Reclaiming attention: Today's defining challenge?

Why am I finding it so difficult to get started on this article?

It isn’t writer’s block. A scribbled outline is sitting on my desk. I know roughly what I want to say. Yet every two or three minutes my attention drifts. I find myself reaching for my phone, reading an email, following an unrelated information trail (a quick glance at the weather forecast and I’m soon watching Arctic puffins), double-checking facts, glancing at yet more “breaking news”. Perhaps not all in the same morning, and I exaggerate a little, but you get the idea.

None of these things is obviously wrong. I’m not looking at pornography or visiting a gambling site. Yet somehow they have become an escape route from the task itself. Twenty minutes later I know more than I did before, but I haven’t written a single word.

What is going on?

It isn’t just about distraction. Psychologists increasingly view procrastination as a problem of emotional regulation rather than distraction. When you put off a task you are not avoiding the task itself. You are avoiding how the task makes you feel. Nevertheless I can’t escape the impression that opportunities for distraction have multiplied dramatically in recent years. And for me, distraction is a growing problem.

I’m encouraged in making this shameful confession because I know many readers will recognise this experience in themselves. Surveys suggest that more people than ever are reporting difficulty with distraction. Researchers have documented more frequent task switching, shorter periods of uninterrupted work and a declining ability to sustain focus.

Of course humans have always wrestled with distraction. This is hardly surprising because if you want to survive, it serves you rather well: a predator moves in the bushes, a child starts crying, an unexpected opportunity appears. If you don’t turn to give it your attention you will likely miss something important.

Yet our capacity to truly flourish depends on something else – the ability to direct our mental energies towards what matters most. If distraction helps us notice what might matter, attention helps us stay with what really does matter.

This is a key insight for Christian believers because discipleship is, in large part, learning to direct our loves toward things that matter most. The Book of Proverbs is full of voices competing for our attention: the adulterous woman calling from the street, the wise wife buying fields and managing her affairs – folly and wisdom each demanding to be heard. Again and again the father implores: “My son, pay attention to what I say!”

The great psychologist William James observed that “the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgement, character and will”. James understood something we forget at our peril: attention isn’t merely a mental skill. It is deeply connected to the kind of people we become.

The Bible makes a remarkably similar claim: “Those that look at idols become like them” (Ps.115v8). We become what we habitually attend to. That is why Jesus taught that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. When we love Him, we become like Him – His image is restored. Yes, love requires many things, but attention is its daily bread.

Which brings me back to my earlier question. What lies at the root of this growing difficulty with paying attention? And if attention is so central to Christian discipleship, what are the implications?

The challenge of our age is not concentration, but sovereignty.

Part of the answer is straightforward. We live in an information-rich digital environment. Every day we are exposed to more breaking news, opinions, images, adverts and messages than any previous generation in history. At one level, our difficulties are simply the predictable consequence of abundance.

But that explanation isn’t enough. Human beings have always lived with competing claims upon their attention. The Book of Proverbs assumes as much.

Today’s digital environment is different in kind. Not because of the sheer quantity of information available to us, but because technologies can now take up residence within the machinery of attention itself. They can learn our habits, exploit our vulnerabilities, and shape the way our attention is directed.

That distinction matters. A traditional library is also full of books competing for your attention with eye-catching titles and glowing commendations. But the books remain where they are. They cannot follow you home, study your habits, learn your weaknesses, and continually revise their appeal. They cannot gain access to the machinery of attention itself. Modern digital platforms can.

Of course we have not been thrown out of the driving seat altogether. But we are no longer driving alone. A powerful presence now sits beside us, learning our habits, observing our weaknesses, nudging the wheel, and steering our attention toward its own ends. Sometimes it reaches for the wheel itself. How else do we explain the familiar experience of picking up a phone and opening an app before we have decided what we are going to do with it? The wheel remains in our hands but the steering is no longer entirely our own.

The challenge of our age, therefore, is not merely concentration but sovereignty: recovering the freedom to decide what has rightful claim upon our attention rather than allowing that decision to be made for us. And since attention shapes what we love, and desire shapes character, the answer to that question will ultimately determine the kind of people we become.

The addicted church

So what are we to do? The first step is to recognise the personal scale of the challenge. Phone-based digital systems designed to capture and shape attention have normalised addictive patterns of behaviour on an industrial scale. Psychiatrists may debate the terminology, but millions of us are finding it increasingly difficult to resist behaviours that are habitual and compulsive. If this is your experience then come out and say it: ‘I’m a smartphone addict’.

And for those of us who are older, let’s stop trying to distract from our own addictive behaviours by focusing on children and young people. I hear young people complaining that their grandparents are as glued to their screens as they are. Many of us struggle to pray without thinking about our phones. We interrupt conversations, meals, country walks and moments of silence with glances at a screen.

Ageing itself brings its own vulnerabilities to addictive phone behaviour too. While older adults are generally less susceptible to some of the social pressures that drive adolescent media use, age-related changes in attentional control can make it harder to sustain focus. Smartphones may prove as challenging to the ageing brain as they are seductive to the young one.

In a future article, I’ll explore how we begin our recovery in more detail. Not because I have mastered these challenges myself, but because years working in psychiatry, together with Biblical wisdom, have convinced me that recovery is possible.

Above all this is a spiritual, as well as a psychological journey, one that begins with contrition, repentance and continues in fellowship with the Spirit.

The ultimate goal is not abstinence. Smartphones and social media bring many genuine benefits. But before we can inhabit a positive vision for their use, we must recover sovereignty over our attention. Not the sovereignty of the autonomous self, but the freedom to direct our attention to the good, the beautiful, and the true – and therefore ultimately to God Himself.

There is, of course, an irony in attempting to reclaim attention from technologies that have already colonised it. The very faculty we need in order to recover – sustained attention – is the faculty that has been weakened. Yet this is why the task matters.

For if attention is, as I’ve argued, not merely a psychological capacity but a spiritual faculty, then recovering it may prove the defining discipleship challenge of our age.