Stolen Focus Summary

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In the introduction to his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari emphasizes how over the years we have slowly been losing our ability to pay attention because of technology and other outside factors. Hari discovered that 12 important factors lead to attention loss, one big factor being Big Tech. The lack of attention we experience today is a systemic problem that can’t be fought by individuals. But rather a collective society of individuals who have taken responsibility for their actions and now work together to deal with the larger factors that are keeping us from healing our attention. If the larger factors aren’t removed from our society, then the smaller, individual problems will continue to resurface. Hari also learned that in order to create …show more content…
After reading the introduction of Stolen Focus, I have found myself agreeing with some of Hari’s claims, but disagreeing with a lot more. I do agree when Hari states, “This is being done to us all”. It is all being done by powerful forces.This is a systemic problem.” (12). While I do believe that our society as a whole has attention problems, I don’t believe that there isn’t also some individual responsibility. People who spend hours and hours on their phones shouldn’t be blaming big tech, they should be blaming themselves or the people who allowed them to be on their phones all day in the first place. Blaming such a large entity like Big Tech for our attention loss is selfish as many people use big tech for work and/or their social lives. Not being able to put your phone down is different than seeing big tech and items influenced by big tech everywhere. Hari also writes, “Based on what I have learned, I have concluded there are twelve deep forces at work that are damaging our attention” (12). If there are 12 problems and 12 solutions outlined in this book, why hasn’t our attention healed