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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2022

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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 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Cause Three: The Rise of Physical and Mental Exhaustion”

Hari has always had great difficulty sleeping and has generally needed to take the sleep aid melatonin to fall asleep. He also finds it difficult to wake up, and lives on the “permanent cliff-edge of exhaustion” (64). After a few weeks of his digital detox, however, his sleep patterns begin to follow the sun, and he feels more rested and refreshed.

Scientist Charles Czeisler has demonstrated that people who are sleep-deprived suffer from poor concentration: People who had been awake for 19 hours became as “cognitively impaired” as drunken people (66). Czeisler argues that about 40% of Americans and 23% of British people are “chronically sleep-deprived,” which impedes their attention and can cause “attentional blinks” (67)—periods in which people are technically awake, but parts of their brains going to sleep for seconds at a time. This phenomenon devastates their ability to pay attention and process information. Sleep deprivation also affects children, who are more likely to appear hyperactive than drowsy during the day.

Roxanne Prichard, a neuroscientist, argues that humans can safely deprive themselves of sleep temporarily to cope with life events like raising a baby or surviving an emergency. However, using this ability chronically has consequences, including raising one’s blood pressure, causing cravings for sugar and fatty foods, and increasing one’s heart rate. Sleep loss also causes poor learning, since it inhibits the transfer of new information from short-term memory into long-term memory. Another researcher has linked sleep disorders with conditions such as ADHD, mood disorders, and obesity.

Sleep is an “active process” (71). During sleep the body rinses the brain with spinal fluid, removing toxins and transporting them to the liver for filtration out of the body. When these toxins build up in the brain due to sleep deprivation, people lose the ability to concentrate. Another sleep process is dreaming, which only occurs during deep REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. When people limit their sleep to only five or six hours, they miss out on the longest and deepest REM cycles, which occur right before waking. Furthermore, taking sleeping pills is only a band-aid solution—it hinders sleep quality and can create physical dependency, worsening the problem.

The invention of electricity and indoor lighting has harmed people’s circadian rhythms: Exposure to light after the sun has set prompts people to experience an increase in their “waking drive” (75) at bedtime, rather than during the mid-afternoon. Czeisler compares light to “a drug that affects how we will sleep” (75). He recommends not having artificial lights in one’s bedroom, and avoiding the blue light of devices for two hours before bedtime.

Hari concludes his chapter by blaming the fast pace and heavy stimulation of modern life for making people feel stressed and time-constrained, both of which take a toll on sleep.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading”

American culture is experiencing a “collapse of sustained reading” (79) as many people find it increasingly difficult to focus on books and read them to completion. Polls such as the American Time Use Survey and Gallup have recorded fewer people reading for pleasure than in previous decades. Reading a book used to be a very common way to access a “flow state” (80). However, Anne Mangen, a Norwegian professor of literacy, has proven that frequently reading on screens causes people to skim information rather than read each word thoughtfully. As this reading style becomes dominant, it takes a toll on people’s “cognitive patience” (82) and decreases people’s engagement with longer, more complex literature. Hari saw this phenomenon in his own behavior when he started detox: He found it impossible to fully focus on a novel as he compulsively scanned it for content.

Twentieth-century Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan argued that the medium through which one communicates is as important as the messages one sends through them. TV sends the message that “the world is fast; that it’s about surfaces and appearances” (83). Twitter subconsciously convinces users that the world can be easily interpreted and that popularity determines the weight of one’s message. Facebook and Instagram encourage superficial notions of success and friendship. Books, in contrast, encourage complex thinking and reflection, with periods of “deep focus” (85).

One study examined how reading fiction affected people’s social skills and ability to empathize with others. It found that people who read fiction were much more capable of interpreting others’ emotions, while nonfiction readers did not enjoy improvements in this area. Researchers attributed this result to the fact that fiction requires people to deeply imagine experiencing life as another kind of person. Longer TV shows also seem to nurture empathy. Hari argues that an increase in empathy has created positive change in the world in recent centuries, leading to advancements in human rights; he believes that reading fiction is an important factor in those developments. He warns readers to be mindful of the technology they use “because your consciousness will, over time, come to be shaped like those technologies” (90).

Chapter 5 Summary: “Cause Five: The Disruption of Mind-Wandering”

American psychologist William James created the enduring metaphor that attention is a kind of spotlight. This comparison rings true for Hari, who has trouble tuning out external stimulation while living in a “tornado of mental stimulation” (92), constantly listening, reading, or talking. During his digital detox Hari has more time to let his mind wander; he realizes that this daydreaming is useful to his creativity and his ability to focus.

As the brain focuses to make sense of a task, one part of cognition wanders, allowing the mind to integrate new knowledge and make connections. In an overly stimulating environment, people’s thoughts are constantly redirected, stifling their ability to let their mind wander. This limits people’s ability to think deeply and creatively. However, in stressful situations, mind wandering often becomes “rumination” (100), so many people associate daydreaming with unhappiness.

When Hari breaks his digital detox to book a hotel, he does not have as many emails waiting for him as he expected, and he is surprised to find that he feels more offended than relieved. He reflects that his addiction to technology has been fueled by his ego, as being connected and under pressure made him feel important. Hari is determined to recreate his digital detox whenever needed by using apps that limit his web browsing, or locking his phone away in a safe for certain time periods. When he retrieves his devices, responding to messages and checking his social media make him feel alternatively repelled and validated by the attention. Over the following months, however, he spends more and more time on his phone. He is disappointed, convinced that this is a “failure” (103) brought on by his lack of self-discipline.

Chapters 3-5 Analysis

Hari continues to rely on scientific evidence to support his claims. His chapter on sleep is particularly well supported, as this area of physiology has been well studied. Harvard Medical School’s sleep expert Charles Czeisler proved that sleep deprivation is detrimental to people’s cognitive abilities and focus, as tired people’s brains are susceptible to “local sleep” (67) in which parts of their brains briefly go to sleep while the rest are awake. University of Minneapolis neuroscientist Roxanne Prichard tallies the physical and mental consequences of sleep deprivation, including inattention. Sandra Kooij, a Dutch expert on ADHD, links a lack of sleep to attention disorders. Interviews with experts Tore Nielsen and Maiken Nedergaard provide more proof: Nielsen studies whether dreaming helps people develop emotional resilience, while Nedergaard’s research shows that the body filters the brain’s toxins during sleep—without this process, thinking is hindered. Finally, New York University neuroscientist Xavier Castellanos emphasizes how important sleep is for internalizing new knowledge. This surfeit of evidence confirms that scientists have reached consensus on the relationship between sleep deprivation and poor attention: “The less you sleep the more the world blurs in every way—in your immediate focus, in your ability to think deeply and make connections, and in your memory […] Every expert I spoke to said this transformation explains, in part, our declining attention” (70).

However, when Hari explores The Individual and Societal Consequences of Distraction by considering what the decline in fiction reading may mean on a large scale, he falls back on less robustly supported science. In less controversial findings, literacy expert Anne Mangen has demonstrated that people “understand and remember less of what they absorb on screens” (82) in comparison to paper. Hari then moves on to a “controversial and contested” claim (88): the link between reading and emotional intelligence. Hari acknowledges that establishing a cause and effect relationship between reading and empathy is “tricky” (86), but cites psychologist Raymond Mar’s research as proof that fiction readers are usually more empathetic than others. He underscores this evidence with an anecdote: His own experience of using social media rewarded him for being more “attention-deprived, simplistic, vituperative” (84). The personal story is compelling, but it offers a less iron-clad justification for Hari’s argument than the multilayered compendium of sleep studies. Hari’s analysis about the differences between using devices and reading books helps him reflect on how phones and computers are changing people’s behavior and cognition. Hari argues that people’s use of technology can change not only the quality of their focus, but also the nature of their thoughts because people “internalize the texture of the voices we’re exposed to” (89). This argument encourages the reader to consider how the media they use influences their own cognition.

Hari discusses modern devices to develop the theme of The Addictive Nature of Technology. Before his digital detox, he was so dependent on his devices that he would use his phone or iPod to fill nearly every moment of his day with some kind of stimulation. As neuroscientist Nathan Spreng points out, “All this frenetic digital interruption is ‘pulling our attention away from our thoughts’” (98). Hari believes that this constitutes a “crisis” (98), urging readers to reconsider their relationship to their devices. Hari’s experience of falling back into old habits after his digital detox offers a relatable example of how habit-forming device use is: Upon being reunited with his phone he “flicked through Twitter and felt like [he] had stood on a termite’s nest. When [he] looked up three hours had passed” (103). Though Hari does not feel that social media was good for him, he “slid into distraction and disruption” for the “slow rush of approval, the retweets, the likes” (103). The anecdote emphasizes the addictive nature of devices and social media, and connects this negative quality with disrupted attention.