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

Tristan Harris is an American technology ethicist. Harris studied at Stanford University, completing coursework through the school’s Persuasive Technology Lab in which he learned how to make appealing and habit-forming websites. As a Design Ethicist for Google, Harris grew discouraged when the company was uninterested in accepting his recommendations. In 2018, Harris founded the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology, an organization that advocates for technological advancement that helps, rather than harms, users, criticizing social media’s use of user data, advertisements, addictive interfaces, and algorithms that steer users towards negative content. TIME 100 named Harris as one of the “Next Leaders Shaping the World,” and he has advised politicians and tech companies on ethical technology. Harris has also been featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, which argues that social media manipulates users, damages mental health, and undermines democracy.

Harris personal experience working in tech adds credence to the claim that social media is intentionally designed to be as addictive as possible. His testimony emphasizes that even though many employees question the ethics of designing habit-forming products, Big Tech’s business models revolve around increasing user engagement:

At Google […] success was measured, in the main, by what was called ‘engagement’—which was defined as minutes and hours of eyeballs on the product. […] The longer you make people look at their phones, the more advertising they see—and therefore the more money Google gets (112).

Citing Harris’ experiences helps Hari build his argument that systemic change is required to help people regain their focus. By emphasizing that individual workers at these companies are generally “decent people, struggling with their own tech distractions” (112), Hari uses Harris’s insight to blame the broader system, which currently profits from keeping people distracted.

Charles Czeisler is an American sleep science expert at Harvard Medical School. Czeisler has researched circadian rhythms, the relationship between light sensitivity and sleepiness, and the impacts of sleep deprivation; he is a leader in his field and has advised various organizations, including NASA and professional sports teams such as the Boston Celtics and the Portland Trail Blazers. Czeisler has won numerous awards for his work, including the Adrian Gold Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine and the J.E. Wallace Sterling Lifetime Achievement Award in Medicine from the Stanford Medicine Alumni Association.

In Stolen Focus, Hari quotes Czeisler’s concerns about children’s being prescribed stimulants to cope with their ADHD symptoms. Using stimulants tends to decrease how much people sleep, which could have consequences for medicated children as they grow—a fact that bolsters Hari’s argument that people should not medicate children for ADHD without seriously considering the potential side effects. Czeisler’s work also shows that a lack of sleep impedes people’s attention: The ability to focus is so greatly compromised with sleep deprivation that Czeisler compares it to drunkenness. Moreover, Czeisler points out the dangers of a phenomenon called “attentional blinks,” in which parts of people’s brains go to sleep while they are technically awake. Hari uses this research to argue that sleep deprivation is a major force behind attention deficits.

Lenore Skenazy is an American activist who advocates for children’s unstructured play and independence and the author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry (2009). Trained as a journalist, Skenazy started to promote unsupervised childhood play after she realized that her son was missing out on the freedoms that she enjoyed as a child.

After allowing her nine-year-old son to navigate New York City on his own, as he had requested, Skenazy wrote about the positive effect the experience had on his self-confidence and enjoyment. While there was significant backlash to her philosophy and parenting decisions, Skenazy felt strongly that parents needed to realize how detrimental it is to children to not be able to play freely outside with other kids.

Skenazy’s campaign “Let Grow” encourages parents and schools to allow kids to try activities without parental help or supervision. Hari uses Skenazy’s work to demonstrate the positive effects of children’s unstructured play and independence from parents: Free play promotes imagination, social skills, and learning the habit of deep focus, all of which are helpful for building a healthy attention span.