Every company wants our attention. Phones buzz, videos autoplay, headlines become more sensational. Is attention becoming the world’s most valuable resource?
The Attention Economy
Since the dawn of time – or at least since someone first traded a shiny rock for a slightly shinier one – companies have been locked in fierce, unrelenting combat for our money.
These days they’re after something far more valuable: our attention. Money can only be spent once. Attention can be captured every waking moment.
Every app wants it. Every news outlet demands it. Every streaming service insists it has “just one more episode” you’ll love. Even my refrigerator occasionally beeps with an urgency suggesting civilisation may collapse if I don’t investigate immediately.
Attention has become the currency of the digital age
The business model is deceptively simple. The longer they can keep our eyes on a screen, the more advertisements they can show us, the more data they can collect, and the more profit they can make. Success is measured not by how informed, entertained or enlightened we become, but by how difficult it is to leave.
This has created an arms race unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Headlines are crafted to provoke outrage before understanding. Social media algorithms quickly discover what makes us laugh, what makes us angry, and what keeps us scrolling. They don’t necessarily show us what matters most; they show us what we’re least likely to ignore.
It is no accident that outrage spreads faster than moderation. A headline reading, “Scientists continue careful research into climate patterns,” struggles to compete with, “You’ll never believe what they’re hiding from you!” One informs. The other hijacks curiosity.
Politicians have learnt the same lesson. Substance is useful, but spectacle travels faster. Why release a well-considered policy paper when an inflammatory remark can dominate the news cycle for days? In the attention economy, volume often defeats value.
Even our conversations have changed. We now apologise for replying to a text after three hours, as though we had been missing in the Himalayas rather than mowing the lawn.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that while technology promised to save us time, many of us spend those saved minutes watching strangers organise their pantry on TikTok.
The cost is not simply distraction.
Constant interruptions make sustained concentration increasingly difficult. Reading a book, thinking deeply about a problem or simply allowing our minds to wander have become almost acts of quiet rebellion. Every notification says, “Stop what you’re doing. This is more important.” Most aren’t.
Children are growing up in an environment where entertainment is instantaneous and endless. Adults aren’t coping much better. Many of us instinctively reach for our phones during the briefest moments of silence – as if waiting in a queue for two minutes now constitutes solitary confinement.
None of this is accidental
Some of the brightest psychologists, behavioural scientists and software engineers in the world are employed not to improve our wellbeing, but to increase “engagement.” That’s a polite corporate word meaning, “How do we persuade people to stay just a little longer?”
Of course, technology itself isn’t the villain. The internet has democratised knowledge, connected distant families, empowered independent media and given ordinary people a voice that once belonged almost exclusively to powerful institutions.
The challenge lies in remembering who should be in control.
Attention is one of the few resources that can never be replenished. Once a minute has passed, it belongs permanently to history. We guard our wallets with surprising diligence, yet many of us hand over hours of our lives without giving it a second thought.
Perhaps that’s the real question.
If attention is the world’s most valuable resource, who is spending yours?
And more importantly, are you getting a fair return on the investment?
If this article interrupted a video of someone teaching a golden retriever to play the piano, I apologise. Actually… no, I don’t.
Keep Independent Journalism Alive – Support The AIMN
Dear Reader,
Since 2013, The Australian Independent Media Network has been a fearless independent voice – holding power to account and delivering journalism that matters.
Running this site isn’t cheap. Rising costs mean we need your support now more than ever. Every donation, big or small, keeps our servers running, our writers working, and our stories free for everyone.
Donate here:
PayPal or credit card – just click on the Donate button below
Direct bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
We’ve also set up a GoFundMe as a dedicated reserve fund for hosting and future improvements.
Thank you for standing with us. We couldn’t do this without you.
With gratitude,
The AIMN Team
Good piece there…oops, text message from “Want to See a Funny Gnu” informing me that there is video of a gnu wearing a French beret…now I forgot what I was going to say.
The last time I travelled on a train, ALL the others were face down in little screens, Why? What was achieved and what resulted? They looked “dead” and had no energy or purpose seemingly. Is this life from now?
Oh dear, an excellent article explaining another good reason for me to give up my screen addiction and become addicted to running around the block …. or some other active distraction from retirement that will improve my physical health, too long ignored while busy dealing with life.
Thank you, All, for your praise.
Not being one to brag, and being a modest chap… I must admit it was rather outstanding.
For GL, once long ago, some elephants were watching StySky newsless, and after a glance around the plains, one said to another, ” That’s the end of the Gnus.., here come the head lions again.”
On a slightly different note, as is my preference, I recall a teacher of the secret knowledge once saying to the assembled: “practice attention, it will take you all the way.”
It’s not actually that mysterious. I suspect since Adam was a boy that teachers and searchers have been following the same creed. There’s an aide-memoire that suggests that attention can be thought of as a stick with two ends, one facing out & away, the other towards. We naturally give away attention to the exterior, and generally give little towards the interior. The instruction is that you can learn to divide the attention such that each is given equal weight, and it is in this practice that the magical may begin to unfold.
It ain’t easy. Life is designed such that we are continuallly caught by what is noted by our senses. This is natural, for we are mammals and this is our normal state. But the human is, obviously, a mammal unlike any other, hence the possibilities of rarified development.
Not for no reason is it said in the Bible that many are called, but few are chosen.
I’ve thought at times that Steve Jobs has handed humanity an extraordinary challenge with his invention of the smartphone. It’s such a beguiling tool, as Phil Pryor noted, whole carriages filled with people transfixed on their screens, streets awash with hordes staring at their phones, oblivious to anything else, their lives, others, sunshine, birds and sounds… lost in their phones, mindless, scrolling, flick, flick, flick, so sad.
“For GL, once long ago, some elephants were watching StySky newsless, and after a glance around the plains, one said to another, ” That’s the end of the Gnus.., here come the head lions again.””
Groan, but in a good way. 😊
“Some of the brightest psychologists, behavioural scientists and software engineers in the world are employed not to improve our wellbeing, but to increase “engagement.” That’s a polite corporate word meaning, “How do we persuade people to stay just a little longer?”
It’s an abject betrayal of what psychology is meant to be, life enhancing, not destructive.