Stolen Attention Spans: A Discussion by Johann Hari

In a thought-provoking interview at the Ready25 event in Sydney, author Johann Hari shed light on the themes of his book "Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention." Hari argues that our inability to focus is not a personal failing, but the result of "huge invasive forces" including big tech, which have corroded our concentration.

According to Hari, the attention economy, with its negativity bias and algorithms designed to maximize engagement, has a political effect. This, he claims, has contributed to the rise of far-right politicians like Bolsonaro. The attention crisis, he suggests, also hinders our ability to take collective action on crises like the climate crisis, as it polarizes, fragments, and distracts, making it difficult to focus on a cause for long enough to build movements.

The climate crisis, caused by putting too many warming gasses into the atmosphere, is a crisis that pushes beyond limits that are tolerable for human, plant, and animal life. Hari compares the attention crisis to the climate crisis, both being built on extractivist ideologies that push people and the environment beyond their limits.

Big tech companies like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram make money from users by scanning and sorting their preferences to figure out who they are. The longer a user scrolls, the more money the companies make. Constantly being interrupted, whether by notifications or the endless scroll, leads to a lower cognitive capacity and increased mistakes, less creativity, and quicker burnout in activism.

Hari suggests banning the business model that secretly surveils users to find weaknesses in their attention and sell it to the highest bidder. He argues that once we understand the factors impacting our ability to pay attention, we can collectively begin to reclaim our focus.

Lack of sleep has catastrophic effects on attention, as the brain does not get the opportunity to clean itself properly when not sleeping enough. Dr. Charles Czeisler, the leading expert on sleep, states that going back to sleeping as much as needed would cause a huge recession due to people consuming less each day.

Dr. James Williams, a philosopher of attention, identifies three layers of attention: the spotlight (ability to filter out noise and achieve immediate tasks), starlight (ability to achieve long-term goals), and daylight (ability to figure out long-term goals). Hari adds a fourth layer, the stadium lights, which refer to our ability to formulate and achieve long-term collective goals.

The ability to focus is crucial for achieving goals, and interruptions like text messages can take up to 23 minutes to recover from. Hari argues that our inability to focus is hindering our ability to take collective action on the climate crisis, as creative solutions require deep thought and reflection. Attention, he asserts, is our species' superpower, and losing it in the face of the climate crisis is not beneficial for our survival.

Hari's book outlines 12 factors that can either make or break our ability to focus, with some factors related to technology and others to factors like food and air quality. The attention crisis, he suggests, is a significant factor in the biggest crisis in democracy since the 1930s. By understanding and addressing this crisis, we can not only improve our individual lives but also collectively address the pressing issues of our time.