Culture of distraction is the tendency of society to turn naturally focused people into distracted way. Accordingly, Joe Kraus in the article “Is ‘Culture of Distraction’ an Oxymoron?” asserts that, “We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us…”
This coincides with Anderson’s understanding in the context of distraction of attention, as attention has always migrated right into the center of our culture. That is to say that, we tend to do all we can to get the attention need right from the current previous generation to the current generation. Currently, we pay a lot to get the attention needed; rather the currencies in which we pay it have drastically changed over time. However, the wealth of information rather consumes the attention of people. With the technological advancement, and the development of information technology, we tend to do multitask. This hence creates poverty of attention.
The fact that today, with the smart phones, email, web video, social networks, and some behavioral change in the internet world has always consumed our attention. Despite the fact that time and attention were considered a valuable commodity in the past, people tend to focus more on internet. However, some people do multitask, they tend to drive and at the same time make a call while holding a packet of milk. Attention is the psychological tool we use to tune out irrelevant information so we can focus on what is important to us. The information is increasingly available to us expand exponentially, and at the same time it strained and challenged. Our attention is a powerful asset in all our relationship and must be taken into account on how we can manage it. We must learn with diligent on how to deal effectively with the temptation to have maximum attention when we are attending to something special first before we embark on things that will create poverty of attention.