This is an age of distraction. Everything on the internet is trying to grab a piece of your attention. Be it by sharing links on social media, spamming your inbox, or popup advertisements.
“Attention is a resource—a person has only so much of it” - Matthew Crawford [1]
And indeed, one does not have unlimited attention. Out of the 24 hours in a day, if we cut 8 hours of sleep-time, we do not have much time to pay attention to everything. And therefore, there is a constant quest by content producers to grab your attention to their work. Thus, attention has become a new currency for the online economy. The more attention something can grab from people online, the more potential it has to “translate” that attention to real money. For example, if a video grabs more attention online, it will attract more viewers for the advertisements associated with it which in turn leads to more revenue from the advertisers.
This attention economy can at times lead to promotion of negative content. In this blog post let us focus on how the attention economy is related to the proliferation of negative content online and how to reduce the interruptions that attract your attention to negative content.
How negativity online catches our attention?
The social media user base has grown rapidly and is still experiencing a high year on year growth in terms of the number of active users. Facebook, the largest social media platform currently has close to 1.71 billion active users [2]. Consequently, such a high number of active user base has led to increasingly high number of people interacting online. In one of our previous blog posts we explained about the stakeholders in online media. Along with content consumers, content producers have also increased significantly online. In other words, there is more and more content online and there are more people reacting to that content. With the high amount of content that is continuously generated online, it is often seen that that negative content attracts more attention.
There are several causes why negative content catches more attention online. In fact, based on research on human psychology, bad news tend to attract more than good news [3]. So it is normal that one’s attention is diverted by seeing something negative on social media. Another thing that draws more attention of people are the public conversations that go on social media. For example, it is common to see a large amount of rude conversations happening on news posts on Facebook. These conversations are tempting people to jump in and debate fiercely with other people. Often, people are drawn to reading more and more public conversations on social media, follow replies and reaction and contribute their feelings and opinions. Therefore, public conversations are quick attention grabbers owing to the fact that humans, as social animals, often seek to find the opinion of others. Social media platforms offer a layer of physical abstraction and also sometimes anonymity which leads to people becoming unaware or unconcerned with the consequences of that they post online. This makes rude conversations and nasty comments quite common on social media. In one of their issues, USA Today has give a fairly good account of rude behaviour online [4]. If we try to connect the dots here, our attention is diverted to some content on social media (be it good or bad), and then we are often exposed to negativity upon getting attracted to the conversations around the content. And if we decide to jump into the conversations, we are prone to getting more hate. However, it is also important to note that there are positive and constructive conversations on social media as well.
Content producers and facilitators are the most important stakeholders which compete to get a part of one’s attention. These stakeholders often use tricks like “clickbait” in order to get the attention to make content consumers click on links and land on a page which also displays advertisements. The term ‘clickbait’ is used to define any content that aims to attract users with the sole motive of showing them advertisements in order to generate revenue. To attract viewers, content producers and facilitators use many tricks, including but not limited to, attractive thumbnails, sensationalising news headlines, and repeatedly sharing the same content. Post titles like “You will be shocked what happened next..”, “This is the best thing ever…” are a common sight these days. Clickbaits have become a nuisance on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter because they distort the truth by not focussing on quality content and waste people’s attention with too much advertisements. In fact, social media platforms like Facebook have new algorithms to detect clickbait links in order to tackle this [5].
The modern world is always connected as everyone carries a full computer with them (in the form of a mobile phone). It is a concern that our attention is controlled by social media companies through sending us notifications. Furthermore, with sharing of content online, even on messaging services like Whatsapp and Telegram, one might get subjected to bad behaviour anytime right on their mobile devices.
How to not pay attention to negativity online?
Each person only has 24 hours per day and it is impossible to digest all bad and good content available. Thus, it is our decision to choose what kind of content we are going to feed our brains. Instead of sitting around and consuming whatever negative content is readily available, challenge yourself to make more conscious choices about what you consume and how you consume it.
- Do you really need to read this piece of news? Does it bring anything meaningful to your day?
- Is it necessary to go to this particular facebook page, particular media channel? Is their content useful or helpful to me?
- Do I need to join this online discussion? Is it constructive? How will it affect my mood and well-being?
If something isn't benefiting you, then eliminate it.
- Leave the facebook page
- Turn off your mobile notifications
- Subscribe to good news channels
- Ignore negative content when you run across it*
“With great power comes great responsibility” - Uncle Ben Parker in Spider-Man (2002 movie). Social media is a powerful tool and it helps in staying connected with family, friends and the rest of the world. But with this power, one must be responsible while interacting with people online and sharing content with others. It is okay to criticise, but criticism should be constructive, instead of using abusive language. Consequently, criticism of oneself should be taken sportingly. Also, remember the famous quote, “Ignorance is bliss” - Thomas Gray (Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College). It is completely okay to not pay attention to something that doesn’t add value (for example, rude comments).
Most of the social media platforms offer a great deal of customization options to their users. It is quite a good idea to tweak your settings to limit notifications from random sources. Also, a good introspection of privacy and security settings is very much recommended. If a page or a person continuously posts content that doesn’t interest you, then it is always a better idea to “unfollow”, “unsubscribe”, or “unfriend” the person or page. This way, we can limit and control the amount of information that appears on the social media feed or as notifications on the mobile phone. In order to tackle the problem of clickbaits, we should identify the sources of content that repeatedly has clickbaits associated with the posts. Such content producers or facilitators should then be unsubscribed.
It is important to note that it is not good either to block all the bad news. It is important to differentiate between negative content and positive content. “Bad news” does not always constitute negative content as it is important for one to know the facts and what is happening around. On the flipside, it is also not advised to paint an image of the world as a paradise by only consuming all the good news. There needs to be a balance. Therefore, it depends on a person to determine how much content they want to consume. This is analogous to food, where one needs to have a balanced diet to stay healthy, in the same way we should consume a “balanced” content in order to avoid social media and technology affecting one’s mental health.
References
[1]
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Crawford, M. B. (2015). The world beyond your head: On becoming an individual in an age of distraction. Macmillan.
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[2]
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Facebook users worldwide. Statistica. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
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[3]
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Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of general psychology, 5(4), 323
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[4]
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Kornblum, J. (2007). Rudeness, threats make the Web a cruel world. USA Today.
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[5]
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Constine, J. (2016, August 4). Facebook’s new anti-clickbait algorithm buries bogus ... Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/04/facebook-clickbait/
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