The New Inequality Is of a Cognitive Kind

In a world where information is abundant, attention is increasingly becoming a scarce resource. Every day, billions of people navigate an immensity of digital content where platforms, brands and creators compete to capture a few seconds of attention that can transform mindless scrolling into engagement, conversions and revenues. It is the so-called attention economy, where every second spent on a web page, and every like and share can generate monetary value through advertising, conversions and of course consumer profiling. It is a feedback loop: the more attention the system captures, the more data it collects; the more data it can collect, the more it can personalize content; the more personalized content is, the more it can capture attention. The result is an increasingly sophisticated system for attracting and retaining people, designed to maximize time spent on the site. Recommendation algorithms analyze our behavior in real time to predict what will keep us hooked to the screen. Push notifications use intermittent conditioning principles borrowed from the world of gambling; infinite feeds eliminate natural interruption points; video autoplays, countdowns in stories, ‘double tap to like’, etc. are all mechanisms designed to reduce cognitive friction and increase the likelihood of engagement. They are all tools of the trade in what Tristan Harris names ‘persuasion technology’.

This competition has profound consequences on our ability to concentrate. Numerous studies show that digital crowding increases cortisol levels and reduces cognitive efficiency. The phenomenon of so-called continuous partial attention is reshaping our brains, privileging superficial reactivity over deep reflection. It is alarming: those who grow up in this system show increasingly fragmented attention patterns. The ability to read long texts, do in-depth analysis and engage in critical thinking become skills at risk for those who become accustomed to the instant gratification of micro-content. Observed from another angle, the phenomenon is also present in those who make use and abuse of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). One of its most widespread uses is asking AI to summarize complex texts: the algorithm is just asked to draft a synopsis in the form of bullet points. It is an efficiency strategy, but which has the hidden cost of making people become less and less capable of reading and above all understanding texts.

Paradoxically, the digital age has truly democratized access to information like never before in human history. Anyone can publish, create, share knowledge. Wikipedia, free online courses, educational podcasts, etc. have given billions of people access to knowledge. The problem is no longer the scarcity of information, but the limited ability of current minds to process it in a meaningful way.

In this context, a new form of inequality emerges: the one between those who know how to manage their attention and those who fall prey to attention-seeking platforms. The new cognitive elites are learning to protect themselves from the online deluge, while the rest of us remains trapped in cycles of passive consumption of content designed to be irresistible. Finding the right balance will be one of the greatest social and educational challenges of the coming years. Maintaining the control of one’s personal attention is not only a question of personal productivity and skills to be exploited in the workplace, but above all a question of cognitive autonomy and, ultimately, an issue of democracy. In a world where whoever controls attention controls perceived reality, the individual's ability to concentrate is tantamount to an act of resistance and, most especially, freedom.