Continuing my free series on Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus. After this post, I have one more post planned, which will complete the overview of the book. You can find the previous post in this series here (and from it link back through all the previous posts) :
[ Stress and the Erosion of Attention ]
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So far in this series, we have explored eight of the twelve key causes offered in Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus for why people today struggle to pay attention. In the last three chapters of the book, Hari offers the final four causes:
deteriorating diets,
rising pollution,
the rise of ADHD, and
the confinement of our children.
These four causes all have reasonable evidence indicating how they contribute to our inability to focus, but they play minor roles in contrast to the eight previous causes that Hari identifies.
Deteriorating Diets
In Chapter 12, Hari explores two causes: diet and pollution. It is not difficult to see how both of these factors inhibit human wellness, but less clear how they specifically inhibit our ability to focus. With regard to diet, Hari offers “three broad ways in which how we wat now is harming our focus” (198). First, our diets heavy with sugary carbs tend to cause “energy spikes and energy crashes,” which serve to deteriorate our focus. Brain fog, he notes, typically follows energy crashes. And living on the cycle of energy spikes and crashes, leaves us depleted of energy, so that “we can’t focus well for long stretches” (199).
The second way in which our diets tend to inhibit our focus “is that most of us now eat in a way that deprives us of the nutrients we need for our brains to develop and function fully” (199). Ultra-processed foods, in particular, which in the U.S. and Britain comprises the majority of our diets do not have the vitamins and other nutrients that help our brains develop most fully. The third way in which our diets inhibit our focus, according to Hari, is that they also contain chemicals “that seem to act on our brains, almost like drugs” (201). Hari names food dyes as one specific group of chemicals that seems to contribute to hyperactivity in children, and thus impedes their ability to focus.
Hari concludes, following the wisdom of established food writers like Michael Pollan, that in terms of diet and our capacity to focus, we do best to center our diet around whole – that is, unprocessed – foods, “the foods that our grandparents would have recognized as food” (202). And on this point, Hari is quick to emphasize the systemic problems that surround our diets. The grocery stores where the vast majority of folks shop are full to the brim with processed foods, we are barraged by advertising for these processed foods, and whole, unprocessed foods are often priced out of the reach of most eaters. Changing our diet to incorporate more whole foods can pose a significant challenge.
Pollution
Although our diets are formed by the powerful forces of advertising and access, we still have some small degree of control over the foods we put in our mouths. The same cannot be said for the next of Hari’s causes, pollution. Hari focuses particularly on lead poisoning, which polluted the air and the soil for decades through leaded paint and leaded gasoline. He also points to other sorts of chemicals to which we are exposed, including pesticides, plasticizers, flame-retardants, and cosmetics (209). Hari recommends a two-prong approach for our society to address to problem of pollutants. First, we should abolish the presumption that a chemical is safe until it is proven toxic, and instead we should test the chemical for safety before it is used in mass production. Secondly, for chemicals already used in production, we need to test these chemicals extensively and do so in a manner that is not funded or manipulated by the industry using these chemicals (211-212).
The Rise of ADHD
Perhaps the most controversial chapter in Stolen Focus is Chapter 13: “Cause Eleven: The Rise of ADHD and How We Are Responding to It.” Hari acknowledges as much in the opening paragraphs: “Of all the chapters in this book, this is the one I’ve found hardest to write, because it’s the topic about which serious scientists disagree the most” (214). However, he quickly proceeds to emphasize that everyone diagnosed with ADHD “has a real problem” (214). In spite of all the assaults to our attention in the present moment, Hari is not skeptical of ADHD as a diagnosis. The controversy, Hari notes, is about how much a person’s biology contributes to their inability to focus. Most experts, Hari grants, agree that biology contributes in some degree to an ADHD diagnosis, but the disagreement is about how much biology contributes to this diagnosis. And a parallel disagreement exists about how one with an ADHD diagnosis should best be treated – with medication, or with more holistic approaches that may or may not include some dosage of medicine. As he has done throughout the book, Hari turns to experts who have been trying to understand the rise of ADHD, and how it should best be treated. One of the researchers whose work Hari found most helpful operates under the conviction that medications, while clearly effective in providing short-term relief, are not a long-term solution, but serve to buy some time for a deeper look into the particular environmental factors that are eroding a patient’s capacity for attention. Hari summarizes this researcher’s belief: “you can only ethically give out drugs if you also are at the same time trying to solve the deeper problem (of what environmental factors are plaguing a particular patient)” (236).
I appreciate that Hari acknowledges the controversies surrounding the treatment of ADHD and his intuitive sense that effectively and sustainably treating ADHD might require more than prescribing medication – although that is often a fruitful first line of treatment.
The Confinement of Children
The final cause that Hari names is the confinement of children, which includes in his estimation, both physical and psychological confinement. At the heart of this chapter is the importance of play in a child’s development, and the ways in which children are often inhibited in their play by their parents and schools. Near the end of the chapter, Hari offers this summary:
“Children have needs – and it’s our job, as adults, to create an environment that meets those needs. In many cases, in this culture, we aren’t meeting those needs. We don’t let them play freely; we imprison them in their homes, with little to do except interact via screens; and our school system largely deadens and bores them. We feed them food that causes energy crashes, contains drug-like additives that can make them hyper, and doesn’t contain the nutrients they need. We expose them to brain-disrupting chemicals in the atmosphere. It’s not a flaw in them that causes children to struggle to pay attention. It’s a flaw in the world we built for them.”
These sentences, although summarizing one chapter, are also a solid recap of the entire book. In a sentence, our growing inability to sustain our attention flows from a world constructed to erode our attention. How do we move forward in the face of this daunting conclusion? My final post in this series will explore Hari’s recommendations for how we move forward (and perhaps a couple of my own recommendations).
New Book from Johann Hari:
Also, for those of you who have been enjoying this series, I just found out that Johann Hari has a brand new book out this week: Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs.
“In Magic Pill, Johann Hari gives us a crash course on the new weight-loss drugs that will soon be transforming bodies, minds, and societies on a massive scale. Magic Pill will help you think more clearly about eating, dieting, health, and mental health, even if you never touch Ozempic.”—Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind
Interesting!! I’m curious to note if he addresses the socioeconomic factors involved in both diet and pollution. Is he just thinking about Americans, or is he thinking/writing globally?
The ADHD conversation is definitely an interesting one. As a parent to a neurodivergent kiddo, I’m always wondering—has there really been a rise in these things, or are we just now recognizing the patterns? Have these nuerodivergences always caused struggle/difficulty, but now we have medical/pharmaceutical solutions so people are more willing/motivated to confess those difficulties? From what you’ve said, it sounds like he’s pretty nuanced in his writing about it.