Amazon’s New Kindle Is an Antidote to Our Shrinking Attention Spaces

Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” mantra may be one of the worst slogans in history. In their rush to disrupt everything, our favorite tech bros have created products that manage to break the foundations of society: election integrity, facts in the media, and our collective ability to focus on anything longer than a TikTok video. And now, even as AI accelerates this derby of digital disruption, the tech industry’s response is not to slow down and think; is to move even faster. So it’s shocking to see Amazon, a company that helps us buy things faster than ever before, to offer us something refreshingly slow: a Kindle with a color screen.

Kindle has been around for 17 years. E-readers feel like static, almost outdated technology; Not the shiny, headline-grabbing gadgets we’ve come to expect from the tech world, but products with tens of thousands of pixels per inch and processors that move at our mortal speeds. brains cannot comprehend. But the new Kindle color that consumers have been asking for (or even begging for) since 2007 is neither of these. That’s what makes it so surprising. I won’t do an extensive product review where I’ll go into detail about the device, but I will say that the colors on the Kindle aren’t something I realized I wanted. But now, after using it for a few days, I can’t imagine living without it. I can highlight it in color. I can see my book covers. Brighter. There is a new page turning function that makes it feel like you are turning a real paper page. And most importantly, it feels exactly like that: paper.

But the question is: What took Amazon so long? Accordingly Panos Panay, The reason we waited 17 years for color was because the company wanted to make sure that adding color wouldn’t take away from the experience of using a true Kindle, said Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services. In short, Amazon could easily have built an LCD screen into the Kindle body to appease users who were screaming about color more than fifteen years ago. But Panay says this would take away from the reading experience. Instead, they wanted to develop a color display that wouldn’t compromise the Kindle’s core purpose: a reading experience that feels like reading, not like scrolling.

In an interview this week, Panay told me that slowing down was at the heart of every decision about the new Kindle color that goes on sale this week. “Do you remember what reading is all about? It’s about learning and understanding. He was born for patience. “It’s very different from scrolling as fast as you can with your thumb,” he told me. “You have the sanctuary or calming effect that reading brings.” (Panos told me that the Kindle team tested dozens and dozens of different displays to find the perfect blend of colors with the feel of real paper.)

What I find so interesting about the Kindle (both color and black and white) is that everyone I know (no matter how old) has a love-hate relationship with their smartphones. (Many people have a hate-hate relationship with them.) Those flashy OLED screens, apps, and endless notifications are a black hole of meaningless interactions. But let me ask you a question: Do you know anyone who hates their Kindle? That’s what I thought too.

This sense of slowed-down simplicity has not only appealed to older people who are fed up with living in a world of AI this and that and yelling at annoying kids to get out of their digital gardens. Amazon told me that the Kindle had its best sales year in a decade, driven largely by millennials and Gen Z (who are seemingly fed up with how overwhelmed and superficial most other technologies make them feel). Kevin Keith, The Kindle vice president told me that 60% of Kindle sales during this boom came from these young adults.

I won’t lie; One of the reasons young readers are buying Kindles may be BookTok, TikTok’s wildly popular corner where readers share their latest literary obsessions. And some of the things they read make me cringe—ahem, Colleen Hoover—but here’s the thing: They reading. Books. Many. “I think what drives BookTok is not just reading in general, but reading without distraction,” Keith told me in an interview. “People are done with their phones and want to get away from them. You get lost in all the notifications you receive; The best part is, there is nothing to distract you, no notifications, no social media, just your books and you get lost in them. That’s why customers are returning to Kindle in droves.”

Maybe there is no end to the human race.

It appears the Kindle is not alone in this counter-revolution against distracting technology. There’s a growing “slow tech” movement gaining momentum: People are buying Light Phones or dumb phones that just make calls and send messages, as well as analog watches that do that weird thing called telling the time, and they’re even going back to film cameras. the thing that forces you to wait and think before every shot (which is exactly why I bought an old film camera). These aren’t just hipster affectations or nostalgia plays; these are life rafts for people drowning in the endless stream of digital nonsense and the speed at which it is thrown at us. Each of these devices shares a common philosophy with the Kindle: Do one thing, do it well, and get out of the way without trying to distract you for engagement metrics.

The science behind why we’re attracted to these slower, more thoughtful devices is fascinating. Studies have shown that reading books, whether on paper or e-ink, engages our brains in ways that scrolling through social media can never replicate. When we read long-form narratives, our brains create detailed stories. neural networksStrengthening pathways associated with empathy, critical thinking, and deep focus. MRI studies found that networks involved in perspective taking and story understanding remain active for days after finishing a book, like mental echoes of the stories we absorb.

On the contrary, the endless stream of social media feeds drives what neuroscientists call “switching costs”; this is the mental price we pay for shifting sustained attention. Every time we move on to the next post or story, our brain leaves a message. a little hit of dopamineWhile it trains us to gravitate towards more readily available content, it also erodes our ability to sustain attention. You’ve probably seen countless studies about how social media is ruining children’s lives. Surgeon General says 46% of children reported that social media negatively affects their body image. In addition, research It was revealed that children and young people who spend more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety.