Lights, Camera, (Distr)action!

The attention span of young people has gotten so bad that college students are watching the movie instead of reading the book. Wait, check that. We have an update. They’re not watching the whole movie, either. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films. “Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies … I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films.”

+ “It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.” Matt Damon recently explained how films are ‘dumbed down‘ for audiences at home distracted by phones.