From chatting with those peak students during the experiment, I think their experience is more like being in a cafeteria abuzz with the voices of friends and acquaintances. At some point, you’re not even trying to follow every conversation, but are just maintaining some vague awareness of the conversations that are taking place and jumping in when you feel like it. People can and do think about other things in a noisy cafeteria. Some even read books! The brain can filter out a constant buzz. It’s just wind blowing through the trees.
The upper middle zone where it’s still possible to try to follow everything (and maybe even reply) looked like more of an attention trap, and was where I was more likely to find that handful of students I already knew had a problem. The FOMO is probably more distracting than the notifications themselves.
From chatting with those peak students during the experiment, I think their experience is more like being in a cafeteria abuzz with the voices of friends and acquaintances. At some point, you’re not even trying to follow every conversation, but are just maintaining some vague awareness of the conversations that are taking place and jumping in when you feel like it. People can and do think about other things in a noisy cafeteria. Some even read books! The brain can filter out a constant buzz. It’s just wind blowing through the trees.
The upper middle zone where it’s still possible to try to follow everything (and maybe even reply) looked like more of an attention trap, and was where I was more likely to find that handful of students I already knew had a problem. The FOMO is probably more distracting than the notifications themselves.