Johann Hari has become one of our favourite writers. A journalist by background, he’s spent the last decade going forensically deep on the research into some of our biggest societal issues. His previous books have examined addiction and depression, exploring whether our cultural and medical responses to them are the right ones.
Now he’s back with his third book, digging into one of our Foresight Focus trends, attention deficit.
Hari spent three years researching why so many of us struggle to maintain focus. While we already knew that the pervasive lure of social media has done more to erode attention in the last decade than any other factor, Hari goes much further to drill into why attentional disorders like ADD and ADHD are so prevalent in the 2020s.
The modern landscape conspires against us. But given the existential challenges we now face, as Hari points out, it’s never been more important to address the issue of attention. It’s a priority if we’re to collectively respond to the escalating climate crisis and demise of democracy before it’s too late.
