Monday 11th May - 06:00 PM BST
Consciousness, Attention, and the Age of Distraction
Reality in an age of overload
'The things we focus on and engage our attention are usually assumed to be worth doing. But from advertising to social media, many argue our attention is being hijacked. So much so that a recent study found two-thirds of the UK public are worried about an emerging attention crisis. Social media has become the latest battleground, with Australia restricting children’s access, with Spain, France, and the UK appearing likely to follow. But what is at stake is not just screen time. Psychological studies suggest that attention shapes what we take to be reality, and focusing on one thing can make us blind to everything else in plain sight. What we pay attention to, therefore, becomes our world.
Should we recognise attention as central to human consciousness and our perception of reality, and therefore regulate and restrict those who try to hijack it? Should we redesign education and culture around attention, and prioritise practices that cultivate it? Or is this just the latest moral panic, no different from past fears about radio and television, with efforts to police attention risking a dystopian future?
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, psychiatrist and author of Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke, and sociologist and critic of paranoid parenting Frank Furedi, debate attention.
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Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent.
Frank Furedi is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent and a prolific author of modern political philosophy in the public sphere. His recent books cover the culture wars, democracy, borders and fear as broad topics. The through line of his work is an analysis of how western democracies fail to account for risk and uncertainty in decision-making.
He also regularly comments on radio and television. He has appeared on Newsnight, Sky news and BBC news. he has also been published in the New Scientist, Guardian, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph to name but a few.
Frances Haugen
Big tech whisteblower
Frances Haugen is an American data scientist and technology whistleblower best known for exposing internal research from Facebook in 2021. A former product manager at the company, she disclosed thousands of documents showing how the platform’s algorithms could amplify misinformation, political polarization and harm to young users. Her testimony before the United States Congress and other governments made her a central figure in global debates about social media regulation and corporate accountability.
Haugen has continued to campaign for stronger oversight of technology companies and greater transparency in platform design. She has advised policymakers and spoken internationally on online safety, algorithmic accountability and the governance of large technology platforms.
Anna Lembke
Groundbreaking psychiatrist
Anna Lembke is a groundbreaking psychiatrist and addiction medicine expert. She is Professor and Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University. Alongside shaping individual lives in her clinical practice, Lembke has featured on the hit Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate.
Lembke gained national recognition with her 2016 book, Drug Dealer, MD, which examined the role of medical professionals in the opioid crisis. Her more recent bestselling book, Dopamine Nation, argues that too much pleasure in the short term causes pain in the long term.