Our diagnosis is pretty conclusive—your frame rate is off. About 93% of the American population suffers from an imbalanced frame-rate. It is more noticeable and devastating on a daily basis for those who were around for the Internet. For those who have grown up in it the daily challenges are less, but when there is any major shift in their worlds, their response is much more damaging and long lasting.
You see, the average person can read approximately 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 wpm for fiction. If someone is reading out loud speed is typically around 183 wpm. The frame rate of reading online, depending on the platform, is much, much higher than you’d read in a book. It’s not that you are reading more words of substance, just a sort of denial of service attack of popular slang, phrases, and words, but at a rate that is not sustainable.
It has been so long since you’ve read a book and you spent so much time flipping through images, videos, and quick textual posts that you are being overclocked regularly at a frame rate that is much higher than what your brain can handle. It feels like you are informed, and you are indeed receiving much more information than ever before, but it is something that does not result in the same knowledge and relationships you do in real life.
All you have to do is spend a sustained amount of time reading books, talking to real people, and spending time not talking offline. I can’t tell you how much time it will take to get you back to a normal state. Everyone’s frame rate is a little different, and everyone’s exposure to television and the Internet is different. You will know best regarding how much time you spend online, and how much time you spend offline, correlated with how you feel.
