Can I Get Your Attention, Please?   

I’Mwriting this article because I’m worried. I’m worried about the people I see in my office and about what I hear from school menahalim. And I am worried about myself.

A few months ago, I was in Gateshead for a chasunah. Finding myself with some time to spare, I headed over to the famed Gateshead yeshivah, where I had learned as a bochur. As I walked through the hallowed hallways and sat down with my Gemara, I couldn’t help but notice how the beis medrash had barely changed in the twenty years since I left.

What had changed, I realized, was my ability to concentrate over my sefer, and this really disturbed me. How could it be that, when I was 17 years old, I could sit uninterrupted for a two-hour stint, but now I couldn’t manage much more than 30 minutes?

With my psychotherapist’s hat on, I wonder why so many of the people I see are struggling to focus and pay attention. And when it comes to the younger generation’s problems, well, the evidence is all too clear. One menahel told me his office has basically become a pharmacy, due to the huge amounts of medication now being prescribed to an avalanche of young people diagnosed with attention disorders. Children and adults are seeing their ability to pay attention in free-fall, with the inevitable devastating impact this will cause. We must first acknowledge that we are in the midst of an attention crisis, which we must understand and then urgently work out what we can do about it.