The Hidden Cost of Free Content

The True Price of the Attention Economy

In the attention economy, every notification is a land grab for your mind.

So what’s the real cost of endless content?

We live in the age of the attention economy, where our mental real estate is constantly under siege. Every notification, every autoplay video, every infinite scroll is a deliberate attempt to claim a piece of our most precious resource: our attention.

But what’s the real price of a free buffet of content and connectivity? Are we unknowingly mortgaging our cognitive capabilities, our mental wellbeing, and even our democracy?

The Evolution of Media Economics

The concept of trading attention for content isn’t new. It’s as old as media itself. Newspapers, radio, and television all operated on a similar principle: provide engaging content to capture eyeballs, then sell those eyeballs to advertisers.

But something changed with the advent of the internet and, more specifically, social media. The scale, precision, and intensity of attention capture reached new and unprecedentedly fucked up levels. Suddenly, every idle moment became an opportunity for engagement. The space between tasks, the lulls in conversation, even our most private moments…