FOMO

 ... Or just short attention span? The other day I was attempting to zip through pictures on my fourth Instagram feed, both for the sake of interacting and connecting, but also because I wanted to consume as many beautiful, inspiring images of cottages and gardens as five minutes would allow. 

a very old pastel sketch about being overwhelmed

Firstly, yes, I have four separate feeds on Instagram. Not [exactly] because I'm crazy. I just have numerous interests. And rather than overwhelm myself and others by posting and consuming multiple topics, I chose a select few topics and set up separate feeds for them. My feed about my creative work is my main account, but I also have feeds devoted to gardening, beautiful doors, and print-on-demand art.

Connecting with others and finding beautiful things and inspiration are very important to me on these accounts. But with limited time to devote to social media, I must consciously cap my exploration. And that realization as I was racing through, admiring the abundant beauty, made me ponder something. 

I frequently hear and read that we, as a human race, have a rapidly shrinking attention span. My thought was "Do we really possess shorter attention spans, or are we simply moving faster, flitting over more things trying to absorb more of the growing volume of information becoming available to us by the minute?" Because there is literally SO much more to absorb. The world is shrinking, but the access to information about the world around us is expanding at the speed of light.

So is it actually more of a fear of missing out [FOMO] on the things that would truly inspire us and illuminate our lives that just looks like a short attention span? Maybe we are evolving to be capable of consuming more in a shorter time than in previous history. I told my mom recently that though my nieces and nephew appear to be absorbed in their devices, they still seem to retain things we tell them or ask them to do (most of the time). I told her that I thought their generation could be evolving to be able to absorb more with less effort. Which could absolutely look like a short attention span if misinterpreted. And if we are evolving in this way, is it an improvement to humanity? What do you think?