by Johann Hari
Hari investigates twelve systemic forces he argues are collectively dismantling human attention, from engagement-optimized social media and ultra-processed diets to sleep deprivation and chronic stress. He rejects the individual-willpower framing of the attention crisis, arguing that focus has been stolen by design and that recovering it requires collective political response.
In this collection, Stolen Focus references 4 other books and is cited by 2 other books.
It draws on Deep Work, Hooked and Indistractable.
It’s picked up by How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times and The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
The books Hari references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Hari interviews Cal Newport and draws on Deep Work's framework that sustained concentration on cognitively demanding tasks is both rare and economically valuable in the attention economy.
Hari engages Nir Eyal's Hooked directly, treating its hook model as a blueprint for the engagement techniques that he argues big-tech companies weaponize to fragment attention.
Hari devotes a contentious chapter to debating Eyal's Indistractable, pushing back on its individual-responsibility framing in favor of structural regulation of tech platforms.
Hari draws on Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep to argue that sleep deprivation is a core, under-recognised driver of the collective attention collapse.
The exact passages where other authors bring up “Stolen Focus” and what they take from it.
Aligns with Hari's Stolen Focus in diagnosing modern anxiety as a consequence of hijacked attention, but shifts from Hari's systemic critique to individual protocols for resetting stimulation
Haidt cites Hari's Stolen Focus on how algorithm-driven digital platforms erode sustained attention, connecting it to his argument that phone-based childhood fragments the deep attention needed for healthy adolescent development
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
Directly cites
Directly cited by
Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.
Digital Minimalism
Cal Newport
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
Tools of Titans
Tim Ferriss
Deep Work
Cal Newport
Stillness Is the Key
Ryan Holiday
Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.
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