Attention Economy

• It’s a business sector that makes money gathering consumers attention, repackaging and reselling it to advertisers.
• The attention merchants
• extracting eyeball minutes has become more lucrative than extracting oil
• smartphones have played a key role since they people were convinced to look at their phones a lot
• critical use is a problem for the digital attention economy
  • users should not be restricting their exposure to social media consciously
  • Facebook researchers claim social media poses mental health but using it more can help
• Tipps to survive
  • Use social media like a professional
    • try to extract large amounts of value for professional and personal life, while avoiding much of the low-value distraction these services deploy to lure users into compulsive behaviours
      • e.g. thresholding (only see tweets with 50 likes or retweets)
  • Embrace Slow Media
    • it’s a general commitment to maximize the quality of what you consume and the conditions under which you consume it
    • consume media with a mindset of slowness
      • limit your attention to the best of the best
      • small amount of high-quality offerings is usually superiour to a larger amount of low-quality
      • isolate news consumption
        • try to ritualize it by chosing a location that will support you in giving your full attention to the reading
        • download articles in advance (learn to use getpocket wisely)

Resources

• 2023-05-16 ◦ Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen | Psychology | The Guardian