Social Epidemic of Screen Addiction

Reading Notes for Hari

Hari, Johann. “Your Attention Didn't Collapse. It Was Stolen.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Jan. 2022, www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/02/attention-span-focus-screens-apps-smartphones-social-media.

Johann Hari was a former columnist for the Independent, but his career failed when he was called out for lying and manipulating facts in order to advance his own journalistic status. He then wrote a book about drugs and addiction and has been writing for the Guardian since (Aitkenhead). The Guardian is a British daily newspaper with a strong web presence.

Hari’s main claim is that addiction is a problem for most people but especially young people attached to their screens and social media apps like YouTube and Snapchat. They are missing out on reality because of their screen addictions. To support this claim, Hari uses personal anecdotes (his experience going to Graceland with his nephew Adam), expert opinion (he travels to Portland to talk to Professor Joel Nigg). He also speaks to James Williams, former Google engineer, who says that the issue is a social problem and that to fix it society itself needs to become less attached to technology.

A key concept in the article is the “social epidemic” concept. It is used to explain the phenomenon of addiction to phones, screens, and technology in the same way obesity is a problem: it is not a medical epidemic but a social epidemic—i.e., a result of environmental factors that need to be changed to address the issue.

The strengths of this argument are that it does highlight the need to change the world in which we live. Getting rid of one’s phone for a day or two might be a nice break, but inevitably we will be back on the screens. Changing the environment is more important—but also more unlikely, which to me is the main weakness. It sounds like a good idea on paper—but if we cannot even change ourselves, how are we going to change society or the environment around us?