Thinklier Updated on May 7, 2025 4 min read

The attention trap: how your brain got hijacked by tech

Your brain wasn’t built for the digital world — but the digital world was built for your brain. Discover how platforms hijack attention, and how to take it back.

We used to think of distraction as a personal failing. As if scrolling endlessly, skipping between tasks, or forgetting why we opened the fridge was just a sign of weak willpower.

But what if it wasn’t our fault?

What if distraction is not a bug of modern life, but a feature of the digital systems we now live in?

The new attention economy

When Tristan Harris worked as a design ethicist at Google, he realised something uncomfortable. The products he and his colleagues were building weren’t just helping users get things done. They were designed to hook people. To keep them engaged, clicking, swiping, and returning for more.

Attention, he saw, had become the most valuable currency in the digital age. And Silicon Valley had become an arms race to capture as much of it as possible.

From YouTube autoplay to Facebook likes to TikTok’s endless scroll, every platform we use is optimised not for your wellbeing, but for your engagement. More time on site means more ads seen. More ads seen means more revenue. It's that simple.

[Insert infographic: Average daily screen time 2010 vs 2024 across age groups]

But the cost of this model isn’t just lost hours. It’s lost clarity. Because thinking requires something these platforms are designed to prevent: stillness.

Hijacked by design

A study by Microsoft once suggested the average human attention span had dropped below that of a goldfish – eight seconds and falling. While that stat may be more pop science than hard fact, the broader trend is real.

Constant notifications, algorithmic feeds, and content engineered for virality have created what Harris now calls a "digital slot machine." Every scroll is a pull of the lever. Will I get something funny? Outrageous? Inspiring? The randomness keeps us hooked.

And while our brains chase novelty, the capacity for deep thought – for critical reflection, for nuance, for sustained attention – quietly withers.

Why it matters

It’s tempting to treat this as a productivity problem. But it's more than that. When your attention is fragmented, so is your thinking. You jump to conclusions faster. You fall for emotional clickbait. You stop asking deeper questions.

And over time, you may lose the habit of independent thought altogether. You become not a thinker, but a reactor.

Which is exactly what the system rewards.

Platforms benefit from outrage, from overconfidence, from groupthink. Critical thinking, by contrast, is slow, effortful, and not especially profitable. So it gets drowned out.

A few small shifts

The good news is that attention can be retrained. And the goal isn’t to delete the internet or throw your phone in a lake. It’s to reclaim just enough space to think clearly.

Here are three small ways to start:

Use tech that works for you, not against you. Apps like Freedom or Forest help limit distractions by design.
Create deliberate boundaries. Schedule focused blocks of time, and physically separate your devices if needed. (Turning off notifications isn’t just a productivity hack—it’s an act of resistance.)
Practice slow thinking. Even five minutes of focused journaling or single-task reading each day helps rebuild the mental muscle.

In short

Your brain wasn’t designed for the digital attention economy. But that economy was absolutely designed for your brain.

When you understand how the system works, you can start to opt out—not entirely, but enough to think freely again.

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