Value of Our Time in the Attention Economy

These days, our attention has turned into the hottest commodity out there. Companies are no longer just selling products; they're selling our focus to advertisers. The more time we spend looking at stuff, the more cash flows around. We aren’t really the customers; we’re the products being sold. How do you even put a price on your time when someone’s cashing in on it without sharing a dime with you? When you find yourself scrolling for an hour, that time ends up raking in profits for platforms, advertisers, content creators, and data brokers. Everyone else gets paid while the person actually spending the time gets nothing. What’s even tougher is that the stuff designed to grab our attention tends to be pretty negative. People engage more with outrage than happiness. Scandals go viral way quicker than good news. So the whole ecosystem is set up to show us things that make us angry, scared, or nosy about other people's issues. We waste our mental energy on junk that doesn’t improve our lives, all while someone else gets richer off our attention. And how do we protect our focus the same way we protect our cash? Most folks keep a close eye on their spending but don't even realize how many hours a week they’re giving away for free to these platforms. There’s no statement for our attention. We just use it up until we feel totally drained, wondering why we haven’t accomplished anything. Some of us here are chatting about becoming financially independent and building wealth outside traditional avenues. But maybe becoming independent with our attention is just as crucial.

I'm not sure we're there yet, but the world is definitely headed that way and we wonder why things like ADHD are becoming more prevalent. It seems like every single social network / media company is trying to psychoanalyze us these days to understand what keeps us hooked, so they can bombard us with content that they'll intersperse with ads. However these companies while intertwined with many peoples daily lives, actually have a hard time becoming and staying profitable as people become wise. For a long time companies like Facebook and Reddit were barely breaking even while they mastered their tools to gamify us. I do fear for future generations who first had to contend with micro edits that create endless doom scrolling and now we enter the era of AI where people are not even thinking, just spurting out any conversation piece and asking AI to come up with the idea for them.

This is very difficult because nowadays you have to filter information. Back in the day, you had no need to do it. You'd get the most important news on the radio while going to work, or you'd buy the newspaper and the ads would be somewhere on the last page. Now ads are forced down your throat while you watch the news. They're even made to be louder than the rest of the feed, to make you wake up and pay attention even if all you want to do is shut them down because they're so stupid, loud and annoying. I'd like to cut myself completely from this brainwashing, but then there's the fear of missing something important, not being able to talk with friends. The typical casual conversation is all about the news. Everybody can see what the weather is, so right now you walk down the street, there's a neighbor and the main topic is something like: "have you heard they killed 80 people while trying to capture Maduro?" I just worry that after 20 years of reading this shit every day my brain will be overloaded

If you aren't making money why spend so much time online? So many young people waste precious time, filming their eyes on contents created to make money for people like them. And it's not even free. You spend so much on data or subscribing to premium sites just for fun. That's dump The earlier you realise that you are just a tool, for others to make their daily income, you will put your time to better usage. Make of the contents we have today are not even real. Soon we will no longer be able to differentiate Ai from reality because of how rapidly it's been adopted by such systems..

Sometimes I also waste some of my precious time just scrolling through my phone and watching a few real or short videos on social media. And without realizing it, sometimes I've been scrolling for more than half an hour. However, I rarely exceed that amount of time because I prefer to spend my time searching for information that I need. I even prefer to watch things that broaden my knowledge and motivate me to add skills to the list of abilities that I must master in this era. So basically, I never feel that all that time is wasted. Sometimes there are even reasons why I scroll through social media. First, sometimes I want to relax my mind or am simply curious about the activities of people I know, which can sometimes be entertaining for us. After that, I move on to more positive things. However, for those who cannot manage their time, this does need more attention. Time must be used as well and as effectively as possible. Time is more valuable than all the material wealth we possess.

The post agree precisely with a short video I just watch which says that "all people do now is to create hate and get paid". According to the video, people get the audience by creating hate and people will just jump into it because negative news spread faster and while we argue and fight, some people are cashing out big money. Indeed people spend most of their time glued to their phones consuming contents that add no real value to their lives. This is a real pandemic especially when we look at the data that says the average American spend about 5.4 hours daily in their smartphones.. This will be higher for countries with very high unemployment rates which is a makes it something of serious concern.

Nowadays, almost everyone has their own cell phone, and they're definitely connected to social media. Scrolling through short videos is something I think many people, including myself, have experienced. But I don't think it's a problem if what we watch has a positive side, like seeing the latest news, whether domestic or international. However, most people watch videos that have no benefit, and that's the real problem.

I read somewhere that when something is free, you're the product. The more time we spend online, the more they will entertain us without any money and create good feelings for us. And through this, they will instill negativity in people. That's why we should keep the online world under control. They will profit by controlling us through online and wasting our important time . Thanks to op for discussing such an important issue.

A perfectly correct observation. A lot of time is spent unnoticed scrolling through all sorts of news or just entertainment feeds, channels. When I began to notice this, I immediately reduced the number of subscriptions. Now I'm looking at just a few sources. Moreover, there is a lot of AI-generated content right now, and it's mostly just informational garbage (hallucinations, platitudes, and just verbal water). It's just stupid to waste your time on this.

It is not all content on social media that is a waste of time. Some of them are entertaining, educating and motivating. In some cases, it is not a waste of financial resources or time.  This is a sad reality. This is why people prefer to create content from those who need help, like accident victims, rather than to offer assistance. Bad news sells faster than positive information. The world is sick.    It becomes a problem when someone becomes addicted to these platforms. I have a timetable where I allocate specific time to different activities. Productive activities take more of my time.

I think we're pretty much aware of this. That these content creators, platforms, influencers are making tons of money online, thanks to us—users. But since we're in the generation where almost everyone has their phone, and people rely a lot on the internet, it's really inevitable that we became the product. At the end of the day, we enjoy using their platforms or watching their contents. And in return, they get money from ads or monetizing their contents. The only thing I don't like about this is how contents are becoming more low quality with no real lessons or anything you can get from it. And some creators are heavily relying on their content income that they're willing to do anything for money even if it means harming or disturbing other people.

Really the sad reality, wasting precious time is now very rampant..people watching other people streaming their whole life, the other party wastes their time, money and resources while the other earn from the other people’s attention. Some people are aware of this while some others don’t care to know and they keep wasting their time in the claim of having fun nevertheless content creators, streamers and others benefit from this  We need to learn how to value our time and attention for our own sake, but it’s somehow good to some people because they’ve earn a livelihood from our attention.

when it comes to this, we must accept the fact that we are the ones that are capable of influencing what we choose to do with our time and are in the best position to decide if what we want to do with our time is to surf the net all through and feed our dopamine while neglecting real issues of life. you can not request for a closure of all social media platform which is the major time killer because as it stands, it has come to stay. The only way you can give value to your time is to decide that you are going to do this this and this and that you are not going to do this, this and this. if you do not decide what to do with your time, then, everything that comes your way will just go that way and you become a victim of time wasters because they are everywhere around you.

It's all about entertainment and that's what people is looking for nowadays. They're looking to relieve their stress and one of it is through social media. While these social media platforms offering free membership but as we know, the members are their products that are being sold to the advertisers. It's a win for them that they get people to sign up for free and they're giving them the entertainment through its various features like chat, calls and all are for free while the users are being pitched to the advertisers. And they all have it categorized in different niches and personal preferences so, it's easier for them to sell it to the advertisers for target markets.

I do believe that we are in this attention grabbing type of thing to make sure that you align with one thing and not take another. There are a lot of tools, practical tools, that would help a person have to balance attention and it's within your palms reach, with the smart phone. I think it's best to practice this skill on your own and evaluate how much is affecting your attention and how the advertisers affect you. I guess it's best to be mindful of yourself and really value the thing that you have.

Once upon a time, incredible sculptures and enormous architectural structures were created to capture people's attention for a short time, as were large, beautiful paintings that have now become expensive works of art. Now, as you correctly noted, attention is being vying for with absolutely idiotic content. Often, this is low-quality AI content or shocking advertisements that begin with provocative words. When we hear them, we turn to the TV and that's it. This is infuriating, and is rightly called information garbage or information noise.

That's more than a fact. If you are using anything free, know that you are the product and that product is a very expensive one. If you are using any product online and it doesn't cost you money, it's you that is been used as an exchange for it, your data is personalized and sold to big companies. Look at how Google is making huge amount of money from us, many companies have taken our data from Google and even resold to other companies because go what? Free service. This AI things in seeing online that people are using, upload their real image to get a 4K sophisticated image after just because they are free, they don't know there is nothing free in this world. Some people use prompt and command and ask AI to delete anything they upload to the sever and the AI will respond it has deleted the image but I'm very certain that the image is still in their server, just that it might not be accessible from outside, nothing is free.

Whatever the circumstances of life every person is in search of peace because due to heavy workload a person becomes mentally disturbed due to which he seeks peace in life.Somewhere or the other it is our own fault because we ourselves have changed the way of life due to which due to high expenses a person works more and loses peace of mind.To solve this people have preferred social media because scrolling distracts the mind because what we see for free others profit from it because people have started working mostly on social media which also reduces mental stress and increases profit.

I think many of us experience this too. And many of us here also prefer to seek information to broaden our knowledge rather than watch short videos that contain more entertainment content without any educational value. But doing so occasionally is fine. Because our brains also need a little entertainment sometimes. As long as we don't do it for a relatively long period of time, because that's not good at all. Time should be used wisely, and we should also be productive. This means we should use our time to become productive individuals. By the way, enjoying the time we have is actually a good investment. Because sometimes people are too busy with work and forget how to enjoy the time they have.

that is true though, but in this case i think we as humans have to make decision on what and what not to partake in, including things that would add and not add value to our lives. i believe that we can not measure time or the amount we spend on time, but we can chose what to spend our time on. like me i usually chose the to watch educative content or advertisement that are worth spending time on, at least it will add value to my life, than just scrolling to an endless/meaningless and unindicative content. like i said, we can still chose the type of content to watch regardless of how it appear. for me i easily detect a content that is not educative and scroll pass them except i just want to watch them just for fun and not for educative purpose.