Stolen Focus : Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again (9780593138526) by Hari Johann

Author:Hari, Johann [Hari, Johann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2022-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

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I want to be honest here about something that complicates the argument I am putting forward in this book. There’s one way in which what Nadine had to teach me—and the wider science of stress that I learned later—is a challenge to the broader thrust of what I’m writing here.

As you saw in the introduction, I believe it is reasonable to argue that our attention problems are getting worse, even though we don’t have any long-term studies tracking changes in people’s ability to focus over time. I came to this conclusion because we can prove that there are several factors that damage focus and attention, and those factors are rising.

But there’s one counterargument to that. You might ask: What if there are counterveiling trends, happening at the same time, which make our attention better? Nadine has shown that experiencing violence damages your ability to focus. But over the past century, there has been a big fall in violence in the Western world. I know this runs contrary to what we read in the news, but it’s true—Professor Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, lays out the evidence for this very clearly. This seems counterintuitive, in part because we are constantly fed images of violence and threat on television and the web, but it is a fact that you are far less likely to be violently attacked or murdered than your ancestors. Not very long ago, the whole world—in terms of violence and fear—looked more like Bayview, or worse.

The threat of being beaten up or killed is surely the largest source of stress any person can face. Since that has fallen, we would expect this trend to have improved attention and focus. I want to be candid about this fact.

Do I think this sole—but highly significant—trend improving our focus outweighs all the other factors dragging it down? Does it outweigh the effects of a huge increase in switching, a decline in sleep, the effects of the vast machinery of surveillance capitalism, the rise in financial insecurity? I think—on balance—it doesn’t. But this isn’t something we can put into a computer and crunch the numbers on—it’s too hard to quantify and compare each of these effects. So reasonable people could disagree with me. It is possible that Nadine’s evidence suggests our attention, as a society, should be improving.

But I then learned about another attention-wrecking force in our culture—one that has been rising throughout my lifetime.

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