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A review by misusedadrenalinejunkie
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
If data ethics is a term you've never heard, at least in context of modern web services, it is well worth the read despite some reservations I have.
Author moves along story about trying to get off their phone and internet, how Facebook, Google, etc are incentivized to learn everything about us and make us hooked and angry to keep using their service. It is, admittedly, not a self help book, but there are actionable steps to help you reduce the distraction of your phone and some call to action to stop tech companies from abusing their power. They did do many interviews and include passages throughout the book and personal anecdotes to make it not feel like a dry "phone bad" book.
If you haven't taken a step back from your phone and thought about how you use it, whether you are glued to TikTok or just use it to pacify some downtime, this book may be worth your time to think and have tools to talk about it with others.
My reservations are that they do seem to have some personal gripes against the increasing diagnoses of ADHD. They are not strictly one-sided and do have some expert opinions and research, but it feels like it is written, despite statements to the contrary, that ADHD is a bit of a personal failing or maybe more accurately a mischaracterization of lack of attention (rather than a neurotype of people). That may be my bias and I do agree with many points they made, especially since many treatments lack therapeutic and behavioral support in lieu of only stimulants. However that is not the primary topic of discussion.
Author moves along story about trying to get off their phone and internet, how Facebook, Google, etc are incentivized to learn everything about us and make us hooked and angry to keep using their service. It is, admittedly, not a self help book, but there are actionable steps to help you reduce the distraction of your phone and some call to action to stop tech companies from abusing their power. They did do many interviews and include passages throughout the book and personal anecdotes to make it not feel like a dry "phone bad" book.
If you haven't taken a step back from your phone and thought about how you use it, whether you are glued to TikTok or just use it to pacify some downtime, this book may be worth your time to think and have tools to talk about it with others.
My reservations are that they do seem to have some personal gripes against the increasing diagnoses of ADHD. They are not strictly one-sided and do have some expert opinions and research, but it feels like it is written, despite statements to the contrary, that ADHD is a bit of a personal failing or maybe more accurately a mischaracterization of lack of attention (rather than a neurotype of people). That may be my bias and I do agree with many points they made, especially since many treatments lack therapeutic and behavioral support in lieu of only stimulants. However that is not the primary topic of discussion.