A conversation has started to take shape around the documentary that premieres at SXSW this week and is highlighted in the CNET article about Your Attention Please. The film examines something most people sense but rarely stop to articulate clearly: the internet has become an economy built around human attention.
That observation is not controversial anymore. If anything, it has become difficult to argue against it.
Over the past fifteen years the dominant social platforms have developed business models that depend almost entirely on advertising. In this structure, attention is the commodity. The longer a person stays inside a platform, the more data is generated and the more valuable that person becomes to advertisers. Algorithms are therefore optimized not for meaning, not for trust, and not even necessarily for usefulness, but for engagement.
This is not the result of malicious intent. It is the logical outcome of the economic model behind the platforms.
When revenue comes primarily from advertising, the platform’s success depends on keeping people inside the system for as long as possible. Design decisions follow that incentive. Infinite scroll, constant notifications, algorithmic amplification of emotionally charged content and endless feeds all make sense when attention is the core product.
The documentary raises concerns about the psychological and societal consequences of this system, particularly its effects on younger generations. Those concerns are legitimate and deserve serious attention. But an equally important realization is that the technological infrastructure itself is not the enemy. Digital networks, global communication, and online communities are not going away. In fact, they will only become more deeply integrated into daily life.
The real question is not whether technology should exist, but how its incentives are structured.
Every media technology eventually evolves toward a sustainable economic model that aligns the interests of the people producing value with those consuming it. Newspapers were once heavily dependent on advertising, but over time many of the most respected publications moved toward subscription models because readers were willing to pay directly for quality journalism. Music experienced a similar shift when streaming services began to align revenue with listening behavior. Film and television followed a comparable path as audiences moved toward subscription platforms that prioritize content over advertising interruptions.
Social media may simply be the next medium undergoing that transition.
If the primary participants in these networks are creators and audiences, then the long-term stability of the ecosystem likely depends on economic structures that reward the value created between them. When the financial relationship flows directly between the people producing content and the people who find value in it, the incentives begin to change. Instead of competing for attention at any cost, creators compete to produce material that audiences actually consider worth supporting.
Financial incentives, when designed carefully, can serve as a form of validation. They introduce a signal that goes beyond clicks or impressions. A view does not necessarily mean something matters to someone. But when a person chooses to support a creator directly, even in small amounts, it reflects a different kind of relationship. It signals trust, appreciation, and perceived value.
As the internet matures, more experiments will inevitably appear that explore these kinds of structures. Some will succeed, many will fail, but the direction itself feels increasingly inevitable. Digital communities function best when the incentives inside them reinforce healthy behavior rather than exploit human psychology.
The conversation sparked by the documentary is therefore an important one. It encourages people to look beneath the surface of social media and ask what kind of systems we are actually building. Technology will continue to shape culture, education, entertainment and public discourse. The responsibility lies in designing infrastructures that respect the people who use them.
The future of online platforms will not be determined only by technological capability. It will be shaped by the economic models embedded within them. When those models begin to reward genuine value instead of pure attention, the digital environments we inhabit may start to feel very different.
