Thank you to Net Galley and Crown for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book is filled with great information and the writing makes it a page turner. The book looks at our growing difficulties with keeping focus, effects of social media, how the environment plays into this, strategies on how to be more present and focused and steps that need to be taken in the for the world. The author's writing style is compelling for a subject which could become quite dry and information and examples provided makes it a must read in my book. Truly excellent!

While this book explores the more obvious culprits in stealing one’s focus, i.e. social media, it also delves into those less obvious such as exhaustion, pollution (a bit tenuous), lack of physical activity etc.

More importantly, this book reminds us why focus is so vital (I liked this part the best): allowing our minds time to wander fosters creativity and it also allows our brain time to cement neural pathways, among other benefits.

The author has the talent for writing in a manner that is immediately captivating. However, I did feel like there were some arguments made in this book that were presented with a bit of bias towards supporting the overall theme of the book.

This book was an interesting read and made for interesting food for thought but more as a launch pad and not an authoritative take.

**Many thanks to Rachel Rodriguez at Crown and Johann Hari for an ARC of this book!**

How long can you TRULY go without looking at your phone?

...

5 minutes? Maybe an hour or two?

And if you happen to leave the house without it...does a fearful panic immediately set in?

And how about watching a movie? Can you remember a time when you could actually SIT and focus on one screen without feeling like you were missing a single thing? Do you remember leaving the house and not worrying about someone 'being able to get a hold of you' at any moment? Or having a thought and NOT immediately jumping to Google it for more information...but just letting your own brain ponder?

To Gen-Z, all of this may seem baffling and unimportant. Why WOULDN'T we do those things? What is to be gained by long periods of uninterrupted thought or action, by unhooking ourselves from the IV of technology we all find ourselves beholden to just to get through the day?

What Johann Hari explores in Stolen Focus is the cause (actually plural, CAUSES) of this inability of people across the globe to pay attention to ANYTHING anymore...and the forces both external and internal that have contributed to this disturbing shift. More importantly, he underlines the fact that if humans refuse to band together and tackle the problems at their root, that this is ONLY the beginning.

Hari set out to determine the root cause of this attention shift, and the results were mind-boggling. He first took a trip to a remote location without his phone, laptop, etc., thinking that a true digital detox would help to lull his mind back from the constant "tab hopping" it currently did. And for a while, it seemed to work: he felt calmer and was able to let his mind wander more often, feeling more creative all the while. But after a while, feelings of anger and resentment at not having his devices crept in, and once he returned from his trip he knew there had to be so much more at play here than the presence of technology and our devices themselves...and he was right.

Hari then works through the different causes in subsequent chapters, including our increase in speed, switch and filtering of information, our crippled flow states, the rise of physical and mental exhaustion, collapse of sustained reading, disruption of mind wandering, the rise of technology that can manipulate and track you, the rise of cruel optimism, the surge in stress and exhaustion, our deteriorating diets and climate change, the rise in ADHD and our response to it, and the psychological and physiological confinement of our children.

Phew. Does that seem like a lot? Because...to put it frankly...it IS.

Hari doesn't shy away from examining ALL angles of the problem, and particularly in America, so much of what drives us away from holding our attention is an environment that mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausts us. We then turn to technology to help relieve and mitigate these stresses in any way possible...and in turn, our technology keeps us on it, watching our habits and of course, inspiring us to spend, spend, spend, to crave more 'likes,' and to keep us distracted and disconnected from the pursuits that would give us joy...but might not help the economic machine as it stands. It's a heavy multi-faceted proposition, covering all sorts of ground. Despite the heaviness and breadth of material, it was in its own way a sort of train wreck of truth: I couldn't look away.

While some have niggled over Hari seeming to 'cherry pick' certain research to bolster his points while potentially leaving out others, aside from the chapter on ADHD (which I do NOT feel qualified to disseminate on a medical level), I felt Hari did an effective job at presenting examples, interviews, and scientific excerpts to provide clarity and context on everything he posited. He also makes sure to emphasize that this text is NOT a self-help book, and therefore does not have a neat and tidy ending. Hari acknowledges that even after this deep dive into attention and all of the time and energy spent trying to reorient himself towards better habits and examine the root causes of this societal shift, that even being armed with this knowledge, it is STILL a struggle...but a struggle that is simultaneously worth the difficulty.

And only with acknowledgement, solidarity, and a firm resolve will we EVER be able to address all 12 facets of this problem as a society in order to forge a new path. Our progress probably won't be linear and will certainly face push back from the larger sociopolitical structures at play in our world. I'll leave you with one excerpt that sums up the mindset shift that needs to take place in order to turn the tide:

"One day, James Williams-the former Google strategist I met-addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: "How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?" There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand."

And if we are all able to focus just a LITTLE bit harder...perhaps in twenty years, with a similar group of people set to shape the very essence of how we live our lives through the powerful conduit that is technology...EVERY hand will go up.

4.5 stars

A thoughtful and well researched look at what is happening to our attention. It's not just phones, but nutrition, lack of sleep, and changes in education. Oddly enough, it all comes back down to capitalism profits off of us being this way in the USA.

4.8 stars
Johan Hari shares a wealth of details, data and anecdotes on how lost we have become in our focus. He gives evidence of the changes over the course of decades, and how we have become victims to society in general.

He reminds us of a time when a child's job was to play! In that play you learned about rules, negotiation, how to be a leader, respect etc. Hari shares an incident when some children given the task to play, didn't know how. He says that our society is giving children rules to follow to be successful. We are not letting them figure it out on their own (like many of us did).

Advertising and work schedules have deprived us of uninterrupted time, lack of focus has stolen our creativity, we fill our minds incessantly and don’t give time to process.

Our sleep, our commitments and our relationships suffer. What will we do about it?

This book reads like a dense, interesting and wonderful textbook filled with references from BF Skinner (psychologist, behaviorist, social philosopher) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow) (2 of my favourites) and even covers how our food consumption has changed.

Further thoughts on my blog https://morethanlettersonalinetoday.blogspot.com/2023/10/stolen-focus-book-review.html

The author of this book believes that people, in general, are easily distracted and suffer from a lack of focus. To explore this, he decides to spend three months without the internet. The first half of the book is part memoir of this time in his life, and part discussion of his interviews with experts regarding distraction. i very much enjoy memoirs and liked this way of structuring this book. The book gets less interesting when Hari abandons this structure in the second half of the book.
I think Hari correctly identifies many of the causes of what he calls “stolen focus”. Some of these are within the individual and others are structural to society. One cause he suggests is “surveillance capitalism” which is companies tracking people. His solution is for the government to ban it and take over companies such as Twitter and Facebook. This is absolutely not the correct solution as we have seen in the past few years as the government has been extremely involved with coercing these companies to censor whatever they deem to be “misinformation”. Another cause Hari correctly identifies is the pesticides and chemicals in our food and environment. But he ignores the role of pharmaceutical companies in facilitiating this with ever-increasing numbers of prescriptions and vaccines.
Hari is a very good writer. I agree that the ability for deep and focused work has decreased in our society and many of the causes he suggests are valid. I don’t give this book a full five stars because his proposed societal solutions.

★★★★★ The publisher provided a copy for review before publication.

WOW WOW WOW. And I don't "wow" lightly. This is a must-read. Think you control your online feeds? Think you're getting unbiased information. Wonder why your kids are getting the junk they're clicking on?

What an eye-opener this well-researched book is.

I teach research and writing in universities, I'm happy to say that research writing is becoming more interesting for the casual and academic reader.

Why? The writing style has changed from formal to conversational - and this book is no exception. You'll enjoy reading this, be able to find sources (if you're using it for academia), and learn a lot. That's the best kind of book, in my estimation. Definitely worth having on your shelf.

I spend a lot of time on my phone. My entire family does. I notice my son has a big issue with setting his down. I identified with Hari's introduction of the book immediately. This is more than just a rant about being addicted to technology. I enjoyed the way the information was presented. It gave me a lot to think about. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Four stars.

I was attracted to this book because like many of us - I sometimes wonder if I have ADHD because of my inability to focus for more than a minute on any one thing. But the more I looked into it, a lot of the symptoms did not fit for me - there are times when I can deeply focus and forget about time. This book is aptly named "Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again: and I was relieved to realize it's not just me who has difficulty focusing and paying attention. Her opening story about her godson and her "online tech detox" in Provincetown totally pulled me in.

This book is a journey of discovery on how to get our focus and attention back. She interviews over 250 experts some of whom you may have heard of and outlines 12 forces at work that steal our focus. Not all the experts agree with each other and this makes it a compelling read. There are some ideas and actions we can take but she also does not provide a simplistic action plan at the end. Instead, she shines a light on the systemic issues that are creating a society of attention deficit. She talks to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who wrote "Flow - the Psychology of Optimal Experience" and tech experts some of whom were featured in the documentary "The Social Dilemma" that lays out the intentional way social media corporations are manipulating us to stay logged in and doom scroll. What was particularly compelling to me in this book, is one of the experts she consults basically says the remedy is a social media "diet' and everything he describes is similar to what I heard in many diet programs (you need to have willpower, you need to change your environment, etc.). Ironically enough, I realized I had heard this guy's name before (Nir Eyal) and realized somehow I was getting a lot of emails from him touting his own remedies about dealing with distraction. Well l in the spirit of his advice - I unsubscribed from his email list. Just as with diets, I am a bit tired of the "victim shaming and blaming" and as Hari points out, there is more at play here than individual weakness. This is why the analogy to food and distraction is so right on - food companies intentionally make foods "addictive" such as potato chips and portion sizes have gotten out of whack. In the end she offers compelling solutions about how together we can fight back. I highly recommend this book.

This is a very important read for all of us living I today’s world. We are captured by so many shiny things that Starla our attention and sap our ability to concentrate. The author has provided an invaluable discourse on how we can slow down and recapture our attention and our minds.

Stolen Focus is a must-read for anyone living in the technologically obsessed world we are in. I listened to the audio and loved the author's narration. This presents an easy to comprehend discussion of why we can't focus, ways our focus is taken, and how to regain the ability to pay attention. Wonderfully written and approachable.

A more timely book this could not be; absolutely exquisite. I found myself in agreement with virtually all of Mr. Hari's conclusions, as he lays out 12 reasons why our attention spans and concentration seems to have shriveled up like raisins in the summer sun.

In traditional fashion (from his previous books), Mr. Hari sets out to interview and discuss with some of the most profound minds of our generation, such as the pioneer and author of "Flow" as well as several key players in Silicon Valley, such as Tristan Harris and Nir Eyal. Along the way, you'll learn why detaching from the world is not a viable option and how the leash we place on children creates a world of ADHD.

In brief, this work is a fascinating insider's look into the alleys and annals of the attention economy, the modern ills plaguing us with deafening silence, and how we can reclaim a little piece of our sanity from the fractured and fear-frought society. Much of Mr. Hari's feast would do well heeded by our lawmakers and those bringing up children in a world of Stolen Focus.

This book by Johan is a life changer. I found myself telling all the people I encountered that they needed to read it. As someone who struggles with focus and attention I took this book to heart and am already implementing and sharing his findings. Thanks Johan for doing the work and sharing it with the rest of us.

The basic premise of the book is that we, as individuals and collectively as a society, are losing our capacity to stay focused and that it is important for us to regain that ability if we want to solve complex problems. The book then discusses a "cause" per chapter - though, it really should be represented as hypothesis. In each chapter, the premise is explored via conversations with experts and peer reviewed publications.

The narrative style of intertwining his own experiences (and oftentimes not the best attempts at humor) and research findings makes this book a bit too meandering. Some of the core themes - addictive nature of social media and how tech companies have created an entire economy based on selling attention- have been discussed in great detail by other authors (Hooked, Attention Economy, etc); this book references those and even interviews the authors, but fails to add any additional insights to the published books. Of course every book on behavior has to have a chapter on Mihalys concept of flow - this book is no exception. The author adds some new thoughts while discussing the impact of stress on hypervigilance and how it has changed our ability to pay sustained attention. Discussions on impact of nutrition, environment are interesting hypotheses.

Overall, a good recap of some key research (and pop books in this area) that delve on how screens have changed our ability to focus and some interesting hypotheses on how one could potentially regain some of that capacity.