Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2022

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-11

Chapter 12-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “The First Glimpses of the Deeper Solution”

Hari begins with two questions: What kind of changes would make devices and sites less addictive, and how can society make Big Tech corporations enact these changes? Aza Raskin recommends laws prohibiting surveillance capitalism; to reduce targeted ads, companies could adopt subscription models in which users pay a small fee to access the service, so that companies such as Facebook would no longer be working for advertisers, but for users. Another option would be for governments to buy social media sites and convert them into independently run public utilities; to avoid being co-opted into government propaganda, they could follow the model of the BBC, the British broadcast network that is publicly owned, but independently programmed.

Harris and Raskin’s recommendations for minor changes include reintroducing finite scroll, bundling notifications, and turning off recommendations that lead to “polarizing” and “radicalizing” content (159). Social media interfaces could promote pro-social behavior: highlighting friends who want to meet up in real life, limiting screen time, or starting new hobbies. Hari laments, however, that these changes will almost certainly not happen without government intervention.

Some people believe the concern about social media is a needless “moral panic” (161) based on a fear of change. While this opinion has some merit, Hari argues that the risks of societal disruption if Big Tech continues unchecked far outweigh the benefits. For instance, leaked internal documents from Facebook revealed that the site knew about its algorithm’s promotion of extremist political groups, but ignored recommendations to remedy the situation.

Hari posits that “political pessimism” (166) keeps people focused on individual solutions when they should join together to create systemic transformation. He hopes that people recognize the need for change and the fact that it is possible before Big Tech debuts new, even more intrusive inventions.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Cause Eight: The Surge in Stress and How It Is Triggering Vigilance”

Nadine Burke Harris, the former surgeon general of California, helped to establish the link between trauma and inattention. Harris’s mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, which left Harris feeling anxious and vigilant for much of her childhood. After becoming a doctor, Harris worked in Bayview, an impoverished and violent neighborhood in San Francisco, where residents lived in constant fear. As Harris learned more about the relationship between fear, trauma, and attention, she realized that people living in stressful circumstances must always pay close attention to possible dangers; as a result, they struggle to focus on other information. When Harris evaluated all of her child patients for Adverse Childhood Experiences, she found that children who had experienced “four or more types of trauma were 32.6 times more likely to develop attention or behavior problems” than children with no trauma (175). Even people experiencing constant moderate stress, such as financial pressure, are vulnerable to changes in attention. Harris concluded that people need to feel safe to properly pay attention.

Harris laments that many of these children show the symptoms of ADHD. They are prescribed drugs to alleviate these symptoms, but this medication fails to address the root cause of the problem. Her approach is to identify the factors causing her patients to feel stressed and vigilant, and to work with them to alleviate these factors. This could include leaving abusive relationships, seeing a therapist, accessing legal help, exercise, and nutrition, and more.

In the 1990s, the increase in financial problems, sleep deprivation, and a weakening middle class, and an increase in workloads made people more susceptible to stress, which in turn made people particularly vulnerable to developing an addictive relationship with technology.

Chapter 11 Summary: “The Places That Figured Out How to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion”

When British businessman Andrew Barnes studied research on productivity, he learned that most British workers were only truly productive for less than half of their workday. Barnes decided to experiment with his own business, allowing his employees to work a four-day week for the same pay. If productivity stayed the same or improved, the workers could keep this new schedule. The experiment paid off: Employee stress levels and feelings of distraction decreased, while their productivity increased by 30 to 40 percent.

Numerous similar workplace experiments, including at Kellogg’s, Toyota, and Microsoft, indicated that decreasing work hours led to an increase in overall productivity. Hari reflects that the 9-to-5 workweek was only accomplished by workers joining together to strike and agitate for more humane work hours. While some businesses are already open to experimenting with four-day workweeks, similar activism will likely be needed to normalize this approach. Hari points to the rapid shift to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate how quickly workplaces can change when they need to. Another necessary change in workplace culture is “the right to disconnect” (194)—the idea that workers do not need to respond to texts, calls, or emails from management during off-work hours. After a grassroots campaign, the French government encoded the right to disconnect into law in 2016, and now most French companies have to formally negotiate contactable hours into their contracts. Hari feels that being able to decompress outside of work is essential to preserving attention.

Chapters 9-11 Analysis

In contrast to the previous set of chapters, in which Hari considered the arguments of tech apologists like Nir Eyal, who assert that managing device distraction and addiction comes down to personal responsibility, in these chapters Hari lays out the case for systemic solutions to the issues of stolen focus his book addresses. Hari argues that governments need to step in to regulate social media giants. To persuade readers, Hari employs a “thought experiment” (163), contrasting Nir Eyal’s emphasis on individual self-control, Tristan Harris’s suggestions for tech-based improvements like the finite scroll and interfaces that downplay outrage, and Aza Raskin’s more radical proposals for turning social media into public utilities. This setup positions Eyal and Raskin as extremes on a spectrum, with Tristan Harris in the middle. Hari asks readers to “imagine if we did as Nir wants. What happens if he’s wrong? What are we left with? Attention shrinks even more, political extremism expands, and the disturbing trends we see around us continue to rise” (164). The problem, as Hari sees it, is that as long as social media companies are driven only by profit, they will never adopt even Tristan Harris’s reasonable suggestions. The only solution is collective action—users need to agitate for legislative change.

The book’s examination of The Individual and Societal Consequences of Distraction also moves towards the systemic. Hari’s discussion of the ways that trauma and stress affect attention does not directly connect to his concerns about devices stealing our focus. However, by looking at the broad trends towards increasing societal anxiety—such as Nadine Harris’s findings that children who experienced “four or more types of trauma were 32.6 times more likely to develop attention or behavior problems” than children with no trauma (175), Charles Nunn’s studies on the link between stress and insomnia, and Sendhil Mullainathan’s work showing a correlation between stress and a reduction in IQ—Hari argues that modern life presents so many challenges to attention that mitigating any of them could make a difference. Hari’s proposals leave the smaller sphere of social media that the book has been about so far. Instead, he considers potential changes to workplace culture and capitalism, discussing Finland’s experimentation with a universal basic income and France’s new laws enshrining the right to disconnect. He uses these examples to argue that “[a]nything that reduces stress improves our ability to pay deep attention” (182). To that end, Hari is hopeful about the potential promise of a four-day workweek. Working long hours has little correlation with creativity or productivity: Rather, “when people work less, their focus significantly improves” (189).

To build emotional stakes for The Need for Collective Action, Hari want readers to be inspired to rebel against Big Tech by successful human rights movements of the last century, such as the fight for the equality of women or LGBTQ people. Those success stories teach people that “huge and seemingly immovable forces can be challenged by ordinary people—and that when they are, it can lead to real change” (168).