Attention is a Resource
Year 5 to 12 students and parents
Our attention is a limited resource. Most of us can only focus on one-thing-at-a-time. Our hectic lives are a constant attention juggle, with more information and more choices at our fingertips than ever before. Social media is designed to capture your attention and hold it there for as long as possible.
Your eyeballs = advertising revenue.
Through your activities on social media, Big Tech has intimate access to your thoughts and behavior with the aim to find the right moment to grab your attention and show you the perfect ad you’ll likely respond to. That’s what Big Tech promises their advertisers, who then hand over vast amounts of money for this precise targeting service. Your attention is the resource and
each app is caught in a race to capture it, competing not just against other apps, but also against your friends, your family, your hobbies, your studies, and even your sleep.
Source: Trapped – the secret ways social media is built to be addictive (and what you can do to fight back)
Question: Ever wondered why most social media apps are free?
Casper Pieters PhD Dip Ed is an author and educator who uses adventure narratives to enliven the ICT curriculum for young people. www.casperpieters.com
