When I began teaching a few years ago they told us that our students attention span was no more than twenty minutes. Today, those same experts are now telling us that the attention span of a teenager is maybe fifteen minutes, if you’re lucky and really exciting. But, I would argue that our society today has the attention span of only a 120 character tweet, or at least it feels like it most of the time. I see evidence for this everyday where someone will post a headline with a link and then people will comment “Well aren’t you going to tell us which country is the happiest?” and I think to myself, did you not click on the link? That’s where the journalist goes into more depth! But no, I guess not. I’ve seen people write something on Facebook and if it is longer than two sentences someone will comment, “you know if it’s longer than a sentence no one will read it right?”
We also see it a lot with Pope Francis when he gives a whole talk, but only one sentence gets tweeted and suddenly social media is ablaze with Pope Francis said this! The best one I saw posted had to be this, “Pope Francis warns that any personal relationship with Jesus Christ is Dangerous” Sorry, come again? It was starting to get me down, all this commenting without even reading the entire article and people believing anything that gets posted online. I also wondered if was even possible anymore to explain a faith that is so deep that it really needs a whole book to give it justice. Is there even a point in trying or should I just keep my mouth closed and stay out of it.
Then I somehow found myself embedded into a defence of Catholicism on Instagram– of all places– and I was shocked to learn that yes, you could defend Catholicism, in short spurts, and even get into details without completely losing your audience. It has greatly encouraged me to believe that there is still hope for this modern era.
I haven’t been blogging in a while because after having my baby I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about anymore. Did I want to continue talking about teaching Catholicism? Did I want to get away from sometimes the never ending head desk banging activity of apologetics on the internet? Or did I want to write more about the adventures of motherhood? But, after this weekends debate on Instagram, I feel energized again and realized that I do have a passion for defending my faith. Now, I just need to work on shrinking all that information down into 120 characters or less.
Seeking Pemberley 