The term “attention economy” may be unfamiliar. Maybe another term means more: “influencer.”
In the electronic and digital age, influencers abound. Some are individuals who write blogs like me. Some publish newsletters, record podcasts, produce YouTube and TikTok videos and post on social media. All search for likes, comments and followers.
Every time we look at small screens and smartphones, influencers assail us. The result is an attention economy that is victimizing us.
It doesn’t stop at influencers. The attention economy is filled with electronic newsfeeds and opinion pieces disguised as news. Then there are the malevolent spreaders of disinformation and conspiracy theories that use all of the above to influence us.
Finally, if that isn’t enough, we get assailed by advertising disguised as content.
Software algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) today grab our attention, our eyeballs, and in the process take our eye off the ball.
Free is the Opiod of the Attention Economy
The Internet provides a free digital information zone enabled by search engines, streaming services, social media and AIs. Yes, there is information behind paywalls. But that represents a tiny percentage of the total content generated daily.
Now, when someone offers you something for free, consider it may be a trap. Computer security folks create traps they call honeypots. They are designed to lure bad actors on the Internet. The honeypots that attract most of us, that draw us like bees to the hive, aim to entrap us for our data. Once trapped, algorithms take over that invite us to click, view, and comment. We hand over our personal contact information and soon see a filled e-mail inbox. Our search intentions get lost in translation.
Meanwhile, our online behaviour gets stored as data and sold to target advertisers who then grab our attention by feeding us even more distractions.
It is a wonder that any real work gets done online today.
Information Overload Defined
A term synonymous with this current online phenomenon is “information overload.” Herbert A. Simon, Professor of Computer Science and Psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University, was possibly the first to coin the phrase in an address given at Johns Hopkins University in 1969. He described the consequences of an information-rich world, stating:
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
Attention Economics Defined
Maxi Heitmayer appears to have been the first person to coin the term “attention economics.” In an article appearing in 2024 in the journal Interacting with Computers, Heitmayer defines the term and describes the current poverty of attention that defines who we are today. He notes how the purveyors of online information assign dollars to every captured identity, click, view and comment. In other words, they see dollar signs coming from distraction. There is competition among purveyors of the attention economy to control audiences and the information fed to them.
The attention economy is a drag on productivity. In a 2019 article published by the World Economic Forum, it states that each time someone in the workplace checks their smartphone in response to a ping, it takes over 23 minutes to regain focus on the work at hand.
The article refers to a McKinsey & Company report that states high-skilled workers spend 28% of their workday reading and replying to emails.
These are the rabbit holes of the attention economy. The time lost is staggering.
We kid ourselves when we describe the modern workplace as a multitasking environment. A better description is a workforce of the distracted.
How to Beat the Distractions of the Attention Economy
Back in 1997, when I was working for a large software company, every Wednesday afternoon the e-mail servers were turned off. That meant we couldn’t receive or send e-mail. The company encouraged us to call our clients or make face-to-face meetings.
Disengaging from smartphones, social media and newsfeeds today may be a hard sell, but it would be the equivalent of the strategy described above.
What other actions can beat the drag exerted by the attention economy on our brains and the workplace?
Reclaim Attention
Self-control is the operative word. Change the work environment by putting the smartphone aside. If you need it for work, then remove the non-business and non-essential apps. Disable non-essential feeds and notifications. Save all of these for your home computer.
At home, turn off your smartphone before going to bed. Keep it away from the dinner table. Limit your smartphone use time. Schedule reading instead of looking at screens.
Share the Fight
Create a family and community behaviour around smartphone and social media use. Resistance gets easier when shared.
Make meal time phone-free. Make meetings with friends and family phone-free. In your family, lead by example. Teach your children media literacy and time management.
Get a hobby or join clubs and other organized activities and groups that don’t involve small screen viewing. Read books, newspapers and magazines, not just newsfeeds.
Engage in Public Awareness Advocacy
Addressing the attention economy at work and home is not enough. Share your concerns to create public awareness, and engage governments about the dangers that the attention economy exerts on all of us.
It is hard to put the Internet and World Wide Web in a bag. Nor can we put an end to social media. What can be done, however, is alter the business practices of the purveyors of attention economics through regulation, legislation and the courts.
We can restrict honeypot usage associated with personal data collection. We can restrict what data can be harvested and its duration during engagements. We can restrict associated behavioural advertising that pops up in response to clicks and form filling.
We can hold social media developers to account for designs aimed at entrapping young people and other vulnerable populations.
We can call on governments to draft legislation to outlaw manipulative algorithms and restrict AI development to ensure these technologies operate within guardrails that no longer rob us of initiative and that end our growing addiction to technologies that rob us of us.
Create an Information Culture and Not One Based on Volume of Content
According to the IDC, the Internet adds more than 600 million Terabytes of data to it daily. Daily traffic amounts to approximately 600 exabytes. Volume of content doesn’t equal quality of knowledge. It doesn’t equate with wisdom, judgment, and creativity.
To create an information culture, you need to create reliable online and offline resources. Information needs to be vetted responsibly by knowledge experts. Infomration needs to be ubiquitous. Reliable, authoritative information can help guide decision-making.
An information culture isn’t driven by its technology, but rather is the driver and inventor of it.
Somehow, after inventing the Internet and World Wide Web, we lost our way.
Maybe the blame lies with the invention of social media. Maybe that was the beginning of our descent down the rabbit hole, taking us from an information economy to an attention economy.
The important future steps needed can get us back to a valued, shareable information repository and a global means of instant communication to help humanity face the many pressing challenges of the 21st century.
