I've been tutoring at Loyola Academy every Thursday this semester as part of a service project for my theology class, and I am continually amazed by how incredibly short the attention spans of those kids are. The young lad I'm usually supposed to be tutoring is in the seventh grade and could not focus on any subject for one full minute if I paid him to. I begin to show him how to solve a math problem, watch him start to play a computer game, remind him of the task at hand, continue trying to teach him and, finally, watch him get up and run across the room to playfully slap one of his friends and then run around the room while being chased.

Aside from being an obvious test of a man's patience every week, they also lead me to consider something: What, in the name of God, has happened to us? Has American culture actually become that bad, that focused on fads and instant gratification, that we can't focus on anything real for longer than a few moments, only to look away at some advertisement because it has pretty colors all over it?

A professor was telling my class the other day that he used to read upwards of 12 books a semester for his class and think nothing of it. Now, it is impossible to get students to read a single book, much less several. I don't own half the required texts for this class, and I wasn't about to tell him that, but I honestly wonder if I would read them if I owned them. I got 10 pages into an assignment for a literature class before I stopped to write this. I'm an English major who can't focus on a book for longer than five seconds. You figure out the logic in that one.

I am by no means calling myself a victim, or about to blame my own faults and short attention span on the outside world. The outside world may influence people, but it doesn't control them. Or at least, it shouldn't. Yeah, I know I have a short attention span and would much rather sit in front of a TV watching the preview channel while I have my computer logged on to AIM, just so I can start obsessively checking all my friends' away messages when I get bored with watching Joan Rivers babble like an idiot about what everyone's wearing. Add my guitar into this mix, and there is no way on earth that I am about to read a word of any book. I try to control myself, however. If I need to do any work, then I leave my dorm room, which is a death trap of distractions and useless junk. I go somewhere quiet, such as one of my two jobs, where I sit at a desk and can completely block most everything out.

I don't think people have problems with just reading. The hyperactive adolescent I previously mentioned can't focus on math, either. Trying to show him how to do square roots would be like trying to teach President George W. Bush to speak in public: purely in vain. Both are activities that would involve more patience than any human being could possibly muster and would probably end with either student running off and chasing a fly. Instead of doing math problems, this kid plays with the media player on the school computer, blasting some horrendous Ludacris song while I'm trying to show him how to multiply fractions. He'll then get on the Internet and go to a Web site to look up cheat codes for video games. Both activities will amount to nothing, and merely waste time, but they are what Americans are raised to do: consume, or be shown what to consume, so that they will acquire it more quickly.

I hate the mere thought of this happening to me, of becoming a product of society instead of a human being. I honestly feel like I am being manufactured when I see golden arches on the side of the highway and instantly demand that my poor friend pull off, since I know and he knows we both need fries, and need them soon, or else we will surely go into some form of withdrawal. I can almost feel bolts being tightened in my neck as we drive through McDonald's and are pushed through the factory on a conveyor belt, dumped into a bin marked, "Toy American Doll." Frightening thought, eh? This isn't a call to rebellion, though. I'm not telling you to boycott Quarter Pounders; eat if you're hungry. But instead of believing the ad on TV that somehow tells you that hot female twins will sleep with you if you drink some company's beer, perhaps you should turn the TV off and read a book. Try "Brave New World." I promise you'll feel better about yourself afterward.

Marshall Johnson is a sophomore studying English.