Have you noticed how hard it is to focus? To give your full attention to anything for long? Maybe you sit down to pray, to meditate deeply on scripture, to read a good book, or have a meaningful conversation—only to find yourself, half an hour later, doom-scrolling through social media or half-watching yet another Netflix documentary you didn’t plan to start.

In recent years, I have returned to school teaching after a long break and have been struck by how much young people’s ability to concentrate had deteriorated. It’s not just them. It’s all of us. Our attention spans are shrinking.

Johann Hari, in his bestselling book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, explores why. One major factor is our tendency to constantly switch between tasks and convince ourselves we are multi-tasking. Another is the relentless pace of modern life. I especially loved the passage where Hari compares the slow, immersive experience of reading a good book to the rapid, fragmented nature of scrolling through X/Twitter. But after speaking with leading experts on attention from around the world, he discovered something unsettling. Our lack of attention isn’t just a personal failing. There are systemic forces actively working to steal our focus. He identifies twelve key reasons, ranging from the decline of mind-wandering to the rise of environmental pollutants, but one factor stands out — Big Tech has discovered how to hack human attention. Through social media sites and apps, and the sophisticated algorithms behind them, companies ensure our engagement to generate profit. This model, known as ‘surveillance capitalism‘, relies on capturing and holding our attention.

Chris Hayes, a U.S. broadcaster, describes a similar battle in his new book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource (see an extract published in The Week recently). Reflecting on his own industry, he admits his job was to ‘capture’ and ‘seize’ our attention—words that reveal the aggressive reality of this new economy. He writes, “Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organisation is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention. It is now the defining resource of our age.” The fight for our focus is relentless, and it’s not just about keeping us glued to screens for advertising revenue. Attention is now a tool of political influence. Elections can be won, regimes can be toppled, and entire societies can be reshaped by those who master the art of directing our gaze.

More than 40 years ago, Neil Postman predicted the beginnings of this problem in a now classic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, warning of our “almost infinite appetite for distraction.” His insights feel even more urgent today. In his time, television was the dominant force shaping public attention. Now, we carry even more powerful distractions in our pockets—smartphones designed not just to entertain, but to addict. Unlike traditional media, social media platforms can now track our behaviour, learn our preferences, and keep us engaged for as long as possible. They don’t just reflect our interests. They actively shape them, nudging us toward whatever content keeps us scrolling.

Postman’s concerns about passive consumption have been eclipsed by a more insidious reality. An attention economy where companies profit from our distraction, and where the ability to focus, reflect, and engage meaningfully is being eroded by design. But distraction isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s a spiritual crisis.

The Biblical Call to Attention

Throughout scripture, we are repeatedly urged to listen, to look, to pay attention. Proverbs teaches that wisdom begins with attentiveness: “Listen to me… watch daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway” (Proverbs 8:32-34). The New Testament takes this further. The Greek words translated as ‘fix’ and ‘set’ in the NIV —as in ‘fix your eyes on Jesus’ (Hebrews 12:2) or ‘set your minds on things above’ (Colossians 3:2)—imply an intense, undistracted focus. They mean to look away from distractions and give something our full, unwavering attention.

The consequences of failing to do this are profound. If we let our attention be hijacked, we are shaped more by the world than by the Word. Social media isn’t just a time-waster. It is forming us—pulling us into polarised tribes, training us to react rather than reflect, to attack rather than listen. Instead of being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2), we are being moulded by algorithms designed to keep us engaged—often through outrage and fear.

And what about giving attention to others? Simone Weil once wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” If that’s true, what happens when our ability to truly attend to others—our friends, our families, our communities—erodes? And what happens when we can no longer give sustained attention to God?

The Fight to Reclaim Our Focus

Despite the bleakness of the situation, Hari argues that we can fight back against this both personally and communally. Equally, Chris Hayes writes, “We need to use every tool and strategy imaginable to wrest back our will, to create a world where we point our attention where we want it to go. A world where we can function and flourish as full human beings, as liberated souls, our ears unplugged and open.”

These writers are not writing as Christians (to the best of my knowledge). For those of us who seek to live in God’s kingdom, the challenge is even greater. This is about more than just reclaiming our productivity or improving our mental well-being. It is about learning to fix our eyes on what truly matters. To ‘fix’ our eyes not just on what is seen but on what is unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18). To resist being conformed to a world that thrives on our distraction and, instead, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

I keep thinking of a prophetic vision that someone shared in our church years ago: first, they saw chickens pecking frantically at the ground, squabbling over scraps, trapped in their tiny world. Then the image shifted. They saw an eagle, soaring high, its vision clear, its movements effortless.

We can live like those distracted chickens—frantically pecking at every bit of trivia thrown our way, and striking out at each other. Or we can reclaim our attention. We can lift our gaze. We can fix our eyes on something higher and greater, something eternal.

As usual, Eugene Peterson gets it right:

“Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.” (Matthew 7:13-14, The Message)

Look out for my review and outline of Stolen Focus coming soon.

There is a multi-part interview with Johann Hari about his book on the How To Academy here.