Generation Sesame Street: How Big Bird Stole Our Attention Span

The world is in the grips of an epidemic of inattention, and a grouch in a trash can and a big yellow bird may be to blame.

Follow that Bird, they stole my attention span! (Image by Author)

If you are under the age sixty and living on Planet Earth, chances are that you grew up watching Sesame Street.

Wether you lived in America or England, China or Japan, Australia or Brazil or in any of the one-hundred-and-twenty countries where the show has aired since 1969, the chances are that you didn’t just watch Sesame Street, you absorbed it; the show shaped your formative years and left a permanent imprint on your life that is still felt to this day.

The chances are that your first interactions with numbers and letters had more to do with a grouchy green monster in a trash can than it did any parent, teacher or formal education system.

The chances are that your ability to read and understand the words that you are currently reading is in large part thanks to a big yellow bird and an oversized Snuffleupagus.

Here in 2024, that fact that roughly 80% of the world’s current population is under the age of sixty indicates that a whole lot of us were raised on the same street named Sesame, with it’s colourful muppet characters and…