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We need to reclaim our attention

• Bud 5y ago
  One of my antidotes to this: I perform large-scale musical works! The Bach St. Matthew Passion takes around three hours. Messiah is nearly that long. The flow state from performing or rehearsing these works is really quite wonderful. Reading (books, not short articles) a lot also helps, I believe.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jmfldn 5y ago
  This for me is key, these sorts of problems cannot just be solved on an individual level. They are systemic. "Individual abstinence is “not the solution, for the same reason that wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution. It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues.” He said that our attention is being deeply altered by huge invasive forces in wider society. Saying the solution was to just adjust your own habits – to pledge to break up with your phone, say – was just “pushing it back on to the individual” he said, when “it’s really the environmental changes that will really make the difference”."
  • mypastself 5y ago
    Except I have no choice but to walk through an area which might be polluted. I do have a choice to not read news sites for four hours a day. The article fails to define both the problem and the solution. How exactly this “attention theft” causes significant negative societary consequences is defined extremely vaguely, and almost exclusively through personal anecdotes. The offered solutions, forcing employers to respect working hours and forcing social media companies to change their business models, are borderline non-sequiturs to the article’s thesis. There is a comment about this possibly being a new “moral panic”, which the author dismisses out of hand. Yet in the same article, he implies his son dropped out of school at 15 because of WhatsApp.
    • sascha_sl 5y ago
      "Choice" really needs to be well-defined here. We know you can influence people to change their behavior because we invented the term "attention hacking". Sheer willpower will not overcome this on anything but an individual level. And just like obesity has other dependents like the cost of food, there is also cost/disincentives to "disconnecting". Social interaction is almost exclusively happening online now, especially during a pandemic. There is a very limited set of circumstances in which individual action will not have other severe consequences to your life - so while it might work for you, there's no way it'll work for everyone. Systemic issues require systemic solutions.
      • mypastself 5y ago
        The article describes a far broader group of culprits than just social media. However, the author only calls for forcing social media companies to change their business models and not, say, news sites that publish articles trigger-happy about declaring crises and emergencies.
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          And they never will. There is just too much money in it. That's why ultimately the responsibility lies with us.
      • thegrimmest 5y ago
        I'd say "choice" in the conventional sense - the exercise of voluntary control over one's body. If sheer willpower can overcome this on an individual level then it can overcome it on a societal level, society being nothing more than a collection of individuals. It seems as though you're suggesting that we use authority to "solve" these "systemic" issues - which really are just individual issues for a subset of the population. This suggests that you are comfortable deciding what's good for others. How would you respond to obese or social-media-obsessed people who are content with their lives and not interested in your "solutions"?
        • 5y ago
  • tomjen3 5y ago
    > It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable And yet we have worn masks for months at least. If the price of a free internet is the equivalent of wearing a gasmask then I would rather do that, at least until we we have the equivalent of the nano-robot immunesystem from the Diamond Age. If we let the government make the rules here we will lose the last place where we can play freely, and will almost certainly not solve the problem we wanted to be solved.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      Regardless if the solution is government intervention, it seems rather funny to say the modern internet is a place that all entrants can play freely. It’s changed quite a bit since when The Diamond Age was first written.
      • tomjen3 5y ago
        We can play freely, invent new solutions and approaches without having the government test their safety, without having to get special approval by anybody. I am aware of the bias of large companies that stops certain people from building, which is why I wrote play.
        • Apocryphon 5y ago
          The antitrust left says large companies prevent people from building freely, but doesn’t the free speech right also claim that large companies are preventing from playing- or rather, speaking- freely? Seems like different activities are falling under corporate purview.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    The only way that you can solve it is on an individual level unless you are in a position of power. You have far less agency over the systemic issues than you have over your individual choices.
  • 37 5y ago
    Correct. It is baked into their business model, to monetize your attention. And they have gotten very good at it. A "race to the bottom of the brain stem" as Tristan Harris likes to put it[0] is the correct way to look at it, AFAICT. To me, it's also a problem of "Moloch does it". Scott Alexander describes it well and gives a handful of great examples in Part I of his Meditations on Moloch.[1] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-01/why-social-media-may-be-in-race-to-bottom-of-brain-stem https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-01/why-social-... [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...
    • neuronic 5y ago
      Of all the examples, reddit is the scariest to me. People think it's a bunch of nerds talking about geeky topics (or whatever) but as soon as a subreddit has a sizable user base it will be targeted by PR firms posing as normal users. More political subs are likely subject to propaganda ops bu8t Im not even going there. Some things on the frontpage are clear advertisments, there has been evidence of shilling about certain topics by using post templates etc etc. but still somehow the impression persists that some dude from Idaho just posted his awesome BBQ recipe and the perfectly framed and well-lit tech equipment in the background is just coincidence.
      • 37 5y ago
        In my eyes, the worst is probably Facebook or Instagram or TikTok (none of which I use) but yes, I also understand the Reddit example as well (which I do use). And yes, even without speaking to the larger politicized subs like T_D, I do completely agree. Quite scary. And it scares me 'PR firms' exist and are named as such because the term 'propaganda' started to take on a negative connotation. Kinda like how Google became Alphabet, or Facebook became Meta. Advertising, marketing, public relations, propaganda, manipulation.... where does the distinction lie? Do you care to give a couple cases/examples on the Reddit front? Like proven scandals where people or groups have conspired to deceive? You mention a dude from Idaho, but I'm not in-the-loop enough to get the reference.
  • telxosser 5y ago
    I just don't agree really. That analogy is pretty absurd. It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level. I know so much more than what I knew in early January 2021 because I spend my time reading books, doing tutorials or taking MOOCS instead of wasting my time watching TikTok. I literally don't even know what the user interface to TikTok looks like and never will. If anything the exact problem is people are giving up agency at the individual level. As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. That implies then that it is not your fault that you check your phone or txt while driving.
    • 37 5y ago
      It's both. Yes it is good that you spent early 2021 not mindlessly scrolling TikTok, and yes it is true that as individuals we do have some agency in the matter. But, it is also true that in this 'attention economy' the large companies are hiring psychologists to try to break your agency, to try to take it away from you. And they are doing a pretty damn good job, and aren't going to stop any time soon. "Stolen" in the title of the OP is not really an exaggeration. >It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level. I mostly agree with this, but in the same token think we should be aware of "this nonsense". >As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. Don't think anyone is saying that. Think what we are saying is more along the lines of something like 'the problem is systemic, essentially baked into the business model of advertising/marketing, and it should be addressed'
      • shukantpal 5y ago
        > “Stolen" in the title of the OP is not really an exaggeration. Theft can happen only when it’s involuntary. > the problem is systemic, essentially baked into the business model of advertising/marketing, and it should be addressed That’s not the root cause. It is just a choke point for blame. The root cause is the choice people make, which we’ve established exists. If people want help, there are plenty of mitigations for social media, like alternative front ends.
        • 5y ago
  • parkingrift 5y ago
    How are those two examples even remotely comparable? Uninstall social media from your phone, delete your social media accounts, put your phone in a box when you get home, etc, etc, etc. These “problems” are trivially easy for an individual to solve. They are so easy to solve that I disagree with the basic premise that we even have a problem. I think we could rewrite this article from the perspective of any generation. Just replace the phone with whatever hysteria was happening in that era. Music, video games, comics, or whatever. The author of this article seems to just throw her hands up without having tried even a single thing. “No, I cannot manage my own behavior. It is society that must change!”
    • saiya-jin 5y ago
      Well, in same vein, you can tell addict to 'just drop that needle', yet few do. Or cigarettes. Addictive behavior is, well, addictive, and few in population have the mental will to shed it off themselves once they get hooked. Tobacco clearly kills you (and people around), ruins you and make you stink like pile of old crap. We still allow it, but regulate it heavily since bad effects are out there, everywhere. TBH I don't mind some regulation on too-powerful social media, they've enjoyed their free pass for way too long and so far they definitely didn't make the world a better place, in contrary.
      • jdgoesmarching 5y ago
        HN and many tech-minded forums struggle the most with arguments that require empathy. For people who probably don’t consider themselves religious, their outlook is extremely Puritanical. “I see you explaining why x is difficult for most people, but I don’t struggle with it so the difficulty is invalid.”
        • parkingrift 5y ago
          It’s not an empathy gap. It’s collectivism vs individualism.
      • parkingrift 5y ago
        Do you have any links to share that would corroborate your suggestion that social media is as addictive or hard to quit as heroin or tobacco? That’s quite a statement. I find these two examples particularly interesting because the regulations have done absolutely nothing. Heroin has never been more popular or more regulated. Tobacco is lightly regulated and the declines in usage are almost completely attributed to campaigns against smoking, not the regulations themselves.
• lr4444lr 5y ago
  This is a major reason why I am bearish about online learning. I do love the accessibility of MOOCs, but I have to watch the videos multiple times to deeply understand the concepts, and I have to print out the assignments in order to really play with the ideas and solve them in a way that makes me grow. I prefer whenever possible to buy books. I'm not a bibliophile; I just do MUCH better when the target of my attention can't throw alerts at me or show me ads.
  • kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Have you tried sitting in a classroom? That can be very boring, too, and there is no way to rewind. Personally I also prefer books and written articles for learning, but for some reason, many people seem to prefer videos.
    • lr4444lr 5y ago
      I do excellently in a classroom as long as the professor is teaching to the upper 25%.
      • literallyWTF 5y ago
        This is not the flex you think it is
    • spongeb00b 5y ago
      I know someone who claims to be a visual learner because he prefers video tutorials. But I say to him: no, I like pictures too, but what I can’t stand about videos is the person talking. I want to be able to scan things at my own (varying) pace, my mind wanders when listening to a single voice talk about something. I struggled with university lectures because of this. But I’ve learnt a lot from podcasts and have been an avid listener since ~2005 but only for ones where it’s a conversation between at least 2 people. I’ve tried and failed audiobooks due to it just being a single narration.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• Proven 5y ago
• 300bps 5y ago
  I’ve said for years that the 20th century saw humanity for the first time having to learn to live in a world of infinite sugar, fat and salt. The 21st century will be about learning to live in a world of infinite information. We will all have to be mindful of whether we are consuming the mental equivalent of broccoli, donuts or anthrax.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Good stuff, really. I like the analogy between sugar, fat, salt and information, though infotainment may be a better term for the stuff we are addicted to.
    • ModernMech 5y ago
      Yes, just as some cultures have very specific meanings for concepts (like the famous German compound words, or the variety of words the native Inuit language uses to describe types and formations of snow), we should probably develop more specific words than just the generic all-encompassing “information” or “data”. Infotainment is a good one, but we will need many more!
  • hindsightbias 5y ago
    HFCS, fat and salt
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Yes, this. Humans as a race have evolved to be able to short-cut our own motivational and behavioural control systems. Or more precisely, for one group to manipulate anothers' motivators to serve the interests of the manipulator rather than the party served by those factors. Wants are a means to an end. They are not the end itself. That is, wants are evolutionarily-derived (or sometimes culturally-instilled) drives or motivators which should result in improved fitness. Think of these in terms of emotional drives, tastes and our responses to them, favouring aesthetics (symmetry, balance, smoothness, etc.) Those evolved in an environment which was itself not counterevolving to feed those drives faster than they could emerge. That's not to say that there isn't co-evolution occurring: fruits, say, evolve to be sweet to attract animals which will eat it and spread seeds. But *there is no "fruit sector" specifically engineering high-sugar fruits with a response cycle of days or weeks or months. Even human breeders typically take years or decades, and natural selection generally takes much longer. Motivators evolved to find things in the environment which improved overall fitness. "Give them what they want" is engineering rapidly to appeal to psychological behaviours in ways that exploit them specifically to the interests of the engineer. (Or more likely: the investors / shareholders / VC behind them.) If you're gaming the want itself directly, you lose the argument that what you're providing is at the choice of the target, because you've coopted that choice to your own interests. https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107453533345126190 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107453533345126190
• jacquesm 5y ago
  There is a veritable war going on for your attention, and the battlefields are your eyeballs, your ears and ultimately your brain. Psychologists have been enlisted, as they are in every war to try to win it for 'their side', be it one of the big silos or some dying TV or newspaper era behemoth, there is no reasonable way in which you can withstand that kind of frontal onslaught. The only way to really deal with this is to not participate. Beware or you too will be collateral damage on the balance sheets of these media conglomerates. Unmediated reality is still there for you to peruse, but 'augmented reality' will be the next big wave for tech and I'm pretty sure that it will end up being used mostly for advertising purposes.
  • samwillis 5y ago
    "The only winning move is not to play." War Games (1983) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MpmGXeAtWUw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MpmGXeAtWUw
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      I don't think that the context of that fragment really applies here.
      • samwillis 5y ago
        It was more your phrasing reminded me of that quote. Agreed it’s not really relevant, other than as yet more distraction.
  • wrnr 5y ago
    The entire way the old media reports on the new media is unironical scaremongering about how the internet is hacking the fear response of your amygdala. They should instead be positive and publish articles like "Here are 10 youtube channels that go into more depth that the master program of any university".
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Sure. And then, at the end of every youtube video a whole slew of totally unrelated trashy videos that are perfectly produced to produce maximum engagement and eye candy will hijack your attention and steal another 3 hours before you even notice that they're gone because of the in-your-face nature of the recommendations. Wouldn't it be great if all youtube did was just store and replay videos? But it doesn't, it's an engagement and advertising dollars slot machine.
• EGreg 5y ago
  The five aspects of HELPFUL software… we as developers need to build it into all our software: https://qbix.com/people https://qbix.com/people
• ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  The problem isn't as much that social media is addictive. The issue is that people aren't happy with their other options of what to do. If you have a draining job and don't have energy to put into a hobby, or you don't have lots of friends to hang out with, you're much more likely to waste time on something addictive.
  • bpodgursky 5y ago
    The default human condition is to be slightly bored much of the day. This is true now, this was true in hunter-gatherer societies. These kind of traps are addictive to even otherwise happy and well-connected people; there are basically no subcultures on earth that has produced individuals who voluntarily abstain from social media (only cultures where such technology is banned entirely, like the Amish).
    • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
      It's not about abstaining completely. There's nothing wrong spending some time catching up with what your friends are doing using social media. It's when you spend more time than you'd like to that it becomes a problem.
    • 01acheru 5y ago
      I find your two concepts of boredom incredibly different one from the other. When you have dopamine tablets as low hanging fruit you use them as much as you can so to keep your mind busy, in a simple society you don’t have those tablets all around 24/7. People are praying on our boredom in our contemporary society, it wasn’t like that in the past. Plus, I don’t think the default to be being slightly bored but being slightly mentally inactive, boredom is a modern concept of our very complex modernity.
    • brbrodude 5y ago
      I'm never bored when I'm outside and moving and with people, I could spend my whole life this way and get inside just to rest and I'm pretty sure I'd be perfectly fine, I think its so much different to be "bored" in real life than it is to be bored locked to cyberspace and screens. Maybe there's a distinction to be made between boredom and alienation? Because These are two very different things to me. I'm not so sure about your hunter-gatherer societies take really. Man has not been alienated forever, or is by default, or is condemned to being, this just isnt true. A lot of this stuff are modernity issues and modernity could very well have developed differently, even though technology would keep on its course just as it has always done. Politics itself if implemented well, uncorrupted, could very much take care of it. The problem to me is political institutions and other human institutions became too weak and lost to capitalism so now that money has the final say in everything we became paralyzed because we can't imagine things being an inch different, which to me just doesn't make sense. I mean why the f*ck would unhealthy stuff be impossible to control? Why can't food be healthier? Tech be healthier? Work be healthier? Why can't ignorance be fought and won? There are fallacies buried deep in the arguments people use defending that this specific configuration of stuff we have now is inevitable. All I know is History is deffo not done yet, things do change, one way or another, sooner or later.
• kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Arguably the iPad technology for viewing plastic plants in VR is more interesting than plastic plants in a room. The author also seems to be very "unlucky" to have a relative who supposedly can't cope with normal live because of all the distractions.
  • mypastself 5y ago
    Yeah, the man was clearly impressed by the tech, and the author’s comment was uncalled for. He was lucky the man didn’t deck him.
  • Apocryphon 5y ago
    Ah, the ol’ Simulacra and Simulation.
• radicalbyte 5y ago
  My attention has collapsed in recent times, but it's not because of mobiles. It's because I have three young kids. You literally have to keep your eye on them at all times so you stop them killing themselves. Also, going from 8 hrs of sleep a night + 1 hr of intensive sport a day to 4-5 hrs of sleep a night and 1 hr of sport a year is an absolute mind killer. When I was younger I could never imagine going into management, as I'm "not a multitasker". Turns out all I needed to do was to never focus on anything for more than 1 minute..
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    I would say that your attention has improved rather than collapsed, it is now again focused on the real world around you instead of on a virtual window into a world that isn't really there.
    • radicalbyte 5y ago
      I'm talking about during work. I work from home and the covid restrictions here (NL) mean that I've had the kids at home an average of two days a week. I also have a high pressure + important job (the NL COVID apps the last 6-7 months one of the key technical people driving the EU-DCC and other vaccination credentials). I've had to stop coding because of it; finally admitted defeat (I love coding) and have essentially 10x'd my effectiveness. So there's that. Before COVID my screen time with the kids was when sitting waiting for them to go to sleep, or feeding during the night (or staying up with them).
  • dominotw 5y ago
    > 1 hr of intensive sport a day to 1 hr of sport a year did you make this tradeoff by choice( vs religious reasons ect) . I've never been that active but you sound like someone who enjoyed sports and being active.
    • Enginerrrd 5y ago
      As a parent with a 3 and 4 year old who was only a functional adult if I worked out intensely at least 4 days per week, and now is struggling desperately to get that back, its not by choice. Children are just really demanding. I think a big part of the problem is that humans were not meant to raise children in isolated family units. You were meant to have a small village where they could go bother different adults and older children and learn from everyone to find a little niche for them, and everyone just kind of kept an eye on the kids so that the parents could do normal survival things like cook, work, and make.
• tomxor 5y ago
  > wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution. It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues. I don't think this is the most accurate analogy. The most attention draining parts of the web/internet are some kind of social platform. I needn't list them, you know what they are... they are not analogous to air. Perhaps they seem that way when you've fully integrated them into your life, but they are not. Keep your phone, your laptop, and keep the tools you need to create and work. But whatsface and spacechat are not part of that toolkit, those types of platforms are psychological crack cocaine. Taking a full break from all tech can be good, but when you return to it, make sure you delete those accounts or uninstall those apps. Don't worry about friends, the ones that count will be happy to communicate with you through less toxic channels - the rest aren't really your friends anyway.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Air surrounds us. Social media --- those site which we don't need to name because we all know what they are --- surround us socially. I don't use the F, or the T, or the IG, or the YT, or the TT. But I sure as heck live in the world they create. In most of the West they've permeate politics and culture. It's often difficult to engage with businesses, or governments, or your own job, without having a presence on these systems. And in parts of the world they've played a major role in insurrection, revolution, and genocide. Sometimes celebrated for that role, increasingly looked on with a sense that something's gone horrifically wrong. So no, disconnecting personally is not the solution.
    • tomxor 5y ago
      I think you're correct to point out they indirectly affect us all through their impact on society as a whole. However what I meant (but failed to say explicitly), is that it is unlike breathing air (which is impossible to avoid), because partaking in these platforms personally is still optional for most people in the world - Maybe it's different in the US but you certainly don't need any of it for your job or government purposes in the UK and I expect most of the EU, and of course none of the east.
• batch12 5y ago
  It is weird to me that someone can watch their kid (I know that this is a godparent) go down this path and not intervene. If the cause of dropping out really was distraction, it is sad that the parent didn't take the device from the child. The kid's parents paid for this conduit monthly.
  • bootlooped 5y ago
    I wonder what kids raised on iPads with big childproof cases will be like when they grow up, or even just when they get into high school.
    • rightbyte 5y ago
      I had that discussion this week end. I wonder if it will be any different from our Game boys? Or is the problem that smaller children get their hands on them?
      • batch12 5y ago
        The problem is the child's mind vs the bidirectional feedback drip. I don't think these two devices are in the same class in respect to this.
      • wyre 5y ago
        It will be different. Playing Pokémon or Mario is much different than the endless scroll of TikTok, YouTube Kids, or a lot of the games.
        • rightbyte 5y ago
          Ye probably. I looked into what Nintendo does nowadays and luckely they seem to have not ditched their anachronistic cartridge design, even though there seem to be internet stores built in into "New 3DS". I guess they are opt in.
          • wyre 5y ago
• slibhb 5y ago
  > Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mistake is thinking that the ability to concentrate on something non-entertaining is the baseline. One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake. We had the same anxieties about radio and TV. Those anxieties were right and wrong. Technologies do change how people behave but it's always the same story. There will be entertainment freely available and you'll have to choose to concentrate on things that aren't entertaining that you consider worthwhile.
  • abledon 5y ago
    whenever the power goes off in my house for long periods, its as if some super power hits and i can read books with a new found attention span
    • sascha_sl 5y ago
      That wouldn't work with ADHD. You'd probably sit down and think about all the things you could do with that time without actually doing them while continuously scolding yourself for not doing them, and then get up 5 hours later, 3 of which you felt hungry and 2 of which you felt like going to the toilet.
    • wott 5y ago
      Yeah, when we are lucky to have a several days long Internet breakage at home (we don't use cellular Internet), all of a sudden things which had been 'not possible' or 'so hard' or 'so tiring' for months or years suddenly become possible or normal or even obvious. We even manage to do things together with family members. Imagine!
      • watwut 5y ago
        Is that really so? Because I do find myself at situations when I don't turn on internet and none of that happens. Books are as boring as with internet, I just don't like them anymore. I don't end up doing something all that great as a result.
• optimalsolver 5y ago
  I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization, the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource. And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    > I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization That may never happen. > the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource It doesn't have to wait for it to be last for that battle to get underway. > And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life Depending on where you live, you may already be there. It's the downside of the future not being equally distributed, you also get the downsides of that future early.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      We were promised a future of replicators and starships where the zero-sum scarce resource of fame was given to explorers like Captain Jean-Luc Picard. We were given a present of increasing inequality and supply chain shortages where internet thought leaders fight it out for likes, subscribes, and RT’s.
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        Science fiction is usually nice for entertainment purposes but I wouldn't take it as 'promises for the future'.
        • Apocryphon 5y ago
          https://som.yale.edu/blog/peter-thiel-at-yale-we-wanted-flying-cars-instead-we-got-140-characters https://som.yale.edu/blog/peter-thiel-at-yale-we-wanted-flyi...
          • 5y ago
• hackingthelema 5y ago
  I often wonder what the world would be like if the Buddhist sciences of the mind (e.g. mindfulness) were taught at all levels of society, as a priority, and TFA mentions it near the end, to say it's not enough: > Meditation is a useful tool – but we actually need to stop the people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need to band together to take on the forces stealing our attention and take it back. I'd argue the 'attention stealing' -- the 'itching powder', as the article called it -- is all in your head. It does exist, concretely, of course, in the form of social media, video games, etc. but their power over you -- the itchiness -- is something I find is seen for what it is through mindfulness. If we teach people proper control over their own minds, we put the power in their hands to evaluate new technologies and services mindfully. I would sooner fight for teaching proper mental hygiene to people than trying to regulate every possible idea under the sun (as it suggests at the end). You DO own your own mind, as TFA says at the very end -- so take control of it!
  • xwdv 5y ago
    One way that would really help achieve better mental hygiene for the masses would be if we had some sort of sensors that could detect when a person’s attention is being diverted away from the task at hand, and remind them to refocus. A person could then see a sort of screen time type summary of how long they are being productive and when they are wasting time on mindless garbage. Perhaps even employers could provide bonuses to those workers who maintain the highest productivity times, which over time would encourage people to improve their mindfulness in day to day life.
    • hackingthelema 5y ago
      I wouldn't mind knowing more. Do you have any links to research or work in progress in this area? The Buddha had a lot of great ideas, but it was over 2000 years ago. If, perhaps, we can teach mindfulness in a way that is more consistent and available to all (like a focus-detection feature in devices), I would definitely support it if it results in the same changes in the brain. Since changes induced by meditation (both acute and long-term) are detectable with brain scans, this seems like something easy to test and compare with traditional mindfulness teachings and practices.
• smokey_circles 5y ago
  I had to read the whole thing to make sure I didn't miss anything. You don't need to read this article, it's adding nothing new to the conversation except for a whole bunch of "i'm so smart, use my wisdom" type stories dotted neatly around the "i don't like that i'm getting old" lamentation going on. > Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky Who gives us a toss what some scientists say? What does the friggen data say? Is this really what passes for higher tier journalism these days? Pathetic
• hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
  I think it's more about existential crisis than electronics. People don't have focus because they don't have focus in their life. They drift along the trend and only have occasional focus when it is forced upon them (e.g. deadline tomorrow morning). They don't really need focus, IMHO, because most of the things they work on don't require that. Social media and other things just feed them the phantasy that they are "focused" and "have something meaningful to do". I kinda agree a previous commenter that there will always be entertainment (and those entertainment are trained to grab your attention) around and removing some from us won't fix. I also found that lack of energy plays a role. Whenever dealing with a difficult topic (e.g. studying something difficult), my energy level drops fast and in maybe 20-30 minutes it's totally gone and I cannot force my eye balls to fall on the reading material any more. As mentioned in another comment, I believe I also fell victim of "juggling", whenever I'm learning online (i.e. without a book), I tend to multitask if the material is not very challenging (i.e. does not need focus). That brings me the conclusion that modern web learning platforms such as edX and modern course designers tend to simplify/gamify the material by cutting the material into very small chunks (most of the videos are sub-5 minutes). I would like to fall back to the traditional learning experience in which we read physical books, working on real electronic components and have to make appointments to ask questions (or grind in library for hours, even days for one single issue).
• CyborgCabbage 5y ago
  This is why I think we should ban ads on the internet. Ads are inextricably tied to the abuse of our attention; they turn attention into money. Ads shift the incentive away from providing value, replacing it with an incentive to consume our time. I think all currently ad-driven platforms would be less harmful with a donation or subscription model. Not to say such a ban is the perfect solution, but I think it is 75% there.
• krono 5y ago
  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ad blockers and other such tools are just as essential for ADHD users as ramps are for wheelchair users. Their continued existence and unhindered operation should be legally protected. Google's plans to take away this last line of defence are absolutely disastrous, especially for people who lack the knowledge or means to implement and maintain workarounds. It is physically impossible on a biochemical or neurological level for us ADHD invalids to ignore whatever it is that triggers us. Removing these potential triggers as much as possible is therefore essential to prevent/reduce disorder-specific self-harmful behaviour, and to get anything done on today's internet.
  • redisman 5y ago
    Ads are only a part of it. Most news sites push ideological views as the core content. Most social media push memes and consumerism and conspiracies as the core content. Ad blockers do nothing for the deeper rot in the system
• praveen9920 5y ago
  > … It’s when you are doing something meaningful to you, and you really get into it, and time falls away, and your ego seems to vanish, and you find yourself focusing deeply and effortlessly… Oh. Have I missed “the flow”. I have been trying to get back into the mode from a while, with lot of self doubt in mind, “ you are just lazy”, “you are too distracted by Twitter “, “were you like this all along”.. It hit me hard when I realised that.. it’s been a decade and I still not able to achieve this.
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    I'm glad that the article specified that individual effort is important. Too often, people act as if a collective solution is exclusive of the ability to improve your personal situation in the meanwhile (this accounts for probably 95% of usage of the term "victim-blaming" that I see online, including on HN) But I'm also a strong believer that raw willpower is a poor substitute for a supportive environment. I've had great results the last 15 years from identifying rough edges in my computing workflows and sanding them off with scripts and OS tweaks. Between the rise of the Internet attention ecosystem and my own higher bar for focus as I get older, more and more of this iteration loop has been consumed by optimizations to improve focus and prevent distraction. "Automating willpower" like this has borne some pretty fantastic results when it comes to my ability to focus and thus both my productivity and mental health. Sadly, most people don't use a proper general-purpose OS like a Linux distro[1], and are locked out of the ability to change much of their environment. Mobile devices remain a stubborn challenge: While I'm considering getting back into rooting my devices after a decade, this is a pretty poor substitute for a proper OS, so I'm also trying to build habits that shift usage from my phone to my laptop. In the event that you haven't tried scripting up guardrails against attention hazards (or are still using an OS that prohibits you from using your computer fully), I strongly recommend taking a serious look at this approach. [1] I'm explicitly excluding Windows due to my familiarity with the severe limitations it puts on the user, all smartphone OSes are the most egregious offenders, and my familiarity with OS X is lower but I gather that it falls between Windows and a Linux distro in terms of how much it babies/limits the user.
  • marcosdumay 5y ago
    You may be working on something that isn't really one of your interests. Can you get into it while playing a game?
• mwattsun 5y ago
  I had a dream last night that expressed my recent concern that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are Pied Pipers leading our kids into virtual worlds where Meta controls everything including allowable expression and thought, where even certain concepts are banned with no allowable word for them [1]. My concern is that kids are getting VR headsets and going to a place where there is no parental control because adults don't understand VR or how to join their kids there. In my dream, and unseen voice is telling a young brother and sister how to secretly steal money from their grandparents and send it to them. [1] Yeonmi Park: North Korea | Lex Fridman Podcast #196 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usDqSEKDVsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usDqSEKDVsA
  • Swizec 5y ago
    > kids are getting VR headsets and going to a place where there is no parental control because adults don't understand VR or how to join their kids there Sounds like early social media. Hanging out without parents was the crucial feature. I’m 34 now and having parents on social media still feels like an odd concept
    • mwattsun 5y ago
      I had to ask myself why VR was different and it's because there's no screen that a parent can monitor. Once a child puts the glasses on, who knows where they go are where they are? I think parents will demand a screencast feature built in so they can at least watch what their kids are doing.
      • ectopod 5y ago
        I don't think parents will demand anything. They will continue to assume that somebody else is making it safe for their children.
• amoorthy 5y ago
  I built a news app (The Factual) that sends only 1 notification per day for a morning briefing. And the newsfeed is consolidated by topic so that you can easily finish browsing what's newsworthy. The app has a small subscription and zero ads so we don't care how long you view or what you click on. I don't know if we'll succeed but trying to solve this problem.
• champagnois 5y ago
  Consider what this does to opinion and independent thinking. Most attention grabbing platforms are designed to use a variety of reward mechanisns to reinforce the politics of the platform. Some easily botted platforms (like reddit) will constantly bombard people with anti-civilizational content promoting "anti-work" or very toxic identity politics that further isolates the users, and, in turn, strengthens their addiction to reddit because they will have no friends or family. I wonder if the platforms are complicit in this or if they are passively incompetent and this terribleness is just being exacerbated by foreign adversaries trying to poison western dialogues and minds.
  • spicyusername 5y ago
    Absolutely agree. I see anecdotal evidence of this everywhere. Its most noticicble with people who spend a lot of time "online" browsing placing like twitter, reddit, and tiktok (or even older folks who watch too much "mainstream" cable tv news). They tend to hold derivative and thoughtless "stock" worldviews that are clearly directly borrowed from the feed they subscribe to and not a result of deciding for themselves how they think things based on their lived experiences or research. This is as much a "liberal" problem (e.g. Capitalism is bad) as it is a "conservative" one (e.g. Universal healthcare is communism). A particularly striking example for me recently was when I happened to compare the content on my TikTok feed to the content on my 60 year old parents. There were completely different sets of propaganda being peddled to both of us that were essentially incompatible with each other. We are all drowning in so much propaganda on these platforms its almost impossible to separate fact from fiction or to find a perspective that has the proper level of nuance. Its no wonder everyone is so divided.
    • champagnois 5y ago
      The anti-work content on reddit should be analyzed by the feds a bit. It is promoting illegal sabotage of workplaces much of the time. It is also very similar to an organic movement from China that got banned and censored just before it suddenly became a top three thread on reddit every day for all of this year. I suspect movements and divisions that are studied and analyzed in (adversarial nation) are then exported, translated, and weaponized by their information warriors. What I have noticed about anti-work is that the insane opinions are amplified and encouraged. They promote and advocate for digital sabotage of your own work places. This all has numerous effects down stream that would slightly benefit an adversary.
• philipswood 5y ago
  The Shallows deals with topic. I bought a second-hand copy of 'The Shallows' by Nicholas G. Carr a few years ago. To be honest I bought it to read it and laugh at it, but he made his point very powerfully and convincingly.
• mayregretit 5y ago
  It's not my fault, if in God's plan He made the devil so much stronger than a man (Source: the best Disney villain song https://youtu.be/U3NoDEu7kpg https://youtu.be/U3NoDEu7kpg)
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  I’d recommend anyone try going a week with zero phone apps or TV. You will be surprised not only by how strong the habits are, but also by how strong they are in others. Its puts a depressing focus on how much time people around you spend mindlessly scrolling on their phones while you hang out. I have an ex who was so hooked on instagram that she would even pull it up to browse during red lights driving. We can’t handle downtime anymore without our phones.
  • nicbou 5y ago
    I have experienced it and it's truly crazy. However, it's hard to decouple the addictive parts from the useful parts. I use my phone as a book, calculator and map, among others.
• Overtonwindow 5y ago
  I suffer from severe ADHD, and the only thing that has helped me is a better understanding of my personal dopamine production. I follow a TikToker who talks about his ADHD in terms of "follow the dopamine." It reminds me of the montessori programs, where you let the brain decide what it wants to do. Allowing my brain to follow the dopamine - essentially auto rotate when attention goes off the rails - has finally helped me to implement some of the other ADHD tricks. All that to say, I think dopamine plays a significant role in attention and wish this article explored that a little. Social media is a dopamine spike. I think it's why we swipe, we're in a Skinner Box of sorts. Swipe. Reward. Swipe. Reward...
• iainctduncan 5y ago
  A few years ago Matthew Crawford wrote a fantastic book about this, "Head The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction". I recommend it every chance I get. The part that changed how I feel about these things for ever was about how the slot machine companies have been rigorously testing how to make them maximally addictive to the point that it's now normal for players in casinos to piss themselves and just keep playing. Psychologically addictive substances are real, and they can be digital, and they can wreck our lives just as well as psychologically addictive drugs.
• gnicholas 5y ago
  I’m curious to know what percent of people read this article in one go, without checking social media or other interruptions. (I tried to do so but small children make uninterrupted work even harder…)
• amelius 5y ago
  Yeah, it makes sense. If we can have "intellectual property", then attention can be "stolen", no doubt.
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  Here's a protip that helps me. Return yourself to the 1990s: Keep your mobile phone plugged in at all times when at home. Make it like a home phone line - turn on phone / texting notifs and disable all else. If you want to / need to check it, force yourself to walk to it to see that text or look something up. Print out things you need (like recipes, etc). Similarly, dock your laptop, and keep it docked when at home. Not 100% possible, but it is a way to try and reduce the temptation to always check.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• erikbye 5y ago
  I bet 90% came back here to comment before finishing the article, and will probably never finish it.
• drawkbox 5y ago
  Doomscrolling caused by "engagement" metrics. When engagement is all that matters, the most engagement comes when people are divisive, mad/angry or even pushed to extremes. That tabloid-esque reactionary content does engage people, but not in a good way. Information of all types give a dopamine hit though and it is sometimes hard to pull away. When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someone wrong on the internet, step away. Or if you are wasting too much time on it. You are taking valuable time from your own projects and quality of life. People can have different opinions and that is ok, your ideas and opinions are what make you, see that as your unique tool to success. On top of that many "organic opinions" are actually astroturfing and PR designed to promote or get you to "engage".
  • 37 5y ago
    >When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someone wrong on the internet, step away. Or if you are wasting too much time on it. You are taking valuable time from your own projects and quality of life. Everyone, please do this. Time is basically the only resource you can't get more of.
• calebm 5y ago
  The gunpowder in a bullet is useless unless the explosion is focused in a single direction by a gun barrel.
• pier25 5y ago
  I've been doing 100% full stack while bootstrapping my current project for the past year and a half. So basically doing absolutely everything alone. It's really exhausting and progress is extremely slow. It's not a matter of skill or knowledge as I've been doing design, front end, and general programming for 20 years. At first I thought it was because I was on my own, so the workload was tripled, but then realized a major factor is really the cognitive cost of having it all in my mind. The db, the platform, the backend logic, the API, the frontend code, the design, the UX, etc. Now I try to not work on the whole thing at once. I focus on the backend for a couple of days, then on the front end for a couple of days, etc. This works, but there are many times where something doesn't work as expected and I need to switch between multiple projects (front, API, some other service, etc) during the same hour. I really don't have a solution to this problem, but I wanted to share my experience. Hopefully someone who has been doing this juggling has some wisdom to share.
  • LightHugger 5y ago
    This is very familiar to me, I've been trying to use some strategies to limit cognitive load to mixed success. The most effective thing has just been taking better notes. If i know i take good notes, and i write something down and know i will go back and read it, my brain knows it's "allowed" to forget about it, and that greatly lessons the load. Sounds obvious and simple but sometimes it's not obvious that spending time to write down a mix of both really basic and really complicated stuff can make it so much easier to get stuff done.
    • cborch 5y ago
      This is the key for me, but I've never heard anyone else talk about it. It feels like I need to get it out of my brain and somewhere else or my brain's 'ram' is full. I'm not sure if its mental of there is some physiological phenomenon going on there, but it really works for me.
    • pier25 5y ago
      You mean like documentation? Or what type of notes are you talking about?
• SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I feel like the biggest evidence for the "moral panic" side of the debate is that the article never actually gets around to making the argument that attention spans were longer in the past. "We can see the effects all around us. A small study of college students found they now only focus on any one task for 65 seconds." - how can we evaluate this without knowing how long they focused 25 or 50 years ago?
• Zak 5y ago
  I want a digest system for notifications on my phone. This used to be common for mailing lists and web forums with email notification systems. I could get an email daily or weekly with the replies to my posts and subscriptions instead of real-time. The temptation to poll manually was reduced because I knew I'd be notified eventually. I want to be able to tell my phone to do the same with its notifications, preferably with fine-grained control. For messaging apps, it would be extra nice if the sender could mark a suggested priority so I could let certain people I trust not to abuse the privilege interrupt me when they think it's urgent enough.
  • sbolt 5y ago
    iOS 15 added something like what you are describing called Scheduled Summary. Notifications are snoozed and delivered at set times throughout the day (twice per day is the default). I believe there is also an API for developers of messaging apps to allow notification privilege escalation.
    • Zak 5y ago
      That is, indeed the feature I was describing. I hope iOS doing it means Android will follow suit soon.
• EGreg 5y ago
  The internet has given us opportunities to connect with one another like never before. Yet, most sites we use today have barely tapped that potential. We believe in the power of well-designed tools to improve people's lives and bring about positive social change. They are characterized by five main aspects: Time: Instead of priding ourselves on how much time people spend in our apps, we want people to get in, get out, and get results. Utility: Help people get things done in the real world, rather than building an online persona. Notifications: Let people control which updates they receive about things happening in their life, instead of getting them addicted to notifications like a slot machine. Organic: In every context, pre-compute useful information and present it to the user, enabling them to do more in less steps. Business Model: Make money by helping people accomplish useful things as a group, not just by selling advertising.
• stevebmark 5y ago
  One thing I believe to be true: If you have a device near you, there is no amount of habit or self control you can enact to change the habits of using that device. The same with the type of device. If a device has internet capabilities, no amount of self control or habit forming will make you only use the reading app on that device. You will always lose the habit at some point. A requirement for changing habits is changing the physical world. Picking a device with no internet browsing capabilities, like an e-reader or a physical book. Or going for a walk where you physically don't have your phone. Even putting a phone in the next room isn't enough, you have to be somewhere where you physically can't access the phone. Humans are not capable of fixing attention habits in which the physical world is set up to make it feasible to lose your attention.
  • jallbrit 5y ago
    > A requirement for changing habits is changing the physical world. James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits [0][1], explaining that to break a bad habit, you must invert the first law of good habits ("Make it Obvious") so that the bad habit is "invisible". To do this, as you say, you must change your environment: "Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment." [0] This Atomic Habits summary was posted on HN recently: https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/atomic-habits [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habits+Cheat+Sheet.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habits+Che...
• daemonhunter 5y ago
  I feel my attention at work has gotten worse, the ability to focus has decreased. Sure, part of it is caused by my phone (gotta keep the music/background noise going oh and might as well glance at reddit) but ALOT of it is being a senior engineer. It is my place to be asked questions throughout the day and I'd rather be asked questions than not. It takes me out of the zone and Sometimes it feels as though my mind is juggling 3+ tasks at once because of the questions I've been asked. I've learned through interaction with reality that some programmers need a bit more guidance when it comes to tasks, some will dig down the correct paths, some will dig down the incorrect paths, and some will just stop and wait for help (which is ok). I feel that at times I've done a poor job of guiding some people. There have been days where I might actually start work on my individual tasks 5-6 hours into the day and staying late after everyone leaves is key to getting back in the zone and solving a problem.
• 50 5y ago
  "There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves. If one pays attention with this intention, fifteen minutes of attention is worth a lot of good works." (Simone Weil, Waiting for God)
  • kiliantics 5y ago
    Brilliant quote, thank you. This book has been on my reading list so I think I'll go ahead and get it now.
• _moof 5y ago
  I would appreciate it if everyone commenting here would disclose any affiliations with companies whose business models depend on maintaining the environment described in the article. Thanks.
• r00tanon 5y ago
  It's become more clear to me that pushing content based on past content consumption promotes harmful effects to both individuals and to society. The data collection needed to provide such feedback is inherently prone to privacy violations and exposes safety risks (see what China is doing to monitor social media activity.) Secondly, these feedback algorithms can pull people into echo chambers of disinformation and amplify all sorts of negative feelings and behavior. Not sure throwing more technology and regulation at the problem is a solution. In the end it will probably require a social shift; a realization that "social media" makes us less social at a deep level while providing the illusion of being social. Paying attention to the person in front of you used to be considered polite. Now it's considered old-fashioned?
• jb1991 5y ago
  I’ve been worried about this for many many years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9883769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9883769
• roland_nilsson 5y ago
  I tried to pay attention to this piece, but the website kept trying to open a pop-up every half minute. After five or so interruptions, I gave up :-/
• mt_ 5y ago
  Delete social media. Simple as that.
• Warlockcraft 5y ago
  I already claimed my attention back. I did this by removing stupid media companies from my life. I did this by learning about "The Propaganda Multiplier". The Guardian is part of "The Propaganda Multiplier". The Guardian is a media company controlled by cut-throat oligarchs. It does not have independent journalists who investigate corrupt politicians deeply. It only has sellouts promoting corporate interests while keeping predators in power.
• stitched2gethr 5y ago
  Seems like a good article but I got bored and distracted halfway through...
• mikewarot 5y ago
  I've avoided smartphone ownership successfully since the beginning, as I feared my own addictive tendencies would have me paying attention to it instead of the world. Even without a smartphone, however... there are things that I got sucked into while being a system administrator with far too much time to surf. It's now apparent to me that I need to schedule time for myself with no computer in the same room.
• spacechild1 5y ago
  > “They’re switching back and forth. They don’t notice the switching because their brain sort of papers it over to give a seamless experience of consciousness, but what they’re actually doing is switching and reconfiguring their brain moment-to-moment, task-to-task – [and] that comes with a cost.” This sounds very similar to multi-threaded programming :-) Joking aside, great article!
• ttroyr 5y ago
  I find it ironic that the right sidebar of the guardian site has a "Most Viewed" list of articles constantly calling my attention away from the main article. As I scroll down, the list of "Most Viewed" articles follow...
• gnuj3 5y ago
  Are we really going to ignore the fact that this was written by a notorious plagiarist and dickhead, Johann Hari?