The race for attention is nothing new. People like being noticed and they being paid attention to. This has been true since before history was recorded. What is new, is that the race for attention is now being fought virtually by tech companies. Our mobile devices now demand more of our attention than we ever demanded or tried to achieve from other people. Our time is being spent not with people, but with our phones as we check our notifications, social media posts and play online games.
Tristan Harris in his TED talk “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day” mentions how that race for attention is changing our world, our conversations and our relationships including how we want to have them. I completely agree. People no longer know how to talk to anyone else unless it is through a device. The art of conversation is starting to disappear.
It is not rare to go to dinner with friends and have everyone get their phones out after the food is ordered and check in with social media, notifications, emails, texts, etc. People are addicted to checking their notifications, checking their email and making sure they are “not missing anything” when in fact, they are missing IRL (in real life) interaction.
Most people joke that “Google owns me” but it is not really a joke. Mark Stone wrote in a Techvibes article “ Google Owns You. But You Already Knew That, Right?” describing just how much of our personal information Google owns. The other tech companies are no different.
People have become complacent about lack of online data privacy and the amount of time and effort social media demands. This complacency is creating a vicious cycle where tech companies are becoming more and more persuasive and learning better techniques so that we will give them more of our attention. As we give them attention we have less attention for our IRL.
Tristan Harris proclaims that “we need new models and accountability systems. So that as the world gets better and more and more persuasive over time” the “goals of the persuader must align with the goals of the persuadee” and be accountable and transparent to what we want. We need to lose our complacency and group together to demand those new models and accountability. It is not ok to lose ourselves to the virtual world at the expense of our relationships in the real world.
What are your thoughts on the race for attention? Do think people understand the amount of time they spend online?