Big tech treats human attention as a resource to be mercilessly extracted, according to a growing chorus of critics. The term 'human fracking' has been coined to describe the practice of pumping addictive content into our faces to force a slurry of attention to the surface, where it can be collected and sold. This process is said to cause 'tectonic instability' in both the external environment and the human psyche.
Nearly 70% of the world's population now owns a smartphone, and these devices account for about 95% of internet access points globally. On average, people spend close to half their waking hours looking at screens, with young people in wealthy nations spending even more. This unprecedented level of connectivity has created new forms of exploitation that are harming children and adults, compromising deliberative politics and psychological wellbeing.
The problem is not 'phones' or 'social media' per se, but what critics describe as a 'world-spanning land-grab into human consciousness'. Our attention, they argue, is nothing less than our ability to care, think, and give our minds to ourselves, the world, and each other. To commodify attention is to commodify our very beings. Regulatory efforts remain piecemeal and are actively thwarted by powerful interests, while psychopharmacological fixes merely monetise the damage and enable further submission to harmful conditions.
History suggests that new forms of exploitation produce new forms of resistance. The environmental movement did not exist in 1950, yet by 1970 it was a global force. In 1946, Reynolds Tobacco was using doctors to promote cigarettes; fewer than 20 years later, the US surgeon general publicly confirmed that smoking caused lung cancer. These examples show that cultural shifts can happen quickly when people come together in solidarity.
The answer, according to advocates, is a global movement of people who insist that human attention is human, and ours, to be used in making the worlds in which we want to live. The fight against 'human fracking' is not quixotic; it is a battle for the very essence of our humanity, and it can be won.
