I don’t watch a lot of television, but I love watching professional sports. Keeping up with all of it is a time commitment I generally can’t make, so I often only watch highlights, game recaps, or sports commentary clips. Increasingly, I’ve noticed some athletes and commentators that seem to have an opinion on almost everything, and speak as if they should be considered a reliable authority on all of it. Star athletes, intelligent and hardworking individuals, (who are most assuredly experts in their profession,) considering themselves experts on anything they spend an evening watching YouTube videos or TikTok reels about. I’m not going to claim whether they are right or wrong on any specific topic, or advise you on whether you should listen to them, but I think we should realize that this is becoming a trend with all of us and recognize the downsides.
The Pressure to Respond
We have more access to information than any generation before us, but access to information isn’t the same as experience or understanding. We often encounter very complex and nuanced situations reduced to a simple headline, a short video, or a few sentences written by someone who wants us to feel something immediately and engage. The format encourages quick judgment. We decide who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s foolish, and who’s worth listening to. Sometimes we make those decisions before we’ve learned enough to even truly understand what happened. And because the next story arrives almost immediately, we rarely return to examine our conclusions. It’s an exhausting way to use our minds. It also creates the illusion that paying attention to something requires taking a position on it. But those are two different things. We can notice something without needing to react. We can learn about an issue without immediately choosing a side. We can care about people without pretending to understand every detail of their circumstances. And we should normalize saying, without embarrassment, “I don’t know enough about that yet.”
Attention Is an Investment
Imagine treating your attention the way you treat your money. You probably wouldn’t hand a few dollars to every stranger who asked for them throughout the day. Eventually, you’d have nothing left for the things you actually wanted to support. But that’s often how we handle our attention. A notification takes a little. An argument takes a little more. A troubling story stays in our thoughts for an hour. Another one interrupts dinner. Individually, those moments seem insignificant. Together, they can consume an enormous amount of mental energy. And that energy has to come from somewhere. Maybe it comes from the book you wanted to read. The conversation you could have enjoyed. The problem you needed to solve. The quiet moment when an idea might have developed. Not everything that captures our attention deserves to keep it. That’s not an argument for ignorance. Being informed matters. Understanding the world matters. Caring about injustice and suffering matters. But being constantly exposed to information isn’t necessarily the same as becoming more thoughtful, compassionate, or wise.
Curiosity Is Better Than Certainty
Besides developing a deficit of attention, something else this way of living creates is limited real curiosity. One of the healthiest things we can cultivate is the willingness to remain curious. Quickly forming opinions, quickly memorizing ways to reinforce them and moving on to the next thing, suppresses a real and meaningful search for truth. Curiosity asks questions before forming conclusions. What am I missing? Why might someone see this differently? Is this information reliable? What would change my mind? Certainty, especially premature certainty, often closes those doors. There’s a difference between holding convictions and assuming that every first impression is correct. We can believe important things deeply while still recognizing that our knowledge is incomplete. Wisdom doesn’t always mean having an opinion or answer. It’s also knowing when you don’t. The person that always claims to have an opinion and answer for everything hurts their credibility to be trusted about anything.
Make Room for Deeper Thinking
What would happen if we gave fewer things our immediate reaction and more things our sustained attention? We might read an entire article instead of sharing its headline. We might ask a friend why they believe something before explaining why we disagree. We might invest real time learning about one subject that matters to us, rather than scrolling through fifty unrelated controversies and other people’s opinions. We might even discover that some things don’t require our involvement at all. That can be difficult, particularly when the world seems to demand constant engagement. But protecting our attention isn’t withdrawing from life. It can be a way of participating in life more intentionally.
Your mind has a remarkable capacity to learn, imagine, discern, and understand. You don’t have to diminish that capacity by reacting to everything that passes in front of you. Choose what deserves your attention. Give it the time it deserves. And don’t allow where you spend your attention to be decided by someone else.
