Instant Gratification

When you are waiting at the doctor?s office, what do you do? Grab a magazine? Pull out your phone? In these activities, you are searching for entertainment. Even in the shortest periods of down-time, this search is instinctual in our minds. Widespread access to entertainment, whether it be television, cell phone games, or instant messaging, results in the expectation of instant gratification, this has had the most prominent negative impact to modern society. Instant gratification reduces an individual's attention span, especially when faced with undesirable tasks, thereby reducing productivity and increasing procrastination (example: the CofC application completed the night before it was due).