Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And – most importantly – how do we get it back? Bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to find out.

Our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds. Office workers on average manage only three minutes.  Part of the experience of being alive in the twenty-first century is the feeling that your attention span is collapsing, along with those of everyone around you – including your children.

Johann Hari has met the leading experts in the world on attention – and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us – by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen.

Johann discovered there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention.

Crucially, he learned how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.

Praise for Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus:

‘In his unique voice, Johann Hari tackles the profound dangers facing humanity from information technology and rings the alarm bell for what all of us must do to protect ourselves, our children and our democracies.’ – Hillary Clinton

‘I don’t know anyone thinking more deeply, or more holistically, about the crisis of our collective attention than Johann Hari. And this is a crisis that we must address if we are to meet any of the other pressing emergencies we face as a species, whether ecological or social. Which means that this book could not be more vital. Please sit with it, and focus.’ – Naomi Klein

‘You know how it is when a cluster of nameless anxieties and dreads are suddenly explained and illuminated by a clever friend who not only  makes them clear but joins them together in a meaningful enough way for you to let go of the anxiety and do something useful in order to make things better? That’s what Hari has done with this entirely necessary book, a miracle of clarity and depth, a resonant, deeply researched warning followed by a truly inspiring clarion-call to action.’ – Emma Thompson

‘Johann Hari writes like a dream. He’s both lyricist and storyteller — but also an indefatigable investigator of one of the world’s greatest problems: the systematic destruction of our attention. Read this book to save your mind.’ – Susan Cain