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We need to reclaim our attention

theguardian.com

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Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#41

Post by krapp »

wrnr wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #8

There is a veritable war going on for your attention, and the battlefields are your eyeballs, your ears and ultimately your brain. Psychologists have been enlisted, as they are in every war to try to win it for 'their side', be it one of the big silos or some dying TV or newspaper era behemoth, there is no reasonable way in which you can withstand that kind of frontal onslaught. The only way to really deal with this…

The entire way the old media reports on the new media is unironical scaremongering about how the internet is hacking the fear response of your amygdala. They should instead be positive and publish articles like "Here are 10 youtube channels that go into more depth that the master program of any university".

But the internet is hacking your amygdala, and has been for years. Most of the information and stimulus you come across on the internet is designed to manipulate you, deceive you and control you in some way, and it works. This has real ramifications at scale, as the spread of disinformation and violence enabled by social media has shown us.

This isn't unironical scaremongering, it's a real thing and it is newsworthy. "Here are 10 youtube channels that go into more depth that the master program of any university" is exactly the kind of clickbait garbage people wish the media would do less of.

Also, the "old media" no longer really exists, it lost its identity and was assimilated long ago. Every media outlet that exists is deeply invested in the web, everyone is "new media" now.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#42

Post by slibhb »

> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky.

I agree with them.

It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mistake is thinking that the ability to concentrate on something non-entertaining is the baseline. One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake.

We had the same anxieties about radio and TV. Those anxieties were right and wrong. Technologies do change how people behave but it's always the same story. There will be entertainment freely available and you'll have to choose to concentrate on things that aren't entertaining that you consider worthwhile.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#43

Post by wott »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #10

The problem isn't as much that social media is addictive. The issue is that people aren't happy with their other options of what to do. If you have a draining job and don't have energy to put into a hobby, or you don't have lots of friends to hang out with, you're much more likely to waste time on something addictive.

> if you have a draining job and don't have energy

Never in modern times have we worked less. It is not that much the 7 or 8 hours of not-quite-daily work which make us tired, it is that on top of it come the 2 or 3 hours of not-really-interesting-but-designed-for-addiction serials watching, the 1 hour of news article browsing, the 2 hours of reading and sometimes writing hundreds of comments about what makes us rage on whichever form of forum or social media or newspaper comment section, the 1 hour on social media of keeping-connected-with-family-and-friends you wouldn't have cared about before, the 1 hour of wanking off to the hundreds of thousands of hours of free porn available in 1 click while you would never have bought a porn magazine before, the 1 hour of browsing online shops for stuff you don't really need of for which you could just have bought the first item at your supermarket without spending hours of research to get the very best one or to save 10 cents.

For most people, at least half of this time spent connected to Internet would have been free 15-20 years go. Free to cook, free to rest, free to read, free to get bored, free to do something a bit more productive or interesting than indulging into one's vices or immediately yet falsely rewarding consumption, which is what the new Internet-backed face of consumerist capitalism excels at providing.

A lot of Internet leisure now occupies many hours a day, and gets placed at the same level as work and duties, instead of being considered as one way of occupying one's free time, so now the free time seems to be only starting after all this leisure consumption has be done, thus it appears extremely reduced.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#44

Post by telxosser »

jmfldn wrote: post #2

This for me is key, these sorts of problems cannot just be solved on an individual level. They are systemic. "Individual abstinence is “not the solution, for the same reason that wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution. It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues.” He said that our attentio…

I just don't agree really. That analogy is pretty absurd.

It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level.

I know so much more than what I knew in early January 2021 because I spend my time reading books, doing tutorials or taking MOOCS instead of wasting my time watching TikTok. I literally don't even know what the user interface to TikTok looks like and never will.

If anything the exact problem is people are giving up agency at the individual level. As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. That implies then that it is not your fault that you check your phone or txt while driving.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#45

Post by mypastself »

sascha_sl wrote: post #13
mypastself wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except I have no choice but to walk through an area which might be polluted. I do have a choice to not read news sites for four hours a day. The article fails to define both the problem and the solution. How exactly this “attention theft” causes significant negative societary consequences is defined extremely vaguely, and almost exclusively through personal anecdotes. The offered solutions, forcing employers to respe…

"Choice" really needs to be well-defined here. We know you can influence people to change their behavior because we invented the term "attention hacking". Sheer willpower will not overcome this on anything but an individual level. And just like obesity has other dependents like the cost of food, there is also cost/disincentives to "disconnecting". Social interaction is almost exclusively happening online now, especia…

The article describes a far broader group of culprits than just social media. However, the author only calls for forcing social media companies to change their business models and not, say, news sites that publish articles trigger-happy about declaring crises and emergencies.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#46

Post by optimalsolver »

I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization, the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource. And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#47

Post by jacquesm »

mypastself wrote: post #45
sascha_sl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Choice" really needs to be well-defined here. We know you can influence people to change their behavior because we invented the term "attention hacking". Sheer willpower will not overcome this on anything but an individual level. And just like obesity has other dependents like the cost of food, there is also cost/disincentives to "disconnecting". Social interaction is almost exclusively happening online now, especia…

The article describes a far broader group of culprits than just social media. However, the author only calls for forcing social media companies to change their business models and not, say, news sites that publish articles trigger-happy about declaring crises and emergencies.

And they never will. There is just too much money in it. That's why ultimately the responsibility lies with us.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#48

Post by batch12 »

jacquesm wrote: post #8

There is a veritable war going on for your attention, and the battlefields are your eyeballs, your ears and ultimately your brain. Psychologists have been enlisted, as they are in every war to try to win it for 'their side', be it one of the big silos or some dying TV or newspaper era behemoth, there is no reasonable way in which you can withstand that kind of frontal onslaught. The only way to really deal with this…

Yes. People talk about addiction to social media or other attention-farming software, but not many people really take it seriously. People think they are unicorns and while some can get addicted or manipulated-- they think "not me. I am too savvy." As long this issue just keeps getting shrugged off as a new version of tv-is-bad hysteria 'media' companies will keep making their dollars and enslaving the minds of the the unwitting willing.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#49

Post by jacquesm »

optimalsolver wrote: post #46

I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization, the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource. And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life.

> I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization

That may never happen.

> the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource

It doesn't have to wait for it to be last for that battle to get underway.

> And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life

Depending on where you live, you may already be there. It's the downside of the future not being equally distributed, you also get the downsides of that future early.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#50

Post by Enginerrrd »

dominotw wrote: post #33
radicalbyte wrote: post #18

My attention has collapsed in recent times, but it's not because of mobiles. It's because I have three young kids. You literally have to keep your eye on them at all times so you stop them killing themselves. Also, going from 8 hrs of sleep a night + 1 hr of intensive sport a day to 4-5 hrs of sleep a night and 1 hr of sport a year is an absolute mind killer. When I was younger I could never imagine going into manage…

> 1 hr of intensive sport a day to 1 hr of sport a year did you make this tradeoff by choice( vs religious reasons ect) . I've never been that active but you sound like someone who enjoyed sports and being active.

As a parent with a 3 and 4 year old who was only a functional adult if I worked out intensely at least 4 days per week, and now is struggling desperately to get that back, its not by choice. Children are just really demanding. I think a big part of the problem is that humans were not meant to raise children in isolated family units. You were meant to have a small village where they could go bother different adults and older children and learn from everyone to find a little niche for them, and everyone just kind of kept an eye on the kids so that the parents could do normal survival things like cook, work, and make.
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