I’ve always struggled to feel like I, individually, can make an impact on the world. There’s a sense of helplessness to how small we each are. Like a little fish in a big pond. I still try. I vote, I call out injustice where I see it. I know if we all do these things, change can happen, but it feels impossible to get everyone on the bandwagon. Of course there have been movements before where people have come together to spur change, things like gay rights or feminism. It’s possible, and I really want something like these revolutions to happen for our focus. The tech industry needs to be called out, regulated. They can’t just be stealing our focus unchecked. 

“The risks of letting them continue behaving the way they have are greater than the risks of overreacting. They have to be stopped. They have to be stopped by us.”– Johann Hari, Chapter 9, Stolen Focus

But they can’t be trusted to do this on their own. One of the many ways these sites steal our focus is showing us content that’s radicalizing and irritating. We as humans love to see bad, upsetting things, it’s called a negativity bias. Well a group of scientists at facebook looked into how they could make the site healthier and less divisive, and guess what? Facebook shut it down. They claimed it was to avoid angering conservatives, but they certainly had more motivation than just that. This is why these sites need to be federally regulated. They have too much incentive (financially) to steal our attention.

Aza Raskin, a cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology proposes in chapter 9 of Stolen Focus, that the government could force tech companies to move to a subscription or publicly owned model by banning the selling of our data. That way, we’d be paying for these services, either through subscriptions or taxes. Then, they’d be at our beck and call, working for our interests. Not the advertisers.

So now I’m left with the question, “what can I do?” 

How do I help make this happen?

Being a journalist my mind went to doing some kind of reporting on it. I think in a way, I chose this field so I can feel like I’m making some kind of difference in the world. When I’m doing stories where I’m calling out injustices, I feel exhilarated. But deep down, I’m concerned it’s still not making change. How many times has this “watchdog journalism” really made a difference? I mean just this past summer, a whistleblower came forward and said that the DOJ was actually encouraging its attorneys to mislead judges in court. What was done about it? 

A professor named Noam Chomsky coined this term, “flak,” in his 1988 work, Manufacturing Consent. It’s the idea that any journalist or whistleblower is pushed to the margins of the industry when they try to challenge anyone in power. 

It makes me question if reporting on the theft of our focus would even do anything. Would it just be ignored? Would it make me a pariah? Plus, as of right now, I certainly don’t have a big enough pulpit to make any semblance of a wave. Especially in this big of a pond.