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Technology and the Attention Economy - Coggle Diagram
Technology and the Attention Economy
Addictive design is causing young people to constantly be glued to technology
I am interested in the topic because technology is such a big part of our daily lives and most people have no idea how much manipulation companies are using to keep them engaged.
We need to teach students how to advocate for themselves in a tech fueled world and educate them on the moral implications of designing to addict.
We should not allow it to be legal for these companies to hack our brains; they have almost ubiquitous control over our lives and information we should have some say in what they get to do with it.
Even the news you receive/consume is a victim of the attention economy very rarely do sources give you the facts without bias in todays sound bite culture we want someone to do the thinking and analyzing for us.
Even if you do not use social media in any form you probably consume media online in some way.
The attention economy is not relegated just to social media as many would have you believe it effects newspaper headlines, book layouts, Netflix thumbnails and almost every aspect of digital media.
When you are employing addictive design and not offering people an easy way to mitigate the effects (YouTube autoplay switch vs. Netflix settings) they are taking away a bit of that person's independence.
How do we utilize the tools technology has presented us with without overrunning our lives?
Technology is rewiring our brains
Companies are hacking the biological structure of our brain to influence us to purchase things/believe certain political views/reinforce our already established beliefs.
Extensive technology use is causing biological changes and we have no idea how this is going to effect us in the long term.
Rewiring the brain should be something that is done slowly over time not in the span of six days. We have no basis for how such a drastic rewiring changes us.
Neurodiverse people are often left out of research and the conversation in general
One of the big topics is that the digital age has thrust humanity into a land of distractions, but what happens to the people whose brains are biological wired to take in massive amounts of information at a faster rate and to respond is yet to be understood.
I want to explore how young people with ADHD react to the attention economy and how we can use their responses to external stimuli to craft a better tomorrow.
When you are only studying the effects on a subset of people the data is skewed and unreliable. The way that a lot of things effect neurotypical brains does not apply to neurodiverse brains. History has shown us that drawing conclusions on skewed data is dangerous and potentially deadly.
Miscellany
The court of public opinion decides whether these tactics can continually be employed.
The simple fact of the matter is that our world is changing drastically and yes we should proceed with caution but I think doomsday talk is a bit harsh. With every new development in human history there has been pushback.