The Attention Economy

bywest2000

3.2K followers

9 months ago

Hi WA Friends,

Recently, I was reading an article that I thought might be worth sharing. It had to do with reclaiming ours and our children’s attention spans.

Being that most of us probably use different social media platforms to market our websites, it drove home another side of this technology that is so ever-present but rarely gets attention (pardon the pun).

It has to do with the fact that tech companies view our attention as a commodity. In other words, if you’re not paying for something, you ARE the product.

We often think that we are in control of our own lives, but one could argue that we are not any longer…at least if you are online or on social media.

It’s staggering to see the statistics of how much time people spend on social media platforms on average. It is addictive and a necessary tool to promote business.

Handing your attention over to these companies is driving an enormously prosperous business model and driving shareholder value into the stratosphere. But at what cost?

Attention is a limited resource. Because tech companies know this, they have developed crafty measures to ensure they gain as much of it as possible. By grabbing more of your attention, they can sell it to advertisers. But, they can also sell it to organizations or entities that want you to do or think something in particular.

The Attention Economy

This business of viewing human attention as a scarce commodity to be sold to the highest bidder is sometimes called the “attention economy.”

And every social media app is a race to grab as much of yours and your children’s as possible. Getting people hooked is the goal. And children may be the viewed as their most valuable “product.”

But if you look around, you see more and more people constantly distracted by their phones and apps.

Designed to be addictive, those apps grab your attention via push notifications, unpredictability and variable rewards. The dopamine hit drives behavior to just have more. How many times have you been with someone who must check their phones the absolute second they hear a ping or feel a vibration?

Clever algorithms, recommendations and infinite scrolls just add to the magic of playing with your attention. This massive driver for social media has shown that young children are more depressed, lonely and disconnected than ever.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t seen The Social Dilemma, you may want to…especially if you have children. It really breaks down how all this is designed to control our attention spans and influence behavior.

In the long run, more time needs to be considered as to the long-term effects of where this is going and how we as humans, want to spend our attention.

Just put down that phone and have a real one-on-one conversation for a change. You may be surprised at the uplifting benefits!

Enjoy the rest of your day!

-Susan

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