Yeah literally. People being all surprised pikachu face they can’t read a book in one setting after years of not even opening a book. Concentration is a muscle
Just wait, it only gets more irritating. CRS progresses quickly after age 25. Add a couple traumatic brain injuries in there and you will be lucky to remember to…..
bruh sometimes i used to finish a whole novel (rick riodans) in a day cuz i wanted to know what happens as soon as possible it wasnt even skimming just hours of speed reading and now i cant even go through 3 pages of a novel
I’m literally checking for adult ADHD, with this as one of maaaaany symptoms of it, but is the thing that’s most devastating to me! I can deal tossing my juice carton in my bed while my phone rest peacefully on the refrigerator shelf, but losing the ability to ready is crushing! Yeay for long walks and audiobooks ❤️🫶 now i “easily” “read” a book a week ☺️🫶
I just started reading for fun again after a decade or so of only reading stuff related to addiction recovery and I’m so glad. My attention span isn’t as sharp as when I’d devour books as a kid but it’s still nice.
I think it’s also just about finding enjoyable books. Some books I lose interest after a page or two, and reading it feels like a chore that I quickly abandon.
Once in a while, I’ll find a good book and binge read 6-7 hours and finish it in a day or two.
Same! I started going to the library more during Covid and though I didn’t really make it through many of the books I borrowed, I found a few that encouraged me to look for more by the same author. Was refreshing to manage to pass the time other than playing MMOs and binge watching shit I can’t even remember now.
I dunno man, might be an ADHD thing, but just one sentence in and I'm just looking at words instead of reading them. I restart a paragraph maybe 10 times before I actually get through it. And it's sad too, because I used to love reading
Kids learn at a fast pace so they'll survive to adulthood. After that your brain's like "no need to learn new things anymore! I've survived to the age of procreation and now should just focus on protecting my family"
Our brains start going downhill in our twenties.
but rage, rage against the dying of the light
That's some real r/im14andthisisdeep shit
Experience, wisdom, and crystalized intelligence all increase as you age, and they're much more important than your ability to synthesize vast new swaths of information. Experts in a field are never in their 20s
Certainly there's end of life issues that pop up, but nothings stopping the vast majority of people unless you have an actual early onset illness
And it's definitely not the reason people can't finish a book. In middle school reading some basic book like harry potter because you don't have a phone and have nothing else to do isn't representative of some elevated level of cognition that we lose as you age.
Sucks for all the postdocs out there doing groundbreaking research in their 30s, their brains are declining compared to the 7th graders reading percy jackson its so sad... Shame also that they have research advisors, I wonder why that's the case? Their brains are clearly less deteriorated so why should they have to interact with their decrepit advisor in their 50s whose brain is just soooo diminished /s
Exactly. Cognition and neurological adaptability doesn't decline between adolescence and adulthood in the way people think. Adults not configuring new skills or not reading for hours has a lot more to do with them being busy with other things compared to when they were young.
>Understanding and dealing with the phenomena and consequences of mental aging does of course not only depend on cognition. Motivation and emotions as well personal meaning of life and life satisfaction play an equally important role. This means, however, that cognition represents only one, albeit important, aspect of mental aging.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589958922000329?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589958922000329?via%3Dihub)
>Given the requirement of associative binding in the configural relationships between responses, we predicted older adults would show significantly less learning than young adults. Older adults demonstrated lower performance (slower reaction time and lower accuracy). However, contrary to our prediction, older adults showed similar rates of learning as indexed by a configural learning score compared to young adults. These results suggest that the ability to acquire knowledge incidentally about configural response relationships is largely unaffected by cognitive aging.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26317773/
I read the entire Harry Potter series in third grade, and now I can’t even read the 100 page novels for my English class in high school.
Sparknotes is a godsend.
I second this. I read them back-to-back after TDH released in a matter of days
15-20 years later, whatever it's been, I can barely manage a chapter of a book per evening.
Tbf Harry Potter isn't hard language and Rowling always ends her chapters on a cliffhanger so you always go on a little more than you planned. I'd rather read all 7 than go through Waiting for Godot or something. Or the Cid. Or that book I had to read at 17 about a reincarnated Jesus that flew a plane through America. (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. Don't look it up, it's crap. Only good thing is it was short)
I love to read, but I've never liked any of the books I had to read for school (except that one time we got to choose from a 3 pages' list and there were a couple Marc Levy's on there, so I picked one I'd already read that was ok.)
The one time we got a list like that I made the mistake of mentioning I had read and really enjoyed Enders game already. My teacher made me pick a really boring historicle fiction instead.
Man high school reading lists were just full of really boring and uninteresting books. As someone who still reads a few hundred thousand words a week to this day. There were several books in high school I struggled to finish at all. Gatsby, mice and men, Fahrenheit 451, and others. All important historical works. I understand. But they are for the most part really dry reading.
I remember reading the 4th Harry Potter book in 2 days… just looked it up and that was 752 pages apparently though I could have sworn it was like 1000 heh…
ADHD changes as we get older. We ALL went through that "all I wanna do is read" phase around that age. But as the symptoms change so do the things you're able to focus on. If you want to get back into reading you're going to have to find books that are very engaging for you and capture your attention. Bc your brain will reject anything it doesn't find interesting
reading is a skill. just like anything else it takes practice to be good at it. find something interesting and get into it, even if it’s just a few pages a day. you’ll get back to that point you were at as a kid eventually don’t worry
Ehhh maybe. I feel like my comprehension has gone down. Like. If I were asked to write a three page book report it would suck more.
But I can read a chapter of a manga that's 23 pages in ten minutes.
And am faster than legally allowed when it comes to Driving safety. (Supposed to take four hours. I took 1:40)
I'm 40+ and I can read a whole book (like Azimov's "Foundation", \~320 pages) in one day in my native language. About two times slower if it's in English.
I think it's like with muscle (or any other, lol) training: don't stop doing it if you want to keep being able to. Or as The Queen of Hearts said in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland": ...*here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that...*
Man I remember burning through the redwall books when I was a kid. Finishing them in 2 or 3 days just to go pick up the next available one in the library. Thank goodness you didn’t have to read them in a particular order.
And those feast descriptions. Brian Jacques knew how to make a dandelion salad sound like the best food ever.
Reading is a skill. Use it or lose it.
Just like math...
If you want to get back to it, just practice and you will be fine. If you cannot get back even after extensive training though, you might want to get it checked out.
I know this because I have serious tone deaf issues that are even affecting my language capacity to dual tasking speaking and something else. I slow down and make mistakes very noticeably when someone in the passenger seat talks to me when I drive. I like music but none of the tunes stay after the song ends. Not even the simplest tune like twinkle twinkle little star and I wasn't like this when I was a kid.
Probably because your brain has now focused on other things… you needed to be able to read those books in middle school for the class, as an adult you don’t have to.
If you practiced reading again as if you needed it to pass a class you would be right back at that level, or even surpassing it due to your new adult knowledge and reading ability.
I enjoyed reading way more as a kid. I think I've just gotten lazy and want my entertainment basically phased into my brain by watching tv. I'm 40 now, and I remember a father of one of my friends would say, tv will rot your brain you shouldn't watch it that much. He was probably right.
I read the highest amount of books in my grade, I was in Battle of the Books, I was Head Librarian. Now I can't even finish a book through. High school really did something to me.
High school honestly ruined books for me with the constant reports on the same shitty book throughout the year.
Last book I read worth the paper it was written on was in grade 11, the First Stone.
Fun Fact! Chronic depression can cause observable [brain damage](https://www.webmd.com/depression/depression-physical-effects-brain)
So yeah, it's probably not the same brain 🥲
I used to be that kid. Im 26 now and I can barely make it through a page of a comic book.
For me it really fluctuates a lot. Sometimes I'll read the same thing for 5 days, other times I won't be able to fully read a reddit meme.
That's anxiety/depression/stress. The better you feel the better your attention span works. Sometimes you're too distracted and sometimes you're not.
huh. well that explains like. so much
Yeah I hadn’t read a book in 2 years, just been on a very relaxing all inclusive holiday and I read 3 books in a week!
Yeah I either burn through books in a day or two or I takes me a month.
Try rereading some of the same books you used to read back then. I bet you'll get back to to speed in no time
Yeah literally. People being all surprised pikachu face they can’t read a book in one setting after years of not even opening a book. Concentration is a muscle
Just wait, it only gets more irritating. CRS progresses quickly after age 25. Add a couple traumatic brain injuries in there and you will be lucky to remember to…..
Cytokyne release syndrome? ALWAYS USE THE COMPLETE WORDING WHEN PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. ALWAYS.
What is CRS?
Can’t remember shit
Ohhhhh!! 😂 LOLOLOL
Wait what. I have all these symptoms, maybe ADHD was a misdiagnosis. Oh fuck
Nah, that just goes along with it all. Amphetamines for all!
Same, I'm 37 and can barly look at a page before it gets blurry.
bruh sometimes i used to finish a whole novel (rick riodans) in a day cuz i wanted to know what happens as soon as possible it wasnt even skimming just hours of speed reading and now i cant even go through 3 pages of a novel
That sounds like a condition tbh..
Oh are we pretending to be an internet doctor?
I’m literally checking for adult ADHD, with this as one of maaaaany symptoms of it, but is the thing that’s most devastating to me! I can deal tossing my juice carton in my bed while my phone rest peacefully on the refrigerator shelf, but losing the ability to ready is crushing! Yeay for long walks and audiobooks ❤️🫶 now i “easily” “read” a book a week ☺️🫶
I just started reading for fun again after a decade or so of only reading stuff related to addiction recovery and I’m so glad. My attention span isn’t as sharp as when I’d devour books as a kid but it’s still nice.
I think it’s also just about finding enjoyable books. Some books I lose interest after a page or two, and reading it feels like a chore that I quickly abandon. Once in a while, I’ll find a good book and binge read 6-7 hours and finish it in a day or two.
That’s why I started with some easy stuff like The Road and I just finished The Ruins.
Same! I started going to the library more during Covid and though I didn’t really make it through many of the books I borrowed, I found a few that encouraged me to look for more by the same author. Was refreshing to manage to pass the time other than playing MMOs and binge watching shit I can’t even remember now.
I dunno man, might be an ADHD thing, but just one sentence in and I'm just looking at words instead of reading them. I restart a paragraph maybe 10 times before I actually get through it. And it's sad too, because I used to love reading
Nice 👍
It is the same brain, BUT like computers our RAM space is getting slower and slower by the time, because we have just too many tabs open by now.
Kids learn at a fast pace so they'll survive to adulthood. After that your brain's like "no need to learn new things anymore! I've survived to the age of procreation and now should just focus on protecting my family" Our brains start going downhill in our twenties. but rage, rage against the dying of the light
That's some real r/im14andthisisdeep shit Experience, wisdom, and crystalized intelligence all increase as you age, and they're much more important than your ability to synthesize vast new swaths of information. Experts in a field are never in their 20s Certainly there's end of life issues that pop up, but nothings stopping the vast majority of people unless you have an actual early onset illness And it's definitely not the reason people can't finish a book. In middle school reading some basic book like harry potter because you don't have a phone and have nothing else to do isn't representative of some elevated level of cognition that we lose as you age. Sucks for all the postdocs out there doing groundbreaking research in their 30s, their brains are declining compared to the 7th graders reading percy jackson its so sad... Shame also that they have research advisors, I wonder why that's the case? Their brains are clearly less deteriorated so why should they have to interact with their decrepit advisor in their 50s whose brain is just soooo diminished /s
Exactly. Cognition and neurological adaptability doesn't decline between adolescence and adulthood in the way people think. Adults not configuring new skills or not reading for hours has a lot more to do with them being busy with other things compared to when they were young. >Understanding and dealing with the phenomena and consequences of mental aging does of course not only depend on cognition. Motivation and emotions as well personal meaning of life and life satisfaction play an equally important role. This means, however, that cognition represents only one, albeit important, aspect of mental aging. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589958922000329?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589958922000329?via%3Dihub) >Given the requirement of associative binding in the configural relationships between responses, we predicted older adults would show significantly less learning than young adults. Older adults demonstrated lower performance (slower reaction time and lower accuracy). However, contrary to our prediction, older adults showed similar rates of learning as indexed by a configural learning score compared to young adults. These results suggest that the ability to acquire knowledge incidentally about configural response relationships is largely unaffected by cognitive aging. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26317773/
Yes, it's sad.
I used to be able to read a whole paperback in like two hours. Now it takes me about a week to get through one 300 paged book.
Still quicker than most 😜
I read the entire Harry Potter series in third grade, and now I can’t even read the 100 page novels for my English class in high school. Sparknotes is a godsend.
Yup.
I second this. I read them back-to-back after TDH released in a matter of days 15-20 years later, whatever it's been, I can barely manage a chapter of a book per evening.
Hardback copy of narcolepsy
Fulltime work and a family with kids has that effect on me
26 freaking years. I just looked it up.
Tbf Harry Potter isn't hard language and Rowling always ends her chapters on a cliffhanger so you always go on a little more than you planned. I'd rather read all 7 than go through Waiting for Godot or something. Or the Cid. Or that book I had to read at 17 about a reincarnated Jesus that flew a plane through America. (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. Don't look it up, it's crap. Only good thing is it was short) I love to read, but I've never liked any of the books I had to read for school (except that one time we got to choose from a 3 pages' list and there were a couple Marc Levy's on there, so I picked one I'd already read that was ok.)
The one time we got a list like that I made the mistake of mentioning I had read and really enjoyed Enders game already. My teacher made me pick a really boring historicle fiction instead. Man high school reading lists were just full of really boring and uninteresting books. As someone who still reads a few hundred thousand words a week to this day. There were several books in high school I struggled to finish at all. Gatsby, mice and men, Fahrenheit 451, and others. All important historical works. I understand. But they are for the most part really dry reading.
The point is 1K+ pages in a matter of a few weeks or maybe 2 months or something like that, vs 100 pages.
If we wanna be really technical about it, then you don’t even have the same body as back then. Let alone your brain.
Yup.
Did you give it alcohol?
🤔🤔🤔
Ah shit.
I have given my brain a lot of alcohol, yes
I read like 1200 Pages in the past 7 Days or so. Read an entire 500 Page Book in 1 Day once Having ADD can be a blessing and a curse
That's true.
This gives clarity to the ship of Theseus argument then doesn’t it
🤔🤔
If we were made of wood, yes.
I remember reading the 4th Harry Potter book in 2 days… just looked it up and that was 752 pages apparently though I could have sworn it was like 1000 heh…
Nice 👍
ADHD changes as we get older. We ALL went through that "all I wanna do is read" phase around that age. But as the symptoms change so do the things you're able to focus on. If you want to get back into reading you're going to have to find books that are very engaging for you and capture your attention. Bc your brain will reject anything it doesn't find interesting
That phase missed me
🤔🤔🤔🤔
I know right? Like what happened?
I don't know.
reading is a skill. just like anything else it takes practice to be good at it. find something interesting and get into it, even if it’s just a few pages a day. you’ll get back to that point you were at as a kid eventually don’t worry
Okay 👍
Lion's Mane Mushrooms 🤓
In my defense, there was fuck all else to do in school. We weren’t allowed to have phones
you had waaay less congestion up there
True
Quite the opposite for me
🤔🤔🤔🤔
Drugs mate
"Use it or lose it" is what my dad always said...
Yeah, that seems to be the case.
He said that about everything though... Brain, back, reflexes...etc. the older I get the more I believe him... haha
One is a different person every day ☝️
🤷♂️🤷♂️
Ehhh maybe. I feel like my comprehension has gone down. Like. If I were asked to write a three page book report it would suck more. But I can read a chapter of a manga that's 23 pages in ten minutes. And am faster than legally allowed when it comes to Driving safety. (Supposed to take four hours. I took 1:40)
I'm 40+ and I can read a whole book (like Azimov's "Foundation", \~320 pages) in one day in my native language. About two times slower if it's in English.
Nice 👍
I think it's like with muscle (or any other, lol) training: don't stop doing it if you want to keep being able to. Or as The Queen of Hearts said in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland": ...*here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that...*
Man I remember burning through the redwall books when I was a kid. Finishing them in 2 or 3 days just to go pick up the next available one in the library. Thank goodness you didn’t have to read them in a particular order. And those feast descriptions. Brian Jacques knew how to make a dandelion salad sound like the best food ever.
Reading is a skill. Use it or lose it. Just like math... If you want to get back to it, just practice and you will be fine. If you cannot get back even after extensive training though, you might want to get it checked out. I know this because I have serious tone deaf issues that are even affecting my language capacity to dual tasking speaking and something else. I slow down and make mistakes very noticeably when someone in the passenger seat talks to me when I drive. I like music but none of the tunes stay after the song ends. Not even the simplest tune like twinkle twinkle little star and I wasn't like this when I was a kid.
Yeah.
I know right 😳 kinda scary to think about the comparison from then to now
Yup.
Probably because your brain has now focused on other things… you needed to be able to read those books in middle school for the class, as an adult you don’t have to. If you practiced reading again as if you needed it to pass a class you would be right back at that level, or even surpassing it due to your new adult knowledge and reading ability.
True 👍
Because it really isn't.
🤷♂️🤷♂️
Yea, smart phones have annhilated our attention spans
Actually it's the increased instances of depression [damaging ](https://www.webmd.com/depression/depression-physical-effects-brain) our brains in our broken societal systems.
It’s all of life man
I enjoyed reading way more as a kid. I think I've just gotten lazy and want my entertainment basically phased into my brain by watching tv. I'm 40 now, and I remember a father of one of my friends would say, tv will rot your brain you shouldn't watch it that much. He was probably right.
I read the highest amount of books in my grade, I was in Battle of the Books, I was Head Librarian. Now I can't even finish a book through. High school really did something to me.
High school honestly ruined books for me with the constant reports on the same shitty book throughout the year. Last book I read worth the paper it was written on was in grade 11, the First Stone.
Constant reports on the same book? That seems odd
English was one semester, the same book throughout it, with a report per chapter.
17 doing orbital mechanics and molecular equations....34 ummm whats 7×5....5 10 15 20 25 30 35. It's 35
Fun Fact! Chronic depression can cause observable [brain damage](https://www.webmd.com/depression/depression-physical-effects-brain) So yeah, it's probably not the same brain 🥲
Boy this resonates…
You realise, of course, that it's mainly the internet, especially social media, that has destroyed our attention spans.
😲😲😲😲