Giving the attention economy the attention it deserves

Giving the attention economy the attention it deserves

1. Dear lawmakers,
2. I’m writing today to ask you to protect our rights to focus and privacy, two issues that have become interwoven thanks to the attention economy. It’s time to put a stop to the harms of the attention economy!

The attention economy

3. What’s the attention economy, you ask? Well, it’s when companies that own websites or apps make money by selling our attention and personal data. Many people say this is a serious problem with social media companies. These companies look at and record what keeps us scrolling. Then, they sell that information to advertisers. This helps the advertisers make more money, because that information shows what we like and look at for a long time. Having this information helps advertisers design ads that capture our attention, in the hopes that we’ll buy the things they’re advertising.
4. Social media companies also use our information to come up with new ways to keep our eyes glued to the screen. They show us more and more of the things that we click on or look at for a long time, so that we’ll spend longer and longer on their websites. And the more time we spend on their websites, the more they learn about us, and the more they can sell our information to advertisers. These companies may offer their websites for free, but that’s because we are actually the product they’re selling.

Social media companies interrupt our abilities to focus

5. The more time we look at their websites, the more money social media companies make. So, these companies want to make sure that we keep our attention on their sites, rather than on the world around us. Many use a process called “brain hacking.” “Brain hacking” involves using psychology to design new ways to attract and keep our attention.
6. Research shows that brain hacking can make it harder and harder for people to focus on things like school work, friends, or family. And when our focus is constantly interrupted, important thinking skills like memory and decision-making also get worse. But the attention economy means that many social media companies’ bottom lines are tied to interrupting our focus. This is a huge problem with the attention economy. We shouldn’t allow social media companies to destroy our ability to focus!

Social media companies make privacy hard to come by

7. All that time that we spend on those websites is recorded in great detail. This helps social media companies and advertisers learn more about what makes us keep looking, clicking, and buying. This is a serious privacy issue. And these companies want to keep kids’ data forever! In her book The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media, Kate Eichhorn looks at how this lack of privacy affects kids. She worries that children growing up with social media are becoming stuck in their past identities. She says that kids and teens are supposed to try new things to learn from them. But it’s hard to try anything new when you might get recorded and remembered for your actions forever.

A hope for the future

8. Eichhorn argues that we should have the right to forget and be forgotten. This allows us to shape who we’ll be in the future. And focus is key to deeply thinking about who we want to be. However, right now our attention and information is making social media companies billions of dollars. They have no reason to want us to be able to maintain our focus or privacy. That’s why we look to you, the people responsible for making our laws, to protect us from the attention economy.
9. Sincerely,

A concerned citizen