Answer:
This argument, that "today´s teens" have a "short attention span" and that older people have an easier time relating with classic texts, than the younger generations, is true, basically because the world of today, and the easiness of acquiring information that is concise, precise, and that requires little thought processing, has become more and more common. Today, young people just need the click of a button, and all necessary information, especially regarding texts, is given in short, precise, concise pieces. As such, people have acquired a distate for analysis, and taking the time to decipher, two qualitites needed to read older, and classical texts.
This is evident when teaching in courses where there are teenagers present; they do not want the long way, or reading too much, they prefer the summaries, and analyzes already made. They want the short answers.
In this scenario, then, it is obvious that young people have difficulty with understanding how someone can take the time to read something like the Odyssey, which requires the full use of all the reading capabilities a reader can have. But there is also the fact that young people, have become less and less exposed to reading, and thus cannot relate to the stories from classical texts. This also furthers their impatience, and lack of desire to read classical texts. Young people are reading those today because in schooling systems it has become a requirement, but few do so out of their own desire.
