Addicted to Attention?

I found myself struggling to write a new article - I was either distracted by social media or I was constantly thinking about how my writing will be received by an audience. Essentially, I was looking to write an article that would grab attention.

It is a fiercely competitive age we live in, where information is in over-abundance but attention is an extremely scarce resource. With social media and the net-based availability of information at our finger tips, we humans have reduced our ability to pay attention for a sustained period of time. Therefore, someone who or something that has the ability to grab the attention becomes incredibly powerful. The beauty of social media is undeniable as it has allowed us to democratize the ability to get hold of this power - attention. The problem lies, especially if you’re someone with an undying urge to be creative, in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s words : our creativity is becoming a means to an end, and that end is to get attention. When you force yourself to be creative to get the power of attention, the less satisfied you are likely to be with the result because that’s the power of an addictive substance, you don’t just want to stop at one or a few, you want to keep going after it until its marginal utility diminishes.

I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel good to have someone read what I write - that kind of attention makes one feel powerful but there is a downside as well. I was reading an interview of a model, who is not so well known, who said that when he’d post a picture on Instagram the surge of likes would give him a high, but during periods of his inactivity it left him with this empty feeling, almost like a void.

Let’s look at Instagram’s business model for a moment. What exactly is it selling?

It is selling the users’ attention to advertisers. It makes money off the user’s attention. You think you’ll be satisfied with let’s say 100 followers but just then you think maybe a 1000 would do the trick. Then you say a 10000 and next you’re saying a hundred thousand followers, but then you tell yourself maybe I’ll be satisfied with a million, there is really no end to the addiction.

Here’s an analogy to help you understand: the minute you take a drug, drink alcohol, smoke a cigarette, win a game of fortnite, when you get a “like” on social media, all of those experiences produce dopamine, which is a chemical which is associated with pleasure. When someone likes an Instagram post, as far as your brain is concerned, it’s a similar experience. But it is not guaranteed that you’re going to get likes on your posts. And it is the unpredictability of that process which makes it so titillating - if you knew that every time you posted something you’d get a100 likes, it would become boring really fast.

All attention is not all bad:

Getting attention is necessary for life’s vital enterprises and can make the difference between life and death in a crisis. Therefore, not getting adequate attention can threaten the quality and sustainability of life. Thus, getting functional social attention is understandable.

Heck, even Maslow put getting attention and belonging on the hierarchy of needs. But the addiction to this kind of attention is dangerous.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m beginning to fear that I’m constantly on the verge of accomplishing quite a lot, and the thing that is keeping me from that breakthrough is the time I waste on social media. Not that there aren’t a few satisfying things about participating online, but what seems to take the biggest hit is actual creative output.

I try to be honest in this blog, and therefore I’ll admit that I find that more often than I’d like, I, too am caught up in this feeling of loving the attention, but I can also admit that most of my best creative work is when I put my focus on doing the task without the ulterior objective of trying to get any kind of attention.

Thank you for your attention.