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This Behaviour Is Spreading Like Wild Fire

And it’s spoiling our enjoyment of even the most basic things

I went to watch an international rugby match yesterday — Wales vs Australia at Principality Stadium in Cardiff.

68,000 people in one of the world’s greatest sporting arenas. If you ever get a chance to attend a Wales rugby match in Cardiff, take it — the atmosphere is special.

This is the kind of event a lot of us dreamed of attending during lockdown, when we weren’t allowed to gather in groups and sport was being played behind closed doors.

But one thing kept happening throughout the game that spoiled the enjoyment of it for many of us, and it’s a behaviour that we all seem to find hard to control.

A Lessening Attention Span

I was a child of the 80s, and a teen in the 90s — times, when, in the UK at least, styles of teaching in schools evolved pretty quickly.

I just about caught the end of the very formal, lines of desks, teacher at the front, long periods of concentration on individual tasks style of learning.

I can remember being very young, sat in a class practicing handwriting in total silence as we copied letters and words off the blackboard.