What I found interesting in Katherine Hayes’ work Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes, was the notion of there being a generational divide in how people learn, behave and act in everyday life. To me,this divide is incredibly clear in everyday society in particular when those predominantly born in Generation Z (1995-2015), (such as myself, as I was born in ’97), are asked to explain how to use 21st century technology and software to older generations, whether it is how to use smartphones to computers and other communication technology.
What I have noticed from explaining the workings of technology to older generations, is that there are different motivations behind understanding how everything works. This correlates with how old the person being explained to is; for me, as a relatively young person, I know that ‘Ctrl+C’ copies and ‘Ctrl+V’ pastes, and that’s all I feel that I need to know. However, older people often feel that they need to know ‘Why do I need to copy this?’ ‘Where does it go when it is copied?’ and for many people of more recent generations, this is unnecessary information; we don’t care where something was copied to, we just need to copy and paste and be done with it.
This analogy holds relevance to the subject of Hyper Attention and Deep Attention because, as Hayes’ evokes in her essay, Deep Attention is cognitively the ‘de facto norm’ for older generations that did not have such mentally stimulating activities available to them. Therefore Hyper Attention is perceived by older generations as ‘defective behaviour’ and not an effective approach to everyday life, let alone education and academia. Yet Hyper Attention is the cognitive approach preferred by younger generations that tend to opt for mentally stimulating activities such as using video games, computer games, and multi-tasking constantly in everyday life.
The divide that I detect between generations in the 21st century is that older generations that are accustomed to Deep Attention are not accustomed to the mentally stimulating nature associated with Hyper Attention, which is a massive part of modern communication technology that Generation Z has practically grown up with.