Dear First name / friend
True to my word, I went out and purchased a copy of Johann Hari's Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention ahead of last week's long weekend in Athens (which was wonderful by the way!).
I want to tell everybody to read this book, but I'm not sure it works like that; it would be like telling someone in your life that they need therapy before they've realised it for themselves. But the soothing power that this book has had on me feels incredibly profound. It feels like a pivotal-cum-lightbulb moment where I finally a) see that I'm not alone in feeling the way I do and b) understand why I feel the way I do. This book normalised my experience. Reading someone else describe things I had felt alone in feeling was deeply relieving: my resistance to excessive TV-watching; my fear and sadness that I no longer read as much as I used to; the deep disappointment I feel when I look around and see almost everyone attached to their screens ("iPad iSolation" as Johann Hari so brilliantly puts it). What is this hold that social media and streaming services have over us?
I've probably folded down, on average, one in every five pages so far in this book to mark amazing quotes! Here's what I've learned so far:
1. It's important to retain a greyscale approach and not villainise social media and TV completely. “It's easy to be snobbish about social media and fall into a moral pain […] There's a lot that's good about social media.” I think it's important to start with that because, whether we agree with it or not, it is the world we live in and there are some amazing people doing amazing things in TV and social media. Okay. Next.
2. "Take care what technologies you use, because your consciousness will, over time, come to be shaped like those technologies." This was something I hadn't considered before. Johann Hari talks about how the medium through which we consume our information changes us: when we consume information through that medium we are unknowingly agreeing to a predetermined set of rules. Let me explain. By using Twitter, you are absorbing the message “First: that you shouldn't focus on any one thing for long. The world can and should be understood in short, simple statements of 280 characters. Second: the world should be interpreted and confidently understood very quickly. Third: what matters most is whether people immediately agree with and applaud your short, simple, speedy statements”. He goes on to describe how each medium - Facebook, Instagram, TV - has its own set of rules that we are unwittingly absorbing: that it matters what you look like; that the world is fast; that your life exists to be displayed to others; that friendship is to look at and like someone's photos. You may not agree with those rules, but your subconscious is taking these on as facts every time you engage with that medium.
3. You can't focus by design. The people of Silicon Valley have expertly designed these media in a way that exploits human vulnerabilities. Imagine if Netflix didn't stream the next episode automatically? (Remember the days where you had to get the next DVD out of the box to continue watching a series?) Hari interviews the man who developed the code for the “infinite scroll” (never getting to the bottom of the page on your feed) - he ended up leaving Google because he felt “dirty” about what he has done to the attention span of billions of people. The point is, it's easy to beat yourself up (I don't think it's just me?) for being as dependent on your phone or spending hours online as the next person, so it's important to acknowledge that this is a systemic, not individual, issue: “The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world's attention burns."
Mindful moment: Our increasing inability to pay attention is the result of our environment. I'm hoping when I finish the book that I will be able to share with you some practical advice for how to regain control over your attention; to improve your ability to sit in silence and read a book. (When did you last daydream?) But for now I just offer you a mindful moment to consider how you might choose to slow down in a world that is speeding up? And to ask yourself: if you wanted to ruin people's ability to pay attention, what would you do? This doesn't need to be a war against devices, but perhaps just an opportunity to reflect on your own relationship with social media, the internet and streaming services, and invite a little more slowness into your day-to-day. You might find then that you can finally finish that novel you keep meaning to read.
