Book SummaryStolen Focus, by Johann Hari

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Stolen Focus

Stolen Focus by journalist Johann Hari (author of Lost Connections) makes the case that we have an attention crisis: We’re losing our ability to concentrate. He argues that the crisis is a result of outside forces stealing our focus—not of lazy individuals not trying hard enough to concentrate. Hari outlines the factors creating the crisis and his approach to solving it.

Hari believes we must fix the attention crisis for three reasons: 1) If you’re unable to pay attention, you can’t move forward on your goals. 2) As a society, we can’t confront the challenges we face without focusing on them to see what we need to do and then act. 3) Because the attention crisis is a result of human action, fixing it requires human action.

Published in 2022, Stolen Focus grew from Hari’s own experience of being increasingly unable to focus. He decided to research the problem and how best to deal with it. He read the work of scientists and activists on the subject, and he met some of them to see their experiences first-hand. (Shortform note: In addition to his journalism work, Hari is known for making [admitted missteps earlier in his...

Stolen Focus Summary The Attention Crisis

Hari argues that an attention crisis is undermining our cognitive ability to do three things: find flow (a state of intense focus), read, and think. This section will explain why each of these activities is becoming harder and what that means.

Proof #1: It’s Harder to Find Flow

Flow is our highest form of sustained attention, and Hari argues that the distractions of modern life are destroying it.

Behaviorism vs Positive Psychology

Hari believes our increasing difficulty finding flow has roots in the psychological theory of behaviorism. In the 1930s, psychologist B.F. Skinner discovered that you can train animals to do almost anything by giving them a reward. According to Hari, Skinner extended that insight to humans, arguing that we don’t have real freedom of choice. We pay attention to what the environment trains us to pay attention to, and we perform tasks because we crave a reward at the end, not because we want to do them.

Hari argues that Skinner’s theory is the basis of attention-grabbing mechanisms that are ubiquitous in modern life, such as “like” buttons on social media. Every time users post on social media, they’re pursuing the reward of external...

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #1: Failure to Explore ADHD’s Causes

The first factor contributing to the attention crisis is how we treat ADHD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which describes children’s inability to concentrate. Hari believes we’re not addressing it effectively. Too often, the reaction to children diagnosed with ADHD is to medicate them instead of addressing the underlying reasons and solving them.

Hari points out that ADHD numbers have climbed over the past few decades. Today, 13% of teenagers in the US have an ADHD diagnosis, and many of them take stimulants to manage it.

Factors That Lead to ADHD

While there’s little question ADHD is a real problem for many people, its causes are unclear.

Hari explains that scientists and doctors disagree on basic facts about ADHD. For example, there's no consensus on whether ADHD is a biological condition or if it even exists as a single condition. Many US-based doctors believe that ADHD is genetic and that medication is the appropriate way to treat it. But doctors elsewhere argue that there are deeper causes and that the appropriate treatment would be to make changes in the child’s environment.

Hari says a key change is lowering stress levels around the child....

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #2: Not Enough Time and Space for Kids to Play

The second factor contributing to the attention crisis also affects children. Hari believes that how children spend their time contributes to rising levels of difficulty in paying attention.

Changes in Children’s Lifestyle

Both at school and at home, children have too little time and space to play without adult guidance. At home, children have fewer opportunities for unstructured play and outdoor activities. Hari notes that by 2003, only 10% of children had regular access to outdoor play. At school, children spend more time preparing for tests than learning through play or discovery. The No Child Left Behind Act made standardized testing pervasive in US schools. Hari claims that in the four years after its passage there was a 22% increase in attention deficit diagnosis. And schoolwork continues at home, with one study finding that US children spend almost eight more hours a week on homework than 20 years ago.

The Effects of Lifestyle Changes

A lack of play undermines children’s ability to focus in three ways, Hari reports:

1) Exercising less affects concentration. Exercise helps children’s developing brains grow and refine their functions. If children...

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #3: Not Enough Sleep

The third factor contributing to the attention crisis is sleep deprivation. Hari believes we’re not getting enough sleep, and it’s diminishing our ability to focus.

Hari argues that sleep deprivation is not an isolated problem. The average sleep time an adult gets each night is an hour less than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. For children, the lost sleep time amounts to an hour and 25 minutes. (Shortform note: The percentage of adults sleeping significantly less than the recommended seven hours a day is so high that the CDC declared it a public health epidemic.)

Hari cites two possible explanations for widespread sleep deprivation:

1) Artificial light. Evolution made humans sensitive to light, but artificial lights interfere with our programming. Earlier humans would rise with the sun and go to sleep by sunset, but they also got a second wind around four in the afternoon, just as the sun began to set. That helped them reach safety or finish tasks before...

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #4: Too Many Harmful Chemicals

The fourth factor contributing to the attention crisis also disrupts the normal functions of our brains. According to Hari, toxins disrupt our brain’s chemistry and make it harder to focus.

Too Many Harmful Chemicals in Our Food

Being able to pay attention requires your body to perform physical functions, such as supplying energy and nutrients, to support your cognitive processes. There are three ways in which food can harm those functions:

1) It creates an energy roller coaster. The average diet is too high in glucose. This makes you reach energy highs right after eating and sends you on energy slumps as soon as your body finishes processing your meal’s sugar. Throughout the day, as you’re trying to concentrate, your body is riding an energy roller coaster that makes it difficult to sustain your focus.

2) Food lacks the nutrients your brain needs. Most of the food we eat today is highly processed and contains additives that make it shelf-stable but lower its nutritional value. That leaves your brain without all the nutrients it needs for your cognitive functions.

3) Food contains toxins that harm your brain. In 2009, a study found that 70% of...

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #5: Too Much Distracting Technology

The fifth factor contributing to the attention crisis is technology. Hari argues that the technology we rely on tracks our every move and tailors the content we see in order to keep us hooked.

Technology Hurts Our Focus as Individuals

Hari contends most technology is intentionally designed to distract us—for profit. The business model of most screen-based technology relies on engagement. Every second you’re watching your screen is an advertising second tech companies can sell.

The more engaged you are with technology, the more distracted you are from whatever you’re supposed to be doing. Hari identifies three ways tech disrupts your attention:

1) Designing for interruptions. Technology operates on the insights of behavioral psychology: People crave rewards and they will adjust their behavior to get them. Technology can train you to need whatever reward it can offer so that you stay engaged for as long as possible, or return to it as quickly as possible.

2) Accumulating your metadata. Every time you click on something, you feed information to the website or application you’re using. That information helps the business behind it build an accurate file...

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #6: Too Much Information, Too Fast

The sixth factor Hari identifies as contributing to the attention crisis is information overload, which makes it difficult to focus long enough to process what we’re seeing and hearing.

The Acceleration of Information

The amount of information available and the speed at which we encounter it are constantly increasing, but our brains can’t keep up. So we jump from one piece of information to the next without focusing. Although we tend to blame the internet for this problem, research shows that our inability to concentrate predates technology.

New topics have become popular more and more quickly since at least the 19th century, and the public has lost interest in them at the same speed. Researchers found that topics on Twitter trended for 17.5 hours in 2013 and only 11.9 hours in 2016. Similarly, data from Google books suggests that topics have been falling in and out of popularity more quickly with each passing decade before the internet set the churn rate at maximum speed.

The amount of information available determines the churn rate. The researchers built a mathematical model to determine what caused topics to quickly gain and lose popularity. They discovered a simple...

Stolen Focus Summary Factor #7: Too Much Emphasis on Individual Responsibility

The final factor contributing to the attention crisis is how we’ve attempted to deal with it. Hari believes the solutions put forward for the attention crisis are lacking because they focus on personal responsibility. We’ll explore how the same forces that made it more difficult to concentrate are making individual action seem like the only solution and why it doesn’t work.

The Individualistic Approach to the Attention Crisis

As we saw in Factor #5, tech is designed to reel you in and keep you scrolling. And the tech industry’s preferred approach to fixing your attention is encouraging you to have more self-control so you can resist their tactics. That way, Hari argues, they can frame the problem as a lack of discipline on your part, not intentionally manipulative design on their part.

Hari cites author Nir Eyal’s description of the tech industry’s individualistic approach to fixing our focus. Eyal’s two books, Hooked and Indistractible, show how this approach works:

Step 1: Get you hooked on technology. In Hooked, Eyal explains that the central goal of designers and...

Stolen Focus Summary A Way Out of the Attention Crisis

While Hari agrees there are useful tricks for disciplining your focus, and he practices some himself, he believes they’re not enough. His proposed solution for the attention crisis has two parts: systemic changes around technology, work, and school, and a citizen-led movement.

Part #1 of the Solution: Systemic Changes

According to Hari, our model of constant economic growth drives most of the factors contributing to the attention crisis. “Success” under the economic growth model requires companies to get larger and individuals to get richer. To grow, businesses continuously find ways to sell more products, which traps consumers in a pattern of doing more and buying more each year. Hari contends that the stress of a growth-oriented society undermines our ability to focus, and because it’s a societal problem, it requires societal solutions.

He argues that we could shift from constant growth to a steady-state economy. In this new model, we would define success by different values, such as having job security and enough time to pursue goals outside of work. This would require changing how society functions today, including the tech business model, and work and school...

Shortform Exercise: Assess Your Focus

Hari argues that an attention crisis is undermining our ability to find flow, read, and think. Examine your own experience to see if you find evidence for these difficulties.

Describe the last time you were able to find a state of flow. How long ago was it? How long were you able to sustain your flow? What difficulties did you experience in reaching and maintaining flow?