Hijacked Minds

How the Attention Economy Fractures Our Focus

Today’s fourth installment of my special Substack series is part of a project titled The Comfort Trap: The Ill Effects of Chronic Ease. In this undertaking, I explore a profound yet oft-overlooked paradox of modern life: our relentless pursuit of ease is leading to an epidemic of chronic disease.

Across the adventure, I leverage my mythical hunter-gatherer ancestor Ffej Onsark (yes, my name spelled backwards) as the benchmark for comparing ancient and modern living conditions.

The comparison elucidates modernity’s comfort-induced evolutionary mismatches and their many negative knock-on physiological and psychological impacts.

If you find today’s excerpt interesting, you can dive deeper on Substack. If you prefer the lilt of my voice, you can listen on the Commune Podcast or purchase the entire effort on Audible, Apple Books, or Spotify.

In love, include me,

Jeff

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Ffej Onsark, my hunter-gatherer ancestor, usually foraged alone, snacking over the course of the day upon vegan delights, and also bringing honey, berries, baobab fruit, tubers, and occasional wild game back to the tribe. During the wet season, the tribe’s diet was predominantly vegetarian. The contribution of meat to the diet increased in the early dry season, when wildebeest, warthogs, buffalo, and giraffes became concentrated around sources of water. During this time, Ffej was often joined by a fellow tribesman and spent entire nights lying in wait by waterholes, hoping to shoot animals that approached for a night-time drink, with poison-treated arrows.

Sapiens, however, were not the only species roaming the Serengeti on the hunt. Lions, leopards, cheetahs, and jackals also slinked through tall grasses, surveying the landscape for potential prey. Humans made sumptuous appetizers for this group. And odd-toed ungulates, though primarily herbivorous, were not always fond of human encroachment. Ffej did his best to remain low-key and out of sight. However, from time to time, he would be startled by a rustle in the grass, or in a moment of carelessness, he would attract the attention of a potential predator.

When this occurred, Ffej experienced an instantaneous physiological transformation. Perceived threat triggered his hind brain, specifically a small almond-shaped cluster of neurons in the medial temporal lobe known as the amygdala. The amygdala is famously associated with “fight or flight,” your body’s involuntary response to external threat. It interfaces with the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the major neuroendocrine system that controls reactions to stress. Activation of the HPA axis results in the secretion of cortisol (and epinephrine). Cortisol is a glucocorticoid, a steroid hormone made from cholesterol in the adrenal glands. In response to perceived threat, cortisol is secreted from the adrenals into the bloodstream. The discharge of cortisol causes the respiratory and heart rate to increase, blood to move from the gut to muscles in the extremities, and pupils to dilate. It instantaneously readies you for fight or flight.

This adaptive mechanism had great utility for Ffej on the Serengeti. It ensured his survival… most of the time. Fortunately for Ffej and the members of his tribe, these intense instances of acute stress were few and far between. Cortisol levels never remained too high for too long. Once the threat has passed, the body would naturally move back into homeostasis. Breathing would normalize, and heart rate would decrease. Ffej would move from his sympathetic nervous system back to his parasympathetic system. Ironically, having occasional stressful experiences actually helped Ffej to more easily regulate. Over millennia, our bodies adapted to being able to boomerang from ‘fight, flight or freeze’ to ‘rest, digest and breed’.

Despite the many hours of chopping wood and carrying water that characterized his life, Ffej actually enjoyed quite a bit of leisure time. He took great joy in climbing to the summit of local peaks and staring out at the vast landscape. From time to time, Ffej would spot flocks of guinea fowl or quail flying east in distinct patterns. This phenomenon would indicate an impending storm. This is how Ffej got his news. In witnessing the migration, Ffej would descend back to basecamp and alert his tribe that a storm was looming.

Of course, modern humans are awash in information. You and I live in the “attention economy,” where everyone and everything is vying for our time and focus. The concept of the attention economy describes how attention is treated as a scarce commodity that can be harnessed and monetized, often at the expense of focus and well-being. This competition for our attention leverages the same biological survival mechanisms that I have just described.

Everything from the latest tropical storm to the most current political scandal is perceived as a threat and triggers the same mechanisms that caused Ffej to either fight or flee. And, worse, in the non-stop information onslaught of modernity, the threat never goes away. We’re always being chased by a digital tiger.

How Did We Get Here?

Though the concept of the attention economy wasn’t popularized until the late 20th century, the foundations of this phenomenon trace back much further, intertwined with the evolution of media, technology, and marketing.

Around the year 1440 AD, Johannes Gutenberg radically disrupted the manner in which information was distributed. Prior to his invention, information was disseminated orally or through laboriously hand-copied scrolls and manuscripts, which limited its reach. Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized access to knowledge, making books, pamphlets, and eventually newspapers available to the masses. This gave rise to a nascent form of the attention economy: the battle for readers’ attention.

If you were knocking around Fleet Street in London in 1702, you might have picked up The Daily Courant, Britain’s first daily newspaper, which covered domestic and foreign current events. The ability to convey information on a regular basis made newspapers a key platform for reaching audiences, both for news and for the earliest forms of advertising.

Early advertisements were basic and relatively innocent, featuring local apothecaries, theaters, and taverns. Still, the phenomenon began the insidious triangulation between content, viewer, and commerce. This set the stage for the ever-increasing commodification of attention.

As the industrial revolution unfolded in the 19th century, a new consumer culture emerged. With increased production came the need to drive demand, and advertising began to take on a more sophisticated role. Newspapers, which had previously depended primarily on sales for revenue, began selling advertising space to businesses. Attention became a product for sale.

In 1920, KDKA launched as the world’s first commercial radio station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The advent of radio introduced a new medium of continuous engagement. Advertisers quickly understood that radio, with its ability to enter homes and accompany daily life, could capture attention more effectively than print.

1936, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) was born as the world’s first regular public television broadcaster. The 1939 New York World’s Fair showcased televisions to the public, with RCA demonstrating live broadcasts. The purchase of RCA color television sets skyrocketed in the 1950s as television went technicolor. Early TV programs were often sponsored by companies, which meant that entertainment and advertising became increasingly intertwined. This sponsorship model made viewers’ attention even more central to the medium’s business model.

The next significant development in the ascent of the attention economy transpired at 6 pm EST on June 1, 1980. David Walker and Lois Hart appeared on the screen and reported on the attempted assassination of civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. This was the very first story broadcast on Ted Turner’s new network, CNN. The Cable News Network introduced the concept of 24-hour, around-the-clock news coverage. No longer confined by limited TV signals, CNN was able to reach into every American living room.

The move to around-the-clock broadcasting drastically increased the supply of media content and thus heightened the competition for attention. Where news had once been delivered in daily or weekly installments, now it could be updated constantly.

On-demand news created a feedback loop of sensationalism, as networks sought to capture and retain attention in an environment where there was always another channel to flip to. More dramatic headlines, breaking news alerts, and an emphasis on shocking or emotional content became more and more common.

And then came the internet.

The internet’s earliest form in the 1990s, often referred to as Web 1.0, was dominated by websites and email. Advertisers quickly saw the potential for targeted ads via email campaigns and static banner ads. The goalposts were quickly moved in the late 90s, when two Ph.D. students at Stanford launched a project called “BackRub” – a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual web pages. In what might be considered their most intelligent decision, Larry Page and Sergey Brin rebranded their collaboration and launched it as Google in 1998.

The emergence of search engines changed how people discovered content, and with it came a new form of digital marketing: search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This new model monetized attention by charging advertisers based on how often their links were clicked.

The development of smartphones, most notably the iPhone in 2007, and the rise of social media platforms like Facebook (founded in 2004), Twitter (2006), and Instagram (2010) took connectivity and engagement to 11. Where people once consumed media during discrete intervals, smartphones and social platforms made it possible to capture attention anytime, anywhere.

The proliferation of apps and push notifications meant that our attention was no longer something we could consciously allocate. Instead, it was continually manipulated, often without our consent. Algorithms optimized to keep users on platforms longer (e.g., YouTube’s recommendation engine or Facebook’s news feed) became central to social media business models. The rise of the attention economy in this era was closely tied to the idea of data as a resource. By tracking user behavior, companies could serve up hyper-targeted advertisements, making attention more valuable than ever before. Social media influencers, advertising agencies, and content creators alike competed for more clicks, more views, and more shares, further fragmenting our attention.

Ok, Jeff, that’s interesting but… How Does This Work Exactly? And what are the impacts?

Let me provide an example. Let’s imagine you were served up the following video on YouTube titled: Social Media Is an Endocrine DISRUPTOR!!! With DISRUPTOR in all-caps followed by three exclamation points.

Would this title scandalize you? Do the ALL CAPS catch your eye? Maybe this title is too heady. How about this title … YouTube Is Giving You DIABETES!!! This time DIABETES in all caps.

Well, God, you might think … I certainly don’t want diabetes. And yet here I am on YouTube.

Would that title get you to click and watch?

If I were the savvy creator of this video, I might hire a pale nose-ringed Zoomer to A/B test both titles to see which one best tickled the algorithm. And then, in the content, I’d explain how YouTube videos are designed to hijack your amygdala in the same manner that a charging rhino triggers Ffej’s hind brain.

This content is designed to send signals down your HPA axis that activates the production of cortisol. And with every new video, YouTube refills the IV bag of cortisol that chronically drips through your bloodstream, heightening glucose levels and activating the release of insulin from your pancreas until an excess of insulin leads to a resistance to itself. And then you have diabetes. And, of course, at the end, I’d push you to the next video!

I’m creating this imaginary scenario ironically to prove a point. However, it does not deviate much from something you might have clicked on last night.

Unlike Ffej, we live in an era where your attention is the most precious of life’s commodities. We subsist within the persuasion economy, in which every marketer, influencer, and news outlet is vying for our mindshare at every possible moment. Headlines and product ads flood our consciousness through social media posts, notifications, texts, remarketing campaigns, banner ads, and so on.

The persuasion economy relies on hyperbole and salaciousness to snatch our attention. 24-news and social media influencers use anecdotes to create plausibility, wrap them in sensationalist titling, lace them with editorial bias, and deploy them like missiles to scare and outrage you. They leverage the algorithm that rewards hype over nuance and yelling over conversation for the purposes of garnering influence and followers, increasing watch time, and selling advertisements.

What Is the Impact of This Madness?

The psychological and physiological result of the mass nonconsensual experiment of algorithmically-gamed social media is chronic stress. When people say “stress is killing me,” they may not be exaggerating.

Beyond the aforementioned impacts of cortisol, the chronic infusion of this hormone has myriad knock-on consequences. These impacts are worthy of reiterating.

Cortisol is a master hormone and, while it’s utterly useful in the right proportion, its excess is central to many of society’s most common conditions.

Chronically elevated cortisol disrupts your gut microbiome. It reduces healthy microbe diversity in the gut and leads to increased intestinal permeability, breaking down the tight junctions in the epithelium that prevent toxins from entering the bloodstream. This barrier is but one cell thick. When it is broken down, undigested food and decrepit bacterial membranes called lipopolysaccharides cross into the bloodstream and trigger an immune response. This leads to chronic inflammation, food allergies, and a variety of gut diseases.

So, yes, you can make an argument that social media-induced stress results in inflammation.

Numerous studies have also shown that people with chronically high cortisol levels have reduced immune function. In response to chronic cortisol, the body produces less neutrophils and macrophages. These cells are essential to the innate immune system that provides the body with general protection from pathogenic bacteria. Innate immune cells also contribute to tumor suppression. They engage in a process called phagocytosis in which they literally engulf and “eat” malignant cells.

Cortisol also spikes blood sugar levels. Over time, this stresses the pancreas to produce more and more insulin to get serum glucose out of the bloodstream into cells. Eventually, cells become insulin resistant. As previously described, this can lead to diabetes.

Further, when glucose is left to linger in the blood, it can become glycated and cause inflammation. It also gets converted to triglycerides and stored as visceral fat. This type of fat that clusters around your belly and organs stresses the heart as it requires the production of increasingly more blood vessels. Visceral fat is also pro-inflammatory. These adipocytes release inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-6, which further disrupts immune function and also can pock up arterial walls, leaving them more susceptible to the accumulation of plaques from small, low-density lipoproteins (LDL). This phenomenon leads to cardiovascular disease – the world’s number one killer.

So, is social media killing you? Well, I don’t want to be too scandalous lest I stress you out.

But, over time, being in a state of constant amygdala-hijack will not only erode your physiological health but will also compromise your ability to leverage the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s locus of reason and rationality.

Is it possible to completely eschew all media and get your weather report like Ffej, sitting atop a mountain peak watching birds migrate? Probably not. However, you can certainly unfollow the more egregious sensationalists. And better yet, invest in some scrupulous media ‘hygiene’.

Fortunately, there is also a four thousand-year-old protocol that addresses our inability to focus and our chronic amygdala overload and its accompanying stress hormones. When I mention this practice to my children, they roll their eyes and say, “Dad! Don’t you dare say the word ‘meditation.’” But I do anyway.

What To Do?

As described, Ffej had plenty of quiet time for chosen solitude. In these moments, he could observe stars glistening, birds chirping, and the wind whipping through the savanna grass – phenomena arising and subsiding in awareness. He would witness his own feelings in a similar manner, noticing without judgment emotions well up from under the crust of consciousness and then fade away. He could luxuriate in boredom – and in the ever-present. By mere dint of his lifestyle, Ffej engaged in a natural form of what we now call meditation.

There are many different meditation styles, traditions, and techniques, from mindfulness meditation to body scan meditation, from Vipassana to loving-kindness meditation, from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to conscious breathing. I feature a few simple techniques in the bonus section of this audiobook.

While the benefits of meditation are pleiotropic, these practices serve to blunt the specific and most pernicious impacts of the attention economy. They help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the "rest and digest" system, which counteracts the fight-or-flight response initiated by media and other stress-inducing inputs. Myriad studies have shown that meditation decreases the levels of cortisol, calming the nervous system and reducing emotional reactivity.

Meditation also helps improve attention span and the ability to focus on the present moment, reducing the mind's tendency to wander or ruminate on past or future emotional distress. This ability to stay grounded in the present moment helps individuals to avoid being swept up by intense emotions or stress.

While smartphones and 24/7 connectivity offer convenience and efficiency, they are part of the comfort trap. In some ways, these tools simplify and elevate our lives, but they also tether us to a constant stream of stimuli that dysregulates our nervous systems. This chronic stress, coupled with fragmented attention, impairs our ability to focus, think deeply, and engage in meaningful work or relationships.

When we open TikTok or IG, we feel we’re getting “free” entertainment and information. But, unsuspectingly, you and I are the product that these companies are selling. More specifically, as the internet pioneer Jaron Lanier quips, “It's the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.“

As we move forward, it is incumbent on each and every one of us to reassess our relationship with technology, recognizing that true well-being and productivity come not from constant connectivity but from our ability to step away, focus deeply, and foster moments of peace and presence. Only then can we unwind this evolutionary mismatch and restore balance to our minds and bodies. Only then can we reclaim our natural capacity for attention and resilience. Only then can we disconnect to connect.

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Today’s newsletter features an excerpt from my audio program, The Comfort Trap: The Ill Effects of Chronic Ease.

Available for purchase on Audible or stream it for free with your Spotify Premium subscription.