Your attention has been hacked. Here’s how to reclaim your brain
Life in the attention age is more anxious and more depressed, more isolated and less social. It cannot go on like this, right?
Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok all rely on the approach of slot machines to hold our attention. The “feed” moves like a slot machine, scrolling endlessly. Illustration: Rachael Bolton
It is hard these days to escape a pervasive sense of dread and doom, particularly online. The heady early days of Wired magazine in the 1990s, the era of internet triumphalism and blogging seem now like a fever dream or the cringe-inducing naïveté of youth.
When I was in my early twenties, I and so many of my cohort truly believed in the power of the internet to fundamentally alter the power dynamics of American political life. We were angry, sometimes despairing, but we also felt that, at least at a technological level, the future belonged to us. The old guard, the incumbents, couldn’t keep up with us. The wind was at our backs.
