‘Need cues to watch a movie because they are on second screens’: Even film students can’t put their phones down

With ever-shrinking attention spans, film students today are struggling to make it to the end of a feature-length movie without getting distracted by their phones.

That’s according to a recent article by The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch. In a snippet that has since circulated on X, gaining nearly 2 million views since it was posted last week, one of the film studies professors interviewed by Horowitch recalled asking his students about the ending of the 1962 François Truffaut film Jules and Jim.

“More than half of the class picked one of the wrong options, saying that characters hide from the Nazis (the film takes place during World War I) or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the movie),” the screenshot read. The film has a run time of 1 hour and 45 minutes. 

Naturally, much hand-wringing ensued online. “I’m so confused. You kind of have to go out of your way to take a film studies course, right?,” one X user asked. “Imagine not doing the homework, and the homework is watching a movie. That’s crazy,” a Reddit user wrote.

Others called it a crisis of attention. “This bleeds into everything. Can’t pay attention to or finish a novel. Need cues to watch a movie because they are on second screens,” another X user wrote. 

The rise of “second-screening” and the resulting genre of casual, background-friendly TV shows and movies has been well documented. Many, myself included, will admit to putting on a film only to scroll TikTok with one hand and place an online order on a laptop with the other.

In a recent n+1 magazine article, Will Tavlin reports that screenwriters are now being told to have their protagonists “announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.”

Film studies professors interviewed by The Atlantic’s Horowitch say they have even resorted to assigning students only portions of films. One compares his students to “nicotine addicts going through withdrawal.”

Short-form content on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have rewired the brain to expect a dopamine hit every few seconds. “The closest thing we had to doomscrolling back then was channel surfing,” one Reddit user pointed out. “Could they play the movies on 2x with Minecraft footage?” one X user suggested. 

Long films aren’t the problem here. If anything, they might be the solution. “I’m actively trying to break my phone addiction, and a big part of that has been using movies as a guaranteed two hours a night off my phone,” one Reddit user admitted. “It’s therapeutic, and I’d encourage anyone trying to click less screen time to give it a try.”

Homework assignment: Sit and watch The Brutalist without once touching your phone, and see how difficult it can be.

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