Your attention has been stolen
Take 30 seconds to reflect on the following question:
How have algorithmically-driven social platforms and digital devices impacted your attention?
Did you reflect for the full 30 seconds? Or did a notification jolt you back into reality?
The crisis of our attention is well-documented. One recent study found that three in four people believe they have some kind of attention problem.
Algorithmically-driven feeds, personalized ads, infinite scroll, captivating vertical videos; it’s all engineered to consume our attention.
But what if Big Tech has fixated on a too-narrow definition of attention? What if a more expansive understanding of attention could help us reclaim our agency and recenter our awareness?
In this newsletter, we trace the historical roots of attention, uncover how it has been measured to build the attention economy, and explore the future of focus in a digital world.
// The history of attention research
Discussions of our attention span date back at least to Jane Austen, when authors during the 18th and 19th centuries feared that the boom of print media would distract readers from standard novellas.
Austen’s description of Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice included a quip about how the character’s attention span was so short she could only listen for “half-a-minute.”
What began as a literary observation would soon become a scientific pursuit.
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A study from the 1890s by American Psychologist James Cattell measured attention span by how many flashing letters a subject could remember. But the study had an issue: It confused memory for attention, setting into effect a flawed basis for measurement that became the basis for measuring attention in the attention economy.
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During World War II, researchers studied the attention of air force radar operators who scanned the English Channel for German U-boats. Scientists measured participants’ attention using response time to on-screen stimuli and the duration of sustained attention. This understanding of attention, too, was flawed; it reduced attention to something that could be quantified, measured, and optimized.
// The rise of the attention economy
As computing advanced, mechanistic attention became foundational to the design of digital interfaces: Engagement could be measured and optimized, and digital platforms built algorithms to extract and monetize attention at scale.
In past newsletters, we’ve explored how social media platforms are optimized for this computational attention. Internal documents unsealed in 2025 revealed that Meta employees described Instagram as "a drug…we're basically pushers," while TikTok researchers acknowledged that "minors do not have executive mental function to control their screen time.”
But modern AI systems go further than social media; they represent the most sophisticated evolution of mechanistic attention to date. Unlike earlier platforms that relied on features like autoplay and infinite scroll to capture attention, AI chatbots optimize for attention by producing fluent, responsive language that mirrors human conversational patterns.
A recent Harvard Business School study of AI companion apps found that 37% of chatbot farewells used emotionally charged responses at the moment a user signaled they were ready to exit, a design choice shown to significantly extend engagement beyond the intended end of a conversation.
// Redefining attention
A mechanistic understanding of attention ignores the depth, meaning, and potential for beauty in what humans choose to pay attention to.
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Twentieth-century French political activist Simone Weil emphasized that attention should be rooted in love and care, arguing that the most authentic human values result from paying attention.
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Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing argues that the attention economy strips away the value of presence and that true attention is an act of resistance and agency, a way to be fully alive in the world.
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James Williams, a former Google strategist and Oxford philosopher, wrote a book outlining three types of attention, which he calls “lights:”
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The attention of doing (daily functioning).
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The attention of being (life goals, sense of self-direction).
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The attention of knowing (self-reflection, contemplation).
The attention economy interrupts all three. Even today’s language around the decline of our attention has become rooted in ideas of possession and conquest: Our attention is first protected, and then it’s captured, stolen, divided, and lost.
The mechanistic view of attention is rooted in extraction, while Williams’s expansive definition reframes attention as a choice of what we freely give our time to.
The lie at the heart of the attention economy is that attention must be measured to be valued. Yet, the value comes from what we decide matters. Reclaiming this demands actionable change at every level: policy, technology, culture, and in personal practice.
// What's being done to reclaim attention
While the grip of the attention economy is strong, it is not unbreakable. Here are a few ways people, organizations, policy-makers, and movements are fighting to reclaim and protect the right to attention.
Policy and Regulations
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The EU Artificial Intelligence Act prohibits certain AI systems that use subliminal, manipulative, or deceptive techniques to optimize for attention.
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In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into companies with AI companion chatbots, citing concerns for the well-being of child and teen users. There’s also momentum swelling in state legislatures across the country to rein in addictive chatbots and AI companions (after tragic stories like the case of Sewell Setzer, which led to settlements).
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The AI Lead Act, which proposed product liability standards for AI systems, is one example of classifying AI tools as products, opening them up to liability for defective design.
Phone Free Schools
By the end of 2025, 26 states had passed phone-free legislation. So far the results speak for themselves:
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Data from Florida showed increases in test scores and school attendance when smartphones were removed as a distraction.
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In a nationwide survey, 20,000 educators reported that stricter policies or bans on cellphones increased classroom focus.
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KIPP NYC College Prep saw a 50% increase in after-school activity attendance. Students were choosing in-person activities after the school day, even when they could use their mobile devices again.
The attention movement
Project Liberty Alliance organization, Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), is on a mission to help you reclaim your attention.
The education initiative, driven by the Friends of Attention coalition, is a group of self-proclaimed "attention activists" working to restore a broader understanding of what attention means. In a recent New York Times article, three members of this movement, D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt, frame the challenges ahead:
“Call it attention activism or even, as we have come to think of it, a new politics of ‘attensity.’ This promises to be one of the central challenges of the decade ahead, an emergent movement for well-being, justice and flourishing. For freedom.”
At SoRA, individuals can attend a wide range of seminars, from ambient music and radical imagination to reclaiming attention as activism.
At NYU, Professor Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Anxious Generation, teaches a course called Flourishing. The course is built around how to reclaim your focus and channel energy into things that directly nourish your personal and professional ability to flourish (watch a clip from Haidt on a recent edition of the Hard Fork podcast here).
// The right to pay attention
The great irony is that the attention economy, now powered by AI, is reducing our capacity to notice, care, and connect. A more expansive understanding of attention has been replaced with a more mechanistic one. Our three-dimensional attentional qualities are being flattened into two dimensions.
But there are forces for good fighting back. Phone-free schools, humane technology initiatives, policy reforms, and attention advocates are all reclaiming what was lost.
And for individuals, there are many ways to curate your relationship with technology, such as taking space from your devices, being aware of how you’re engaging with AI, questioning the algorithm, switching off autoplay features, or turning your phone to greyscale mode. All of these practices contribute to a much more intentional use of time.
As The New York Times article written by the Friends of Attention describes, true attention, freely given, is "much more expansive and beautiful than a tool for filtering information." Our attention belongs to us, and its value lies in recognizing the agency each of us has in choosing where we place it.
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