Reclaiming attention: Today's defining challenge?
Glynn Harrison
Why am I finding it so difficult to get started on this article?
It isn’t writer’s block. A scribbled outline is sitting on my desk. I know roughly what I want to say. Yet every two or three minutes my attention drifts. I find myself reaching for my phone, reading an email, following an unrelated information trail (a quick glance at the weather forecast and I’m soon watching Arctic puffins), double-checking facts, glancing at yet more “breaking news”. Perhaps not all in the same morning, and I exaggerate a little, but you get the idea.
Social media and our children
Glynn Harrison
If you missed all the headlines about the link between smartphones and the epidemic of mental illness in children and young people, then you have not been paying sufficient attention to your social media feed.
The demand for young people’s mental health services currently stands at record levels. It began around 2012, which saw a sharp uptick in rates of childhood anxiety, depression and self-harm. And since then, the graphs have continued their upward march. Even sceptical mental health epidemiologists like me, who prefer to look at data from several different sources before making up their minds, now believe that something serious is happening to our children.
‘We need a better story...
Glynn Harrison
… because the sexual revolution demands one’ says Glynn Harrison
‘Mindful of the Church’s teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others’
