What’s wrong with the attention economy?

Photo by Sandro Katalina on Unsplash

Read it first on my Substack

Scott Galloway recently published a piece on the evils of the attention economy. His primary complaint with the state of things is our one-track minds, our inability to critically consider multiple topics at once. He uses this point to swing through all the big stories of the past few weeks (Roe v. Wade, Ukraine, economic recession).

The past few weeks aren’t a great case for the point he’s making. We’ve been whipping from one catastrophic news cycle to another for days (months? years?), and it’s hard for even the most voracious news consumer to keep up.

But there’s more to the story here than our inability to multitask. Our collective attention has always zipped from topic to topic — there’s only so much room on the front page, and the news has historically given short shrift to long-term issues like climate change. Instead, the current attention crisis is one of speed and concentration. Both are increasing, and degrading news attention with them.

Attention speed

The speed of attention cycles largely lines up with our traditional conceptualization of attention span. Slow cycles allow us to ruminate on topics, to fully consider the weight and implications of serious issues over time. By contrast, a quick cycle encourages surface-level…