I recently found myself reading Nir Eyal’s, “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life”, which is a guide to staying focused in an age of constant distraction. Eyal argues we need to stop using the word “addicted” when it comes to technology – because most of us aren’t addicted at all; we’re just guilty of overuse and learned helplessness. He declares that there is a lot of scare-mongering around technology at the moment, particularly from people who want to sell clicks and thrive on the “economics of fear”. In truth, Eyal affirms there is that there is no “mind control”, nor are our brains being hijacked by malicious forces. Distraction, according to Eyal, is age-old problem that far outreaches technology. I laughed at the study he cites from the Science journal: when left alone in a room containing nothing but an electric shock device, 67% of men and 25% of women gave themselves painful electric shocks to pass the time. No comments about the gender bias here please! Hence, we not only need to empower ourselves and regain control of our mobile phones in particular, but also deal with the reason we are looking for distraction in the first place. Eyal avows that this is a new skill set, and, for me, one we should work together to cultivate in our young people if they are to control the ever advancing personal technology, and not be oppressed by the need to respond to pings, notifications and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). An interesting take on technology!