The shorter attention span idea is an interesting perspective on this. I’d have thought fidget toys like electronic pets etc. might have the same effect of inducing attention diverting behaviours but as you said, my experience of Facebook/Snapchat at the time was mostly static images. There was video on Facebook and to be fair we watched a lot thanks to many Australian phone plans zero rating data for Facebook but we didn’t do that during class.

I still think of myself as a ‘digital native’, as in this technology has existed my whole life, but in many ways yeah I agree with your perspective that it was not as pervasive during my formative years and I guess that makes all the difference here.

Growing up with this stuff in it's infancy, it was like there were two worlds, the digital one and the real one. Most people out in the real world didn't use the internet much and even if you spent tons of time online, they could pull you up to speed with their ways of thinking and behaving. Kids nowadays don't have that, their parents are phone addicts, their neighbors are phone addicts. They can't see themselves out of the maze because there is no one to guide them out.

> This things happened gradually.

And is happening continuously over time. It is the deleterious effects of this accretion that is so insidious about the digital/social/internet media.

I have experienced/am experiencing this same problem in my own mental functioning in spite being "old" (am in the middle 50s), don't use phones much, don't do social media much and yet with just browsing and consuming all types of content on the Internet; my attention span, focusing ability, time spent on continuous concentrated study all have declined (well beyond what can be attributed to ageing). Add now a sedentary lifestyle entailed by the above activities and you have your physical body deteriorating in all parameters too. This sets up a vicious cycle where the mind degrades the body which in turn degrades the mind and so on.

Thankfully since i have memories of my mental functioning from before the Internet era i can discipline myself when needed (but getting harder) but i shudder to think what it is doing to the developing and growing brains/minds of kids/teens growing up in this environment.

It is really important that Society as a whole wakes up to this insidious problem and involves Neuroscientists/Biologists/Psychologists/Scientists and Political Policy makers to focus on and find a solution to this epidemic.