An economic and cultural framework in which human attention is treated as a scarce and valuable commodity, and digital platforms compete to capture, retain, and monetize it through notifications, feeds, and algorithmic personalization. Because time and cognitive focus are limited, companies design products to maximize engagement, often optimizing for clicks, watch time, or emotional reaction rather than depth or well-being. Under this model, the user’s gaze becomes the product, sold to advertisers or leveraged for data extraction.
The concept gained prominence alongside the rise of social media and platform capitalism, and has been analyzed by thinkers such as Tim Wu. Critics argue that the attention economy incentivizes sensationalism, outrage, and addictive design patterns, contributing to distraction, polarization, and burnout. In creative fields, it can reward high-volume, low-quality output, sometimes called “slop,” as systems prioritize whatever most efficiently captures eyeballs rather than what most meaningfully enriches audiences.