They are stealing our attention, piece by piece
They are stealing our attention every day. Stay with me until the end and I will explain why long-form reading is one of the only ways to take our mind back.
We live inside systems that interrupt us all the time. Every notification cuts the thread. Here in the United States, the University of California, Irvine has been studying for years how our concentration collapses after each interruption. The mind does not go back to where it was. It breaks into pieces. It becomes faster, but less deep. And this changes how we think.
Long-form reading means any text that needs time and continuity. Books, essays, long articles, reports, investigations. You cannot consume them in a few seconds. They force you to follow an argument, connect ideas, remember what you read before. It is a mental exercise, not a pastime. It reactivates parts of the brain that stay off when we only read short content.
Maryanne Wolf, working between the United States and Europe, has shown how long-form reading supports the mental processes we need to understand, analyze, and evaluate. These are the same abilities we need when we make serious decisions in real life, like reading a contract or understanding a medical report. Short reading does not train these abilities.
There are concrete examples. In Finland, schools introduced long-form reading to improve students’ ability to detect online manipulation. In the following years, students improved their critical evaluation of information. They reached this result simply by training attention.
Workplaces show the same pattern. Boston Consulting Group examined international teams and saw that those who practice deep work, including long-form reading, make stronger decisions and commit fewer mistakes. A trained mind resists confusion better.
The point is clear. Long-form reading is a form of self-defence. It rebuilds our ability to think without being pulled by the rhythm of algorithms. Without this ability, we become more vulnerable and less autonomous.
Now the question is for you. How much time do you still give to long-form reading? And how much do you notice that your attention is changing?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC #AI