Interconnected Ep 1: What happened to our attention spans?

As humankind descends deeper into the tech age, many have wondered how our increasing reliance on devices is impacting our ability to focus. Johann Hari, in his new book, “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention,” examines this question, and considers other explanations for the evaporating human attention span.

Through researching his book, Hari learned that a fundamental characteristic of the human brain is that it can only consciously think about one or two things at a time.

Today, Hari says that human beings have “fallen for a mass delusion,” and that “the average teenager now believes they can follow six or seven forms of media at the same time.”

This has consequences–including the “switch-cost effect,” where social media users are more prone to rapidly switching between tasks, leading to more mistakes, weaker memories, and less creativity. Hari says that encouraging users to task-switch is an integral part of the business model for social media companies, who use internet algorithms to collect users’ data and sell it to advertisers.

“The more times you pick up your phone, and the longer you scroll, the more money these companies make. And every time you put down your phone, or your kid puts down their phone, those revenue streams disappear,” he says.

Hari advocates for a replacement business model. “It doesn’t have to work that way,” he says. “Selling our attention to the highest bidder is just an inhumane system.”

“When you get your attention back, it’s so profoundly healing. You become potent again.”

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