Can a desire for too much attention hurt an actor’s creativity? Joseph Gordon-Levitt believes it can. It happened to him.
In his TED Talk called How Craving Attention Makes You Less Creative, the actor shares how an addiction to social media exacerbated his insecurities and took a toll on his artistic expression.
A Life of Attention and Creativity
Gordon-Levitt has enjoyed a life in the spotlight since his childhood with acting appearances in films like A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield and 10 Things I Hate About You, but many remember him as Tommy Solomon from the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun. As an adult, he starred in The Dark Knight Rises, Lincoln and Snowden. He’s even been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards for leading performances in (500) Days of Summer and 50/50.
“When I’m acting, I get so focused that I’m only paying attention to one thing,” he says. “Anything else that might be bothering me or might grab my attention it all goes away, and I’m just there. And that feeling, that is what I love. That, to me, is creativity, and that’s the biggest reason I’m so grateful I get to be an actor.” However, when Gordon-Levitt started using X (then known as Twitter), he admits he became addicted to the social media platform.
Social Media Distractions
Like so many people across the globe, Gordon-Levitt fell into a bottomless pit of attention-seeking behaviors, always on a quest for the rush of power he felt with each new follower he gained. Instead of placing his efforts on paying attention to others and his work, he found himself seeking attention via the Internet. When discussing his thought process at the time, Gordon-Levitt’s behavior was similar to many people using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
“I’ll be sitting there reading a script and instead of thinking, ‘How can I personally identify with this character?’ or ‘How is the audience going to relate to this story?’ I’m like, ‘What are people going to say about this movie on Twitter,” he said. “And what will I say back that will be good and snarky enough to get a lot of retweets that are not too harsh because people love to get offended, and I don’t want to get canceled?’ These are the thoughts that entered my mind. I’m supposed to be reading a script, trying to be an artist.”
Gordon-Levitt attributes this mentality to oversized social media companies preying on their users’ desire for attention in order to profit from advertisers. This is because getting users addicted to attention is built into their business models.
Despite having millions of followers across X, Facebook and Instagram, the actor says, “In my experience, the more I go after that powerful feeling of ‘paying’ attention, the happier I am. But the more I go after the powerful feeling of ‘getting’ attention, the unhappier I am.”
How Joseph Gordon-Levitt Stays Focused
Gordon-Levitt has found a solution to keep his mind focused on his creativity, his acting and his joy.
“When I’m acting in a scene, if I start seeing the other actors as my competitors, and I’m like, ‘OMG, they’re going to get more attention than I am, people are going to be talking about their performance more than my performance,’ it’s like I’ve lost my focus. And by the way, I’m probably going to suck in that scene. But when I see the other actors as collaborators, then it becomes almost easy to focus, because I’m just paying attention to them. And I don’t have to think about what I’m doing; I react to what they’re doing, and they react to what I’m doing, and we can keep each other in it together.”
Although we’re able to use social media to communicate with and meet others with similar interests, displaying our talents, network and share photos with loved ones, it’s important to recognize there can be a dark side to using it. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s story can help others pay closer attention to the way they approach the various social media platforms, and discover how they can adjust their focus for the better.
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