What is the crowd's opinion of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains?
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There is some research that the way we are thinking is changing. We offload a lot of memory and processing to computers now, so we do less of that type of thinking and more of types of thinking like judgment and synthesizing. We no longer navigate, because we can offload that to a GPS, without which a lot of people would be lost if they left their neighborhood.

Also we don't have long bored times to reflect on things, observe, ponder questions, think deeply, be creative, etc. If we have a question, we just look it up instantly then move right on to the next thought.
You also see it when people put on a TV show or movie and yet sit there scrolling their phone the whole time it's on - multitasking, rapidly switching between the two, not paying real deep attention to either.

We think quickly and shallowly, in between notifications or task-switches while multitasking. We often communicate with short asynchronous messages, rather than focused deep conversations. We're used to reading now in infinite-scrolling feeds of bite-sized chunks, instead of reading long-form books and sitting back to think about what they have to say. It even affects those who are (or were) deep readers and creative thinkers.

One of the books about that is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains which is kind of ironic because it's a writer writing a book about how he can't really focus to read books anymore and he interviews literature professors who also no longer have the attention span to read whole books.

However, there is also evidence that people actually are reading more, with book sales increasing year after year (both print and e-books, as well as audiobooks). So while there is evidence that focused reading is not a thing of the past, that doesn't necessarily negate other stuff about thinking modes largely shifting.

You might enjoy this book at any point you feel like a break from more serious philosophy. It’s not actually anti-internet as the title sort of implies but puts forward and interesting claim on how the media we use influences our cognition. It is also a nice overview of various mediums for reading and writing and the types of thought that are deemed valuable. I found it an interesting read and quite thought provoking.

Yup, another unpopular opinion among people but I definitely agree. I abstained from electronics use for a couple days and saw significant improvement in mental clarity. It's a shame I couldn't sustain it and came back to my addiction, it's something I'm working on also.

Here's a popular book on how technology affects our brain, it goes pretty in-depth, if you are interested: link

There are a couple of possibilities (aside from the one you've ruled out):

The fakeness and repetitive tropes of mainstream Hollywood are just stale. That's totally likely because it's very repetitive - they like to repeat past successes and that's why there are so many sequels, reboots, crossovers, etc. Some people don't care and even like that familiarity, but for others, it's really boring.
- Something that might help with that would be to try looking into surrealist movies, the 'mindfuck' movie genre (weird psychological movies), and indie movies. Or some of the old classics that you've never seen from the black&white days or even into the 60s/70s. Movies and shows were different back then.
Games, if you're talking about the big-name AAA games that get so much media exposure, the same goes there. Mainstream gets boring. You can try some of the weird little indie games, or a switch to light, quick, or turn-based games that you can just play for a few minutes to relax without really having to get deep into it. But that might not interest you either.
Another thing you might be interested in is the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Basically people are developing much shorter attention spans because we're so used to small-form stuff like tweets, memes, posts, used to getting distracted by notifications, task-switching, etc. It's harder to focus and stay interested in long-form media like books, watching a whole movie, or getting deeply involved in a game.

You might have a bit of that going on along with a bit of 'mainstream fatigue'.

>哈哈你引的这一段我都很喜欢。你赞同的观点是如何应对频繁社交的方法，梭罗他觉得物理上保持一定的距离减少社交的频次也就可以。可21世纪互联网的今天，社交变得更加cheap，我甚至可以和地球背面的你对骂 ;)

是的, 这个在今天的社交网络时代尤其是个问题...最近对此有不少的讨论,

比如 The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, 以及 Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age和 Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

(我用amazon的link主要是为了准确的定位书籍...网上可能会有不少的免费枪版...)

这些书我基本都没有认真看过, 只是大概的skim了一下...但大致上很多都是说，我们在做需要深度思考时候, 应该回归到更为传统的方式(或者至少断开网络), 很多great things都是需要非常集中注意力才能去创造出来的(the shallows , deep work)...同人交往的时候也是的, 我们需要独处，以及与人面对面的交流, 而不仅仅只是成天在网络上挂着(reclaiming conversation)...Essentialism这本书也是讲专注的重要性...我个人的经历也有类似感受...我见过不少号称学霸或者校霸之类的学生, 我感觉大多数人--不管是学霸还是"普通"的人...我们的智商和思考力都是差不多的, 但是那些能够做出非常杰出的成就的人常常是能够不受干扰的非常专注的投入的做那一件事情...

>对我来说瓦尔登湖就是一本人生指南，他太伟大了（形容词词库贫瘠，实在除了伟大找不到别的词了

嗯，这是本非常好的书, 至今仍很有影响力...只是世界上的好书太多了...所以我们可能需要stay foolish; and stay hungry -- 当然是在平衡专注力的基础上的...

TikTok? That ship sailed long ago, friend. Facebook has been in existence for almost 20 years at this point.

This book was quite illuminating and provides a lot of evidence for the worsening of our attention span: https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains-dp-0393357821/dp/0393357821/ref=dp_ob_title_def

And still reads true, in my opinion.

Now, if you took social media away right now could we regain our focus? I certainly think so, and that's been my experience. I don't think TikTok is causing permanent ADHD. But if you're on social media every day and priming your brain to be in that state of shortened attention span, the effect might as well be the same.

Trust me, I know: I'm a Reddit user.

It's the internet, and it's the massive flood of notifications and information being thrown at the brain. It hijacks circuits in the brain that reward new information which performed a valuable function throughout most of history. Now they're overwhelmed and everyone has ADHD.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393357821

That is a tech effect. There are books about it. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains is a decent one.