Spotlight: Doomscrolling & the Divine

Ezra Thorne-Matsuda spent fifteen years as a software engineer before becoming a meditation teacher. He understands the attention economy from the inside — and he understands what it costs.

The Spiritual Case

This is not another book telling you to delete social media. Thorne-Matsuda is more interested in why we reach for the phone in the first place — and what that impulse reveals about the human need for connection, stimulation, and meaning.

His argument is that the distraction crisis is, at root, a spiritual crisis. Not because technology is evil, but because our attention is sacred — and we have been giving it away without understanding its value.

"Every contemplative tradition in history has said the same thing: where your attention goes, your life follows. We are the first generation with an entire industry designed to capture that attention and sell it."

Practical Paths

The book offers what Thorne-Matsuda calls "attention practices" — not digital detoxes but something subtler. Ways of relating to your phone, your feeds, and your own impulses that gradually shift the balance from distraction to presence.