Nir Eyal vs Johann Hari

Or, what should we do about the 'attention crisis'?

Nir Eyal smiles while Johann Hari looks into the middle distance.

The appeal of podcasts is when you get those serendipitous moments that wouldn't occur in any other form. Someone mentioned that Jordan Peterson had been talking insightfully about Public Image Limited on a podcast recently, a bizarre crossover of a kind that makes you prick up your ears when you're in the supermarket.

Such podcasts are usually relaxed, friendly, and free of the time constraints that make TV interviews so facile. They allow the guest to get comfortable and share what they know, rather than badgering them into submission. Nevertheless, I wonder if all this friendliness has gone too far and a few more adversarial debates might tease out deeper insights.

I was thinking about all this whilst listening to Johann Hari's interview with Nir Eyal on the attention crisis and whether smartphones and social media have created a distracted, anxiety-ridden population.

It is not, technically-speaking, a podcast. It was conducted as part of Hari's research for his latest book, Stolen Focus, which claims that big tech (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat etc) has destroyed our ability to concentrate. Hari was caught fabricating quotes in the past (amongst other things) so feels obliged to publish the audio of his interviews so people can check he is not making it up. As such, it sounds like a real conversation: neither of them are putting on their best podcast voice and it is a lot more petulant and revealing.

Hari is interviewing Eyal because the latter literally wrote the book on designing habit-forming products and then followed this up with a book about how to resist addictive tech and become 'indistractable'.

I would summarise their conversation as a dispute over whether we should take more individual responsibility for our use of technology or seek more government regulation. Is social media like leaded petrol—something that is slowly poisoning us and needs to be banned—or is it more like television: a mindless activity that some people over-indulge in, but which is generally benign?

Another analogy in the conversation is cigarettes. 40 years ago cigarettes were ubiquitous and non-smokers would have fancy ashtrays for when guests came around. As we became more aware of the health dangers we started to push smokers out into the streets. Nir Eyal thinks the same thing is happening with smartphones. If you start checking your messages during a conversation it is now considered rude whereas in the past we may have glanced down as if we were a Doctor getting an urgent call on their pager. The route to smoking becoming unacceptable was a combination of health data, government warnings, pub bans, and social norms. Will we do something similar to deal with smartphones?

Johann Hari is not a designer and doesn't think about technology in terms of trade-offs. He focuses on the negative effects of social media, rather than weighing up any potential benefits. For instance, Hari will talk about the anxiety-inducing effect of Snapchat streaks and how they should be banned. Eyal points out that streaks are beneficial on Duolingo and that, in any case, they are not that compelling.

Hari keeps coming back to this idea that there is a whole army of the most intelligent people in the world using all of their skills to make you addicted to their app. In his book, he uses emotive language to describe the situation: "Our attention and focus have been raided, pillaged, and poisoned by huge external forces."

It is an appealing idea.

I spend way too much time on my phone and doom-scroll with the best of them. I make resolutions to use the device less and then find myself stroking, tapping, and flicking the screen. It would be nice if I could blame all my akrasia (the handy Greek word for acting against your own best interests) on app designers. However, I probably check my email more than anything else and that is a technology that hasn't changed in 30 years and has been relatively unaffected by developments in behavioural science.

Eyal thinks all the focus on Silicon Valley geniuses is overstated. He keeps bringing up Hari's previous book, Lost Connections, a book which makes the opposite point to Stolen Focus, that rather than penalise and regulate the activity we should address the underlying causes: social breakdown, inadequacy, and alienation.

According to Eyal, we check our phones compulsively because we feel bad already. We are all lonely, bored, and unfulfilled in some way. By recognising this we can start to address why we feel that way.

How do you want to feel? What is a live well-lived? Only once you answer these questions can you then see whether there are any benefits to having a smartphone.

For example, I like staying in touch with people and so have every messaging app. I like taking photos and sharing how I see the world, so the camera is prominent. I like capturing my thoughts on the go and have a note app. What I don't like is the infinite vortex of social media and so try to only use those apps on my computer at certain times of the day. I have learned through experience that I need to remove that constant temptation. This process of learning what makes you feel good or bad is like the immune system building up resistance to a new pathogen.

Hari has a very low opinion of our ability to solve problems without state intervention. Nir Eyal, by contrast, wants to empower people to take control of their digital lives and thinks there are enough tools (like the 'do not disturb' button on smartphones) to avoid feeling enslaved.

Whenever we talk about the 'crisis of attention' it has an extra relevance because we are subjectively affected by the situation. We can look at the data and try to be objective about the changes wrought by smartphones, whilst simultaneously feeling guilty for frittering away our time staring at screens.

So who wins?

I would like to say Hari and lay all the blame for my procrastination at the feet of capitalism, but still feel that Eyal’s insights are more empowering. Indistractible was a revelation because it centred on the phenomenology of pain and pleasure. That moment when you feel a negative emotion and reach for your phone is a source of insight and shouldn't be brushed off as manipulation.

Listen to excerpts from their discussion, alongside my own commentary, on this month’s podcast:

Reacting to Nir Eyal vs Johann Hari

What I’m Reading

I’ve mentioned previously that I think the world would be a better place if everyone had a blog. So I am delighted to see several friends have started posting on Substack. It’s still early days, but check out their blogs here: