One of the factors discussed in Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari is the guilt we feel as humans when we realize how strong our attachments to our devices, more specifically, our cellphones, are. It feels like a simple task: just don’t look at it. What we fail to recognize is that it’s not as easy as we think when our attention spans are fighting against multi-billion-dollar companies that all have the same goal: to take up as much of our time as possible.
Our Attention is Worth Money
A major part of what keeps social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook running is targeted advertising. We’ve all experienced targeted ads. One day you’re talking with your friend about the new Nike sneakers you want to buy; you look them up to show your friend a picture, and the next day it feels like your phone has been listening, putting ads for the shoe you want everywhere.
Your phone isn’t listening to you; that would be silly – Mark Zuckerberg is.
In 2025, Facebook made over $196 billion in targeted ads. To put this in perspective, that is around 97% of their yearly gross profit. Without our attention, these apps would be useless. Developers, engineers, and the smartest minds in the world are hired to collaborate on systems designed to keep us as hooked as possible. Once you become aware of this, it’s easy to see the tricks up their sleeves.
Design Tactics Used to Keep Us Glued
As someone who’s interested in product design and user experiences, these design hacks are extremely intriguing to learn about. However, when you think about the motive behind these decisions and the impact and revenue they generate, it can be unsettling.
Infinite scrolling
Patented by Microsoft’s search image team, infinite scroll officially launched in 2008, with major credit to Aza Raskin for the original design. Before infinite scroll, users had to choose whether to continue once they reached the end of a page or feed. The brain had to stop, even if for a second, and decide its next course of action. With this new feature, the user can scroll, and scroll, and scroll. This makes it difficult for the brain to cue when to stop. Each video watched releases a small burst of dopamine, which keeps up in a continuous loop of seeking.
Personalized Feeds
While we spend time aimlessly on apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, these platforms track our usage. Our likes, dislikes, watch times, scroll times, location, and time of day are just some of the factors these companies use to create a personalized feed. Using complex algorithms, a screen tailored to your interests keeps you on it longer, plain and simple. The longer you spend, the more monetized content you are likely to see, and the more money companies make.
“It’s not your fault you can’t focus. It’s by design. Your distraction is their fuel.” Johann Hari – Stolen Focus
Rewards and Gratification
One feature many of these apps share is ‘pull-to-refresh’. You feel like you’ve seen everything that’s on your feed, so you pull the screen down to get brand new content. This feature has similar psychological effects to a slot machine- our brain gets excited by the possibility of what we will see next. This anticipation is another crucial factor in what keeps us hooked on these platforms. The almost instant gratification we get from a like, a shared post, or a comment keeps us coming back. These notifications are also designed to be seen with phone buzzes, screen pop-ups, and bright red icons, just waiting to be looked at.
“The engineers were always looking for new ways to suck eyeballs onto their program and keep them there. Day after day, he would watch as engineers proposed more interruptions to people’s lives – more vibrations, more alerts, more tricks – and they would be congratulated.” Johann Hari – Stolen Focus
Give Ourselves Some Grace
I do think phone use has reached a point where it harms our psyche, not only as individuals but as a society. It can be overwhelming to realize that our day-to-day lives are being controlled by little screens we hold in our hands, and I think it’s important to reflect on that. However, when you look at how our experiences are tailored directly to us and our attention as soon as we open our phones, I hope it gives us some reprieve from the possible guilt individuals may feel when they struggle to change their phone habits. Hari words it perfectly: “The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day, and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world’s attention burns.”
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