Attention Economy? No, it’s an Anxiety Economy
Economists have said we are living in an attention economy. Not so. We are living in an anxiety economy.
Online platforms and advertisers want to invade as much of our time—our lives—as they possibly can. The way they do that is to keep us connected to technology through anxiety and fear.
What do you get when you combine the information economy with the attention economy? The Anxiety Economy.
Think about it: What drives our attention? What is the underlying emotion that leads us to pick up our phone ninety-six times a day?
It is not an overwhelming need for information. It is fear—fear of missing out (FOMO), fear our jobs will disappear because of artificial intelligence, fear of government collapse, fear that our friends and family may not be safe, fear of yet another new viral strain.
Because we are at a loss to do anything about these events, we are fearful of the future. Fear combined with uncertainty is anxiety.
How does anxiety affect the economy?
What do we do when we want to manage that anxiety? We grab the closest cell phone or tablet.
We either doomscroll on X or its equivalents to make sure the world hasn’t blown up or flip our way through TikTok, trying to lose ourselves in the latest dance moves or find indestructible dog toys that are going viral.
Ethics of the Attention Economy
Does this reduce anxiety? Of course not! And that’s exactly what social media platforms and marketers want to happen.
The more anxious you are, the more you want to relieve that negative emotion, the more likely you are to either spend more time online or to treat yourself with the latest online product trend.
“What do we do when we want to manage that anxiety? We grab the closest cell phone or tablet...trying to lose ourselves in the latest dance moves or find indestructible dog toys that are going viral.”
What Power Does the Consumer Have in a Market Economy Driven by Attention and Anxiety?
So what can we do? How can we push back against the corporate takeover of our time and our mental health?
Here are three things you can do to assert your consumer power:
1. Own Your Time
If you understand how marketers get you to buy, you can also learn how to put a kink in that process. Marketers are driven by the marketing funnel which entails creating awareness, increasing product consideration, driving purchase, and perpetuating loyalty and ultimately turning you into a marketing evangelist so you will sell the product for them.
Digital technology and UX are designed to get you to think fast (with emotion) so you won’t make good decisions. It is intended to collapse the marketing funnel, so you go from awareness to purchase in seconds. Don’t!
You decide where you spend your time and your money. You have control here.
2. Boycotts Work
They are an act of resistance against Corporate Power. They also help train you to resist buying and gain more control over your purchase decisions by creating time and distance between awareness and purchase. This is an act of resistance and personal empowerment.
We have already seen how effective targeting individual companies is. Target sales are down because people no longer trusted them. Over the last few years they pulled back on their support of the LGBTQ community which primed people to question their commitment to causes. When Target pulled away from DEI, people said, “Enough!”
Same is true with Tesla. Recently, Musk’s daughter has come out and said that his commitment to liberal views were all a ruse for marketing purposes.
“Don’t let anybody tell you a boycott doesn’t work... they have worked for decades and decades and decades.”
3. Corporations aren’t people and neither are products
We have been trained over the last 75 years by consumer culture that buying is an ultimate good. Over the last 20 years, we have been lulled into believing that companies care about us and that they share our values.
But, in the last few months, we have had nothing less than a societal “Santa Claus isn’t real” moment about our economy. As the hosts of Frugal Friend’s podcast said to me, the cult of our time is consumerism.
“The cult that most of us are going to struggle with is consumerism.”
Brands tied to causes because it was good for their bottom line—consumers like to think they were doing something good and the companies got to take a tax write off. The minute aligning with women’s empowerment or health care (read: abortion rights) or DEI was going to negatively affect the company, they dropped it like a hot potato.
This is a signal to us: to demonstrate our values outside of the market and to spend our time on things that really matter.
Ethics of the Anxiety Economy
The anxiety economy is meant to overwhelm you. It is meant to keep you fearful whether we are talking about FOMO or the current political climate.
Anxiety is the fear of the unknown. And while we can never know what the future holds, we do have control overhow we spend our time and where we spend our money.
Escaping the Anxiety Economy
As all our digital spaces become commercialized, we can implement protective measures that restore our sense of agency. When we develop the ability to recognize marketing tactics—seeing clearly how products are being attached to our identity—saying "no" becomes easier.
We maintain control by choosing how much we engage with our mobile devices and being intentional about our purchasing decisions. We get to choose how much we engage in the digital mix of marketing activity by choosing how often we look at our phones.
Through maintaining this awareness and reclaiming our time, we can navigate the anxiety economy with greater clarity and confidence.
“Remember that your phone is first and foremost a purveyor of advertising. It wasn’t created to help you reach out and touch someone. It was created to help you reach out and sell someone.”
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