Are big tech's attention algorithms undermining our ability to focus during prayer?

Eid Al Fitr morning prayers in Dubai. Much of an observant Muslim’s daily routine is structured around acts of worship and reciting the Quran. Antonie Robertson / The National

Smartphones and social media are profoundly affecting our cognition and our interpersonal relations. Scientifically studying the impact and developing countermeasures is critical to our well-being. Furthermore, the unique culture of Gulf countries interacts with smartphones and social media in a way that only homegrown scholars can truly understand.

In the half-century that followed the Second World War, the economic, political and social success of western culture created a powerful socialisation force. People in the Global South felt pressure to view the adoption of western cultural values as being inevitably tied to progress. Clinging on to one’s own culture might have felt comforting, but it would mean falling further behind in the civilisational race that commenced during the European Enlightenment in the 17th century.

This tendency was evident in some of the Gulf countries, too, where in many cases children became more fluent in English than in Arabic, and where some western mannerisms supplanted local ones, including clothing, entertainment, secularism and so on.

Today, the picture looks very different. Many western countries are in economic decline, and bitter culture wars are raging over issues that leave many in the Global South scratching their heads. Meanwhile, Gulf countries have – like many others – increased resistance to the wholesale importation of western cultural values, associating many of them with decadence and complacency.

If we were to rely on western researchers to understand the impact of smartphones, the outcomes would be unsatisfactory

One area where this divergence is particularly stark is the twin phenomena of smartphones and social media. Many studies within economics, sociology and cognitive and social psychology have demonstrated how producers have begun to perfect the act of exploiting the human brain’s flaws. If you feel it is difficult to put down your smartphone – and feel anxious when you are away from it for a few minutes – it doesn’t mean you lack willpower. Instead, some of the world’s finest engineers, with in-depth knowledge of neuropsychology, are exploiting the way your brain works to keep you engaged in a way that is potentially deeply damaging to many aspects of your life.

For example, attention spans are declining precipitously; many people are no longer reading anything longer than 100 words, and some can’t maintain conversations with their loved ones for more than a few seconds. As a result, they feel deeply unsatisfied with their lives without being able to identify any discernible cause for that discomfort.

While all the above apply to people in the Gulf as much as anywhere else, there are extra considerations stemming from the local culture that western social scientists understandably don’t pay attention to. Much of an observant Muslim’s daily routine, for instance, is structured around acts of worship, notably praying five times a day and reciting the Quran. Doing these things properly and in a manner that yields maximal benefit requires what is in Arabic referred to as “khushu” – a sense of piety, focus and clarity of mind. This, I would argue, is now mortally threatened by the endless scrolling to which smartphones have made us addicted.

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Similarly, for centuries, the kin-centred social networks that are critical to people’s mental well-being in the Gulf have been sustained by daily meals with the family, regular trips to the tribal majlis, congregating to pay respect during funerals and other such activities. The practice of such customs is declining, and when such gatherings do materialise, lively conversations have been supplanted by silent participants fixated on their smartphones. This is undermining a central pillar of social support that western cultures dispensed with long ago in their multi-century drive towards secularisation, detribalisation and familial atomisation.

Accordingly, if we were to rely on western researchers to understand the impact of smartphones and social media and to develop remedies, the outcomes would be unsatisfactory. The damage being caused by these phenomena in the Gulf (and the Islamic world more generally) is quite distinct from that in the West, and so it is up to us to conduct our own research and devise solutions tailored to our unique needs.

Is our ability to memorise the Quran undermined by big tech companies’ attention-related algorithms? Should mosques install jammers that prevent the use of the internet during prayer time? Should majlises have lockboxes for smartphones to force visitors to talk to one another? Scholars in the Gulf should be spearheading attempts to answer such important questions.

The era of uncritically adopting western solutions is over. The social and psychological challenges posed by smartphones and social media are fundamentally different in the Gulf due to its unique cultural fabric. It is therefore incumbent upon Gulf scholars to lead the research effort and devise homegrown strategies to safeguard the region’s core traditions from technological overreach.