EP 59: Your Attention Isn’t Yours Anymore- A Big Tech Insider Explains Why, What it's Doing to our Mental Health (and How to Get It Back)

Your Attention Isn’t Yours Anymore — A Big Tech Insider Explains Why (and How to Get It Back)What if the reason you feel distracted, overwhelmed, and mentally exhausted isn’t a lack of discipline — but the systems you’re using every day?In this episode, I’m joined by Kenneth Schlenker, former Google product leader and founder of Opal, the screen-time app helping millions of people reclaim their focus.After years working inside Google on products like Maps, YouTube and Ads, Kenneth saw firsthand how Big Tech uses behavioural science to capture — and monetise — human attention. He walked away to build the opposite: tools that put people back in control of their focus, time and mental wellbeing.We explore how social media subtly rewires our desires (including how I briefly became convinced I needed a $50k Birkin bag 🙃), why attention — not time — is the real currency, and how constant information overload is quietly fuelling burnout.This is a candid, grounded conversation about technology, mental health, shame, parenting, sleep, and what it really takes to use modern tools without letting them use us.• What Big Tech really optimises for — and why wellbeing isn’t part of the business model• How platforms use behavioural science (infinite scroll, autoplay, likes) to keep us hooked• Why attention matters more than time — and how it shapes who we become• The “Birkin effect”: how social media influences what we think we want• Why we often feel worse after scrolling (especially women)• The link between information overload, sleep disruption and burnout• Why willpower alone isn’t enough — and why tools and friction actually help• How shame keeps people stuck in unhealthy tech habits• Social media bans for kids: do they help, or push behaviour underground?• Why sleep is the most important boundary for both adults and teenagers• How Opal is evolving from a tool into a trusted wellbeing partnerYou’re not weak for struggling with your phone.These systems were designed by very smart people to be hard to put down.The goal isn’t to quit technology — it’s to use it intentionally, in service of the life you actually want to live.