The Attention Economy – The Most Expensive Commodity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Short Content

The Attention Economy – The Most Expensive Commodity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Short Content

In a world that is drowning in a never-ending flood of information, one rare and precious thing has become our attention. Oil or gold is no longer the most precious commodity, but the minutes and seconds we devote to the screen of our phone or computer. This is the essence of what is known as the attention economy, an economic concept that treats human attention as a finite resource that companies and technological platforms seek to acquire in various ways.
Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon first coined the concept in 1971, when he pointed out that an abundance of information creates a scarcity of attention. But what was just an academic theory decades ago has now become a dominant economic reality, driven by two modern giants: artificial intelligence and short content.

What is the Attention Economy?
The attention economy is a model that is based on the idea that a person's ability to process information is limited, so attention is a resource that must be efficiently managed and distributed. In this economy, every click, every scroll, and every second of view is transformed into valuable data that can be turned into profit.

The economy of attention as a commodity can be summed up in the following equation:
Attention = Time + Focus
The companies that succeed in attracting the most of our time and focus are the ones that achieve the most financial success. This is why social media platforms and digital services are very carefully designed to be as addictive as possible. The goal is not only to provide good content, but to design an experience that prevents the user from leaving, through mechanisms such as: 

• Infinite Scrolling: Eliminates the need to click on a new page, keeping the viewing continuous.

• Push notifications: Using psychological stimuli such as fear of missing out on something – FOMO to bring the user back to the app.

• Superior Personalization: Deliver content tailored to the user's interests, making them more likely to engage.

The concept evolved from advertising to interaction
In its early days, the attention economy was mainly focused on traditional advertising, newspapers, television. It was about buying space to display a message. But with the advent of the internet, the focus shifted from buying attention to gaining attention through content. With the advent of social media platforms, it became a matter of retaining attention through constant interaction and personalization.

The Rise of Short-form Content The 15-Second Battle
It is not possible to talk about the attention economy today without referring to the phenomenon  of Short-form Content, which is represented in videos that do not exceed a few seconds or one minute in length, as we see on platforms such as TikTok and  Instagram Reels.

Why short content?
Short content is the legitimate son of the attention economy in its most extreme form. It is designed to suit the diminishing attention span of the digital user, who  has a much  shorter attention span than in the past.

Short content reduces the cost of attention on the user. Instead of committing to watching a two-hour movie, the user can try hundreds of different clips at the same time, making it more likely to find something that interests them immediately.

Negative Effects of Short Content
Despite its appeal, short content raises serious concerns about its impact on cognitive abilities:

• Focus fragmentation: The rapid flow of information reduces our ability to focus for long periods or delve deeper into a single topic.

• Excitement Search: The brain rehearses for the rapid dopamine rewards generated by exciting content, making the deeper, slower content seem boring.

• Cognitive superficiality: May lead to a preference for quick and simplified information over complex knowledge and deep analysis.

AI is the new fuel
If short content is the weapon, AI is the fuel that powers that weapon in the battle of attention. AI has moved the attention economy from the stage of random competition to the stage of precision-directed warfare.

Hyper-Personalization
AI is responsible for the algorithms that decide what you see on your feed. These algorithms not only analyze what you've watched, but analyze:

• Watch Duration: Have you stopped scrolling?

• Exact interaction: Did you zoom in on the image?

• Emotional rhythm: What types of content elicit an emotional response to laughter, anger, empathy?

Using this big data, AI builds a digital twin for your attention, predicting with incredible accuracy what will attract you next. This superior customization makes the content feel like it was made just for you, making it more likely that you'll stay on the platform.

Artificial Intelligence and Content Creators
Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a tool for attracting attention, it has become a tool for producing content itself.

• Content generation: Large language models (LLMs) and generative AI can  produce text, images, and short videos in high quality and at a much lower cost and time than traditional methods. This floods the market with more content, increasing the scarcity of attention.

• Improve performance: The creator uses AI tools to analyze audience preferences, choose the most engaging headlines, and optimize publication timing, all with the sole goal: to capture attention.

This synergy between AI and short content creates a vicious cycle: AI produces engaging short content, and short content feeds the AI with new attention data, increasing its efficiency in attracting more attention.

Ethical and Social Challenges
The dominance of the attention economy, powered by artificial intelligence and short content, raises profound questions about our cognitive and social future.

Psychological manipulation
Algorithms aren't neutral; they're designed to achieve a business goal: to increase time on the platform. This means that they may prefer content that provokes controversy, anger, or polarization, because it ensures longer engagement. Attention becomes a commodity to be manipulated, not something that is transparently earned.

The Filter Bubble
Hyper-Customization Provided by AI can trap users inside Filter Bubbles, where they only see content that confirms their current beliefs. This reduces exposure to different perspectives, increases societal polarization, and makes shared dialogue more difficult.

Attention Health
Experts have started talking about attention health as a public health issue. Feelings of cognitive exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, and anxiety caused by constant notifications are all symptoms of a digital environment designed to drain our attention.

The attention economy has evolved from a theoretical concept to a dominant force shaping the way we think and interact with the world. Artificial intelligence and short-form content have multiplied the pace of this revolution, making competition on our minds fiercer than ever before.
The challenge today is not to get more information, but to protect our ability to process it deeply and focusedly. The battle to regain attention is a battle to regain our ability to think critically, learn deeply, and live mindfully. Ultimately, the most precious commodity in this age is not what corporations sell, but what we choose to give: our attention.