On the contrary, he's just saying that conscious is not an irreducible phenomenon like some of his philosophical contemporaries believe. There's still a lot to learn about the reduction. In fact, his is the less lazy way out, because how consciousness reduces to physical laws is completely unknown, but if you take consciousness as irreducible in some way, then you have nothing else to explain: consciousness just is.
Of course, what they really need to do is put their phone away and actually focus on, you know, nothing.
One of the favourite analogies I've seen uses is that of a series of boats racing down the river. Normally you're on one, and you might move from boat to boat. Mindfulness meditation is stepping off onto the shore and paying attention to the boats racing past.
"Focusing on nothing" is concentration practice. You need a degree of concentration practice to calm your mind enough for mindfulness meditation, but mindfulness meditation itself is not a concentration practice, but an insight pratice.
To me his perspective seems a lot like our primitive ancestors looking at the stars and calling them holes poked in the sky--case closed. But you don't have to believe in a soul or anything like that to suspect that there's something significant about self-awareness that we haven't figured out yet. I feel like Dennett is the odd man out here. I suppose we'll have to wait and see if anyone can prove him wrong.