be careful what you pay attention to! This week’s unit has helped confirm and solidify my desire to practice more mindfulness, and to create boundaries for myself. I have many times over the past years deleted social media apps, logged out of Netflix, and attempted to spend my time more wisely and creatively. But it is hard! I am at times successful, and then at other times become engulfed at the easy access of distraction. I think advertisements, and our society’s acceptance of it is dangerous, but even more dangerous is the form of attention it seeks from us. It does not want us to question, to ponder, to criticize, it merely seeks to distract and entice. That goes the same for other forms of social media; they are designed to be fun, enjoyable, and distractible, which then in turn allows them, and the advertisements within them, to make a profit from our lack of attention! I would argue that social media, and dissociating from reality and human relationships are not new to our era, nor is it necessarily wrong. The real danger of our new technology is the inability to sit with our thoughts. This goes back to the idea and appeal of mindfulness and mediation. These concepts are about being present in the moment, paying attention to our thoughts and sensations within us and around us, quite the opposite of advertisement-driven forms of technology that pervade our society today. Anyone who has tried mediation for the first time (myself included) can attest how hard it is to simply sit for five minutes trying not to think or pick up the phone! That is why it is so crucial to continually question what we are feeding our minds, and why we are surprised by rises of mental health disorders in youth and adults. As a psychology major, this is a major area of interest for me. This was briefly introduced in these weeks readings, in how social media is used as a way to encourage narcissist tendencies, with the features of like buttons, friend requests, modifying profiles, etc. Although these social medias claim to encourage social networking, they in fact often lead to isolation, anxiety, and depression. It is crucial to acknowledge this, since there are many teenagers and young adults that use social media as their careers, and in fact become celebrities, who face many criticisms and backlash. It reminds me of the introduction chapter of the The Attention Merchants, where Tim Wu explains that a public school was able to receive funding in exchange for advertisements being in the school. This is a similar idea in that, is it safe to allow youth to become celebrities on social media, where they are vulnerable to other opinions? Are they able to question the validity of advertisements, distinguish between trolls and truth? These questions are not easy to answer, which is why it might be wise to take heed of George Saunders advice from “The Braindead Megaphone”, and continue to have discussions questioning our media.