Attention as Currency and 3 Important Costs of Overspending

Introduction

Imagine walking into a bustling bazaar where every vendor is shouting, waving, and dangling shiny trinkets in front of you. Except this marketplace isn’t in a city square—it lives in your pocket, inside your phone, and you are paying not with money but with your attention. Platforms, advertisers, and influencers all compete for the same scarce resource: your mental focus.

Herbert A. Simon, Nobel laureate and psychologist, predicted this decades ago. He argued that in a world overflowing with information, the scarcest commodity would be human attention (Loewenstein, Sunstein, & Golman, 2024). Today, his warning reads like prophecy fulfilled. The digital world has become an economy where our attention is both currency and commodity.

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The Theory Behind the Trade

Attention is a finite cognitive resource. You cannot pay attention to everything at once, so you prioritize what seems most rewarding or urgent. Bruineberg, Fabry, Heitmann, and Kirchhoff (2025) argue that the attention economy rests on the cognitive architecture of human beings: our perceptual systems are designed to focus selectively, making us vulnerable to external cues engineered to hijack that focus.

Heitmayer and Lahlou (2025) describe the current moment as the “second wave of attention economics.” Unlike the first wave, which emphasized media competition for audiences, this wave emphasizes behavioral capture—the precise measurement and monetization of attention through data analytics and algorithmic design.

How Platforms Capture Attention

• Variable Rewards: Social media feeds rely on unpredictable rewards (likes, new content) that mimic slot machines, activating dopamine pathways (Zeng, Schäfer, & Allgaier, 2021).

• Interface Design: Infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications keep people from disengaging. The “default” is staying, not leaving.

• Cognitive Overload: Constant switching taxes working memory, reducing the capacity for deep focus (Radesky & Christakis, 2016).

In this sense, platforms function like aggressive street vendors who not only call out but also redesign the street so you cannot easily pass by without stopping.

The Costs of Overspending Attention

Overspending attention has individual, emotional, and societal costs.

1. Cognitive Costs

Digital multitasking undermines sustained concentration. In a pediatric study, higher screen multitasking correlated with shorter attention spans and slower task performance (Radesky & Christakis, 2016). Over time, this shallow engagement may reduce the brain’s ability to process complex information.

2. Emotional and Psychological Costs

The emotional toll is significant. Westgate and Wilson (2024) found that rapid switching between short videos paradoxically increased feelings of boredom. People anticipated stimulation but instead reported dissatisfaction. Similarly, constant comparison to curated social media feeds is associated with anxiety and lower life satisfaction (Loewenstein et al., 2024).

3. Societal Costs

At the collective level, overspending attention reshapes democracy, culture, and social bonds. Algorithms that amplify engagement often privilege outrage, misinformation, or polarizing content. Zeng et al. (2021) demonstrated that YouTube’s design influenced users’ sense of agency, pushing them toward content they did not consciously seek. The marketplace of attention can thus corrode autonomy and collective trust.

The Upsides

It is tempting to treat the attention economy only as predatory, but there are benefits when attention is harnessed wisely.

• Democratization of Voices: Social media allows marginalized groups to capture attention and push for social change (Heitmayer & Lahlou, 2025). Movements such as #MeToo or climate activism spread because they captured collective attention.

• Efficiency and Personalization: Algorithms can also reduce search costs, helping people find relevant information quickly.

• Gamified Focus: Apps such as focus timers or habit trackers use the same reward systems as social media, but to encourage productivity.

Thus, attention is not inherently squandered—it depends on where we invest it. Like money, attention can generate returns when directed at meaningful goals.

Rebalancing the Economy

Since attention is a limited currency, individuals need strategies to spend it wisely, and societies need regulations to prevent exploitation.

Personal Budgeting

• Digital Hygiene: Turning off non-essential notifications reduces compulsive checking.

• Mindfulness Practices: Meditation has been shown to strengthen attentional control, effectively “increasing the budget” (Bruineberg et al., 2025).

• Slow Media Consumption: Reading long-form content or deep listening encourages sustained engagement.

Platform Responsibility

Design ethics matter. Autoplay could default to “off,” time dashboards could display how long users have engaged, and recommendation systems could be transparent about their criteria (Zeng et al., 2021).

Policy Interventions

Governments may need to regulate manipulative design patterns. Just as advertising for children is restricted, attention capture strategies might require age-appropriate safeguards. Media literacy campaigns could also prepare citizens to navigate digital spaces critically.

Open Questions and Future Research

Several open questions remain:

1. Individual Differences: Are some people (e.g., those with ADHD) more vulnerable to attention capture?

2. Neuroplasticity: How does constant shallow attention affect long-term brain development and creativity?

3. AI and Attention Markets: With generative AI shaping feeds and ads, how will human focus adapt (Loewenstein et al., 2024)?

These questions are not academic luxuries—they are central to the well-being of future societies.

Conclusion

We live in an era where attention is money, and the bazaar never closes. Overspending leads to fatigue, dissatisfaction, and manipulation, but careful budgeting allows us to invest in creativity, learning, and human connection. The future of the attention economy will depend not only on how platforms design and regulate themselves but also on how individuals learn to protect and wisely spend their most precious resource: the contents of their minds.

References

Bruineberg, J., Fabry, R. E., Heitmann, S., & Kirchhoff, M. D. (2025). Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy. Philosophical Psychology, 38(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2502428

Heitmayer, M., & Lahlou, S. (2025). The second wave of attention economics: How to study the attention economy empirically. Interacting with Computers, 37(1), 18–32. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwad002

Loewenstein, G., Sunstein, C. R., & Golman, R. (2024). The economics of attention. Journal of Economic Literature, 62(3), 643–695. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20241665

Radesky, J. S., & Christakis, D. A. (2016). Increased screen time and multitasking: Associations with reduced attention span. Journal of Pediatrics, 179(1), 123–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2016.08.045

Westgate, E. C., & Wilson, T. D. (2024). Scrolling through online videos increases feelings of boredom. Nature Human Behaviour, 8(3), 412–419. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01709-5

Zeng, J., Schäfer, M. S., & Allgaier, J. (2021). How the design of YouTube influences user sense of agency. arXiv Preprint arXiv:2101.11778. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2101.11778