Somewhere in the 1970’s the phrase “information age” was uttered for the first time. Someone looked at a Commodore 64 and thought “The future is now!” We can all look back now on those simple-minded, simple living, happy people and laugh at how naive they were. Philistines. Back then, information was exchanged through relatively balanced, intentional transactions. You generally knew what you were buying and you got what you paid for. Then the internet gave rise to a new form of currency; our attention and most of us don’t really know how to spend it.
So now we live in an “Attention economy” which has an estimated value somewhere in the trillions of dollars. I sincerely hope that at least one of my subscribers only just now, at this exact moment, realized that we “pay” attention.

I don’t know what you will do with that information besides feel as dumb as I do for not making the connection sooner, but anytime a reader learns something new from me, I consider it a win. Now let’s talk about your attention spending habits.
How do you feel about an attention audit? I hope you kept your receipts, because we are going to dig back through the last year of everything you paid attention to at work, home, online and in the physical world. It sounds like a ridiculous idea, but a good ol’ fashioned bank reconciliation might help to get your attention accounts in order for a Q1 in the black (for those who did not waste 4 semesters in college accounting classes like I did, that means “a profitable first 3 months of the year”).
If we actually did receive a monthly statement from the places where we spend the most attention, would this change our habits? Not just simple deposits and withdrawals, but line-item accountings of exactly how our attention was monetized on the other end. I think on a semi-conscious level, we know where it is all going. That’s part of why the moment you put your phone down you feel so annoyed or guilty at having just wasted 10 minutes scrolling through pointless images and videos. Was it 30 minutes? Who can say? But you know in your bones you didn’t get what you paid for.
A casual dig through the top five smartphone scrolling studies on Google Scholar reveals that a typical scrolling session lasts roughly three minutes. We also spend an average of nearly two and a half hours on social media each day. But after that session, when you finally do put down the phone, I bet you sometimes ask yourself “Why did I just do that?” knowing the answer. Yet you’ll do it again later, won’t you?
Oh, wait. Maybe you don’t know the answer. I don’t either, actually, but I have a guess. It is not a question of content, either. The reality is that while most of us seem to have a handle on the value of a dollar, humans are notoriously bad at valuing time. We are even worse at valuing our attention. Meanwhile, those who gain the most from our attention apply a precise dollar amount to every second. In the true valuation of our attention, we simply don’t know what we have, even after it is gone. And yet this simple human resource accounts for trillions of dollars and drives every media outlet in the world. In the attention economy, we are all suckers.
It is only partially our fault for getting into this mess. We are simply outgunned by technology and those who create it. We are at the mercy of our primitive, dopamine-seeking brains and the attention merchants know it. In the bygone days of early Facebook scrolling, users had to first click on a video before it would play. Developers quickly figured out that if the video began automatically playing as users scrolled by, it would guarantee longer engagement. We were babies with candy. I distinctly remember the change because of how well it worked on me. I felt compelled to stop scrolling at the first sight of motion. Eventually, my brain adapted so that I could be more selective about the videos I chose to watch, but until that time, Facebook was literally stealing my attention.
Fool me once, shame on you… but the technology has adapted to our adaptations. Just when we find a way to process the glut, a new back door to our brains is discovered. None of this matters if we don’t really care about who has access to those doors. Based upon the absolute crap that goes viral on social media, it appears that most of us do not.
Why should you care, though? If philosophy doesn’t matter to you, maybe you shouldn’t care. If allowing others to divide and occupy your attention at their whim is fine with you, then by all means, leave the door ajar. At least on a microeconomic scale your wanton scrolling is a victimless crime. But if you value a life of awareness. If you like asking questions about yourself. If you hope to apply Stoicism to your life, then you must commit to agency over that which commands your attention.
Early in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote that physical things from the outside world cannot touch the mind. It is a human’s only true refuge and the aspect of him or herself, which he is most readily able to protect. However, Aurelius also warned that “The mind takes the shape of what it frequently holds in thought.” Whatever affects your mind only does so if you allow it unrestricted access. A Stoic gives permission only to that which he or she has considered worthy of attention.
There is also a consideration for the Stoic parent. We dutifully teach our children fiscal responsibility, or at least we know we should at some point. Our ability to effectively teach money management is not so much limited by our financial means as by our own behaviors. Your child will learn more from the living example you set than the lessons you attempt to contrive.
However, money carries obvious usefulness. Combined with its scarcity, this creates a concrete sense of value for even young children. Hopefully, this also contributes to a desire to use it thoughtfully regardless of the adult examples available. Like money, children will also learn from your attention spending behaviors. Unfortunately, attention is unlike any commodity or currency, which has ever existed. It is completely unregulated. Its value is subjective and wildly unstable. It is infinitely self-renewable and there is virtually no obvious consumer cost to acquiring or spending it. Most confusingly, whatever attention we may possess can be claimed by anyone and anything at any time.
But if we are such easily manipulated consumers in this economy, the same must be doubly true for our children. Yet, they already have full access to the currency because it is neither ours to give or take away. As independent minds, children also have the freedom to spend their attention as they choose. When it comes to limiting online content, even if parents set the goalposts an inch apart, the information contained in the space between is nearly unlimited. All this means that our children act as almost equal consumers in this attention economy, engaging in millions of intentional and unintentional transactions everyday.
We must devote effort toward determining content and sources of information deserving of our own attention in order to help our children do so as well. As a starting point, Epicurus, by way of his philosophical opponent Seneca, in Letters From a Stoic #16, reminds us to align with the laws of nature.
“If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor. If by the opinions of others, you will never be rich. Nature’s wants are small, while those of opinion are limitless.” —Epicurus
2000 years ago, man’s attention was devoted toward relatively few, if often unreliable sources of information. As such, the facile opinions of others constituted the greatest threat to intellectual progress, because humans were left with little recourse by which to prove or disprove what they heard. Consequently, philosophers like Socrates advised encountering all information and ideas with a critical eye.
The Sophists and Rhetoricians of ancient Greece are today’s Youtube influencers, whose platform is no longer limited to the village square. Our ability to possess our own attention in their presence has been driven out of us by the sheer volume of online stimulation, which constantly overwhelms our cluttered minds. However, Seneca suggested a simple test we might use to separate the wheat from the chaff:
“If you want to know whether the desire aroused in you by something you are pursuing is natural…ask yourself whether it is capable of coming to rest at any point. If after going a long way there is still something remaining far away, you may be sure it is not something natural.” —Seneca
No Stoic would be surprised that the internet, especially social media, fails Seneca’s test. We explore its deepest recesses without any hope of ever reaching its end. It is an unnatural experience to travel for any length of time without advancing closer to a destination. Yet, the world is now able to devote its attention without limit only to come away with not even a fleeting memory to show for it. In economic terms, this is an unbalanced transaction. When only one party is actively aware of this imbalance, it is called fraud.
So what can we do to balance our exchanges? As a consumer, we must develop a habit of considering the value we receive for our attention before we spend it. That calculation is a function of the content, the investment of time and the anticipated result. We should also consider what the merchant or creator gets out of this transaction. What motivation does our attention support? How will our attention be used?
One of the things I appreciate about Substack is that in every exchange, I have never felt shortchanged. Either as a writer or a reader, my experience has been that people enter into each transaction in good faith. For example; I put a few hours into this post, did a little research, dusted off my Seneca, because I want to share a message with you. I might receive a comment of appreciation or words of encouragement, but my aim is simply to share ideas. I sincerely hope that my effort is worth the cost of your attention. As a Stoic Parent subscriber, I assume each time you read one of my posts, you begin with that same hope. Maybe enough balanced exchanges like this can make those unbalanced ones easier to spot and avoid. If that ends up as the only result of this post, I have held up my end of the bargain. Now it is your turn to keep the scales balanced.