Why You Can’t Pay Attention

Part of the experience of being alive in the twenty-first century is the feeling that your attention span is collapsing, along with those of everyone around you – including your children. Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And – most importantly – how do we get it back? In Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari sets out on a global investigative journey into our shortening attention spans. He tells us what he learned from spending three months off the internet, reveals the inside story of the war to grab our attention that is waged every day, and explores why those prescribing mood stimulants to 10% of children in schools are getting it so wrong.

Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with the world’s leading experts on attention problems, Stolen Focus moves beyond individual solutions towards a collective understanding of a problem facing us all. Only by first solving the attention crisis, Hari argues, can we turn to fixing the issues we care about most – and sustain the attention to build a better society.