Why you can’t pay attention to this book review of Stolen Focus
Hari, Johann. (2022). Stolen Focus: Why you can’t pay attention – and how to think deeply again. Crown. 368 pages. Purchasing options. ISBN-13: 978-0593138519
Review by Jacob Pleasants
In 2010, Nicholas Carr wrote a book called The Shallows which introduced many readers to the idea that our cognitive abilities (to pay attention, to read deeply, to think) could be negatively affected by digital technologies. Carr’s book started many subsequent conversations about these ideas, and Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus can, in many ways, be seen as another entry in the ongoing discussion (Hari cites Carr’s work as a source of inspiration).
As implied by the title, Hari’s topic of concern is our seeming inability to pay attention, to focus, in our modern society. He opens the book with a story about his nephew, whose attention is perpetually glued to his phone and who seems unable to focus on anything more meaningful than social media, even things that he willingly admits that he cares about a great deal. Hari is saddened by what he sees happening to his nephew and to others, but more importantly what he sees happening to himself. He decides to see what might happen if he truly unplugged from his own life and write a book in place without access to the internet.
Woven into his personal experiences is Hari’s extensive research into what he believes are a set of twelve causes that, together, have resulted in the destruction of our ability to focus. The causes include the expected culprits: the information and communication technologies created by “big tech.” But they also include a more wide-ranging set of factors, only some of which are centered on modern technologies: an overall breakneck pace of modern life, poor diet and pollution, stressful and confining childhoods. In this respect, the book differs from Carr’s work or others who have specifically examined the role of digital technologies in our modern society. In his exploration of a broad range of possible causes for our loss of focus, Hari covers a wide swath of territory.
For those who are reasonably well-traveled in research on human cognition and the psychology of human interactions with technology, Hari’s discussion of his identified causes will be quite familiar. You will read about the impossibility of multitasking, the state of flow, surveillance capitalism, and even ADHD. He has certainly done his research and spoken with experts in these domains, but each of the chapters will likely leave a veteran of those topics wanting more. On the other hand, for those who are just stepping into these bodies of research, Stolen Focus is a reasonable point of entry. While many finer points and nuances are inevitably left out, Hari presents a complex set of ideas in a very approachable way. And he makes a reasonable argument for why the various causes that he describes work together to collectively harm our ability to attend to the things that are most important in life.
Although some of the individual causes discussed in Stolen Focus are debatable (claims about diet are always worth taking with a healthy dose of skepticism, as are critiques of modern parenting practice), an overall point emerges that is very much worth consideration. Hari emphasizes that solving the problem of focus cannot possibly be done at the individual level. Although there are some ways that we might make individual improvements in the ways that we live, the problems come from the systems in which we live, and therefore demand systemic solutions. Hari is therefore calling not for self-help but for societal action.
Hari’s repeated emphasis on the systemic is crucial, because the personal narrative that he provides in the book has the potential to leave one with a different impression. His quest to reclaim his own focus meant going fully offline for an extended period of time, living away from work and home. He freely admits that this is not a prescription that others should follow – rather, it was more of an experiment to explore the possibility of escaping the systems that he thinks are so problematic. The very fact that almost nobody can replicate what he did reinforces his point: we are not going to solve these problems by all going on “internet fasts” every now and then (sorry, tech bros).
Although there is much to appreciate in Stolen Focus, in my view there is something very important missing from Hari’s account (notable, given just how wide-ranging his account is). Hari’s research leans heavily on the social sciences, especially psychology. Left out, though, is scholarship from the humanities that has a great deal to say about the topics that Hari explores. Where those omissions make themselves felt is in Hari’s prescriptions for change. He is, for instance, very taken with the work being done by the Center for Humane Technology, which advocates for reorienting the development of digital technologies toward human-centered goals rather than the capitalistic ones that currently dominate. Those prescriptions, and the others that Hari introduces, certainly have merit. But they often treat the problems and solutions in technical terms. They imagine that if we could just emphasize different goals (perhaps promoting more focus rather than less), we could develop different technological systems that would help us reach them. Critiques of modern technology (and modern society more generally) from the humanities tradition, however, would very much doubt that it will be so easy. We probably cannot design our way out of the problems that our approaches to social organization (including our technological systems) have created. Addressing the kinds of deep-rooted problems that Hari has identified will require more thoroughgoing shifts in our value systems and social structures.
In writing the above, I am reminded of points raised by Ruth Schwartz Cowan in More Work for Mother (written all the way back in 1982 and which, incidentally, is on the book club list for Civics of Technology which you can sign up for on the Events page). In her investigation of the history of housework, the central paradox that emerges is that even while household technologies make many household tasks far easier and more efficient, the actual labor of housework never seems to diminish. Though much good certainly came from technologies like modern plumbing, refrigeration, and cooking implements, in the most human terms, the labor borne by women of maintaining the home seems to have progressed little. Is this a problem of technological design? Perhaps to an extent, but the issue doesn’t really lie with the design goals of household technologies. The household burden that women carry will not be solved by more concertedly designing technologies that are “truly” labor saving, because it is a problem that is rooted in social values and systems of social organization. Just as we cannot design our way out of the problems of housework, we are unlikely to design our way out of the problem of stolen focus.
So, is Stolen Focus worth a read? Overall, I would say that it is, primarily as a point of entry into a set of useful perspectives and interesting topics. If you are already familiar with the kinds of topics that Hari addresses in the book, you probably won’t find much that is terribly new or insightful. Even so, he presents ideas with an approachability that can nevertheless be enjoyable. I actually “read” the audiobook version, which is narrated by Hari himself (and he is an excellent narrator). If you are an audio format kind of person, I do recommend going that route.
Connections to Five Critical Questions about Technology:
What is our society giving up? We have seemingly given up our ability to focus. Worse, we seem to have done so mostly willingly. Though we might occasionally perceive the problem, it often evades our consciousness.
Who is harmed and who benefits? We all pay a steep price. But as is typically the case, the most privileged among us can often pay a discounted rate. If you have the means to do so, you can escape many of the systems that sap focus (perhaps by, say, giving up internet for a few months to live in Provincetown, as Hari did).
What does our modern technology need? Modern communication technologies require our attention. They demand our attention. They consume our attention, and leave little left for us.
Why is it difficult to imagine a different world? The causes of the problem are so diffuse and widespread that it almost seems to require giving up… everything. And that’s terrifying.