There's nothing in your life or in our collective problems that does not require our ability to put our attention where we care about. At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time.
Tristan HarrisRead
You're either on, and you're connected and distracted all the time, or you're off, but then you're wondering, am I missing something important? In other words, you're either distracted or you have fear of missing out.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the struggle between constant connectivity and the anxiety of potentially missing out on important information.
In this quote, Tristan Harris articulates the modern dilemma of digital connectivity where individuals are constantly plugged into their devices, leading to distractions, or they choose to disconnect and face the anxiety of missing out on significant events or updates. This reflects on the psychological effects of technology on our lives, illustrating a dichotomy that many people experience in today's fast-paced digital age.
Themes
ConnectivityDistractionFear Of Missing OutTechnologyAnxiety
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about digital well-being, I might say, 'As Tristan Harris notes, you're either connected and distracted all the time, or you're off worrying about missing out.'
More from Tristan Harris
All quotes →Technology steers what 2 billion people are thinking and believing every day. It's possibly the largest source of influence over 2 billion people's thoughts that has ever been created. Religions and governments don't have that much influence over people's daily thoughts.
Tristan HarrisRead
Technology is causing a set of seemingly disconnected things - shortening of attention spans, polarization, outrage-ification of culture, mass narcissism, election engineering, addiction to technology.
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I'm an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That's why I spent the last three years as a Design Ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people's minds from getting hijacked.
Tristan HarrisRead
If we really wanted to have a reorientation of the tech industry toward what's best for people, then we would ask the second question, which is, what would be the most time well spent for the thing that people are trying to get out of that situation?
Tristan HarrisRead
With our Paleolithic instincts, we're simply unable to resist technology's gifts. But this doesn't just compromise our privacy. It also compromises our ability to take collective action.
Tristan HarrisRead
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