The Ecology of Attention

Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting. And, even more disturbing, scrolling narrows the field of my curiosity.

The sensation is one of wandering aimlessly, picking up and putting down partly-interesting objects with a sense of generalized indifference. I started noticing something else, too: the impulses powering my behavior weren’t even articulated. The reason for checking and scrolling was rarely in response to an actual inquiry.

The sensation is one of wandering aimlessly, picking up and putting down partly-interesting objects with a sense of generalized indifference. I started noticing something else, too: the impulses powering my behavior weren’t even articulated. The reason for checking and scrolling was rarely in response to an actual inquiry. The impulse to scroll rem... See more

The “soft” characteristics of any kind of contemplative behavior (slowness, eddying, meandering) make it easy to devalue. And this, too: creative space often feels resistant, like it’s denying us something, won’t speak, won’t produce—when in reality it’s just quiet, it’s not dancing for us, or “entertaining,” or feeding us dopamine edibles.

But my attention is not free for the taking—it’s mine . And once I felt that my own very precious ground-of-being was overrun and manipulated, once I identified the extractive behaviors I was being recruited for, I could see that I had to exert far more agency. If I believe my inner world is an “ecology” and social media’s algorithms are “incursion... See more

That space—where you look up from writing and don’t know where to go or what to do next, where you sit at a red light, wait at the post office? Something lives in that space that’s being hurt and displaced by calling in the “elsewhere” of messages, news cycles, TikToks, and so on. A relationship to something as yet unknown and under formation is be... See more

Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting. And, even more disturbing, scrolling narrows the field of my curiosity. I take what I find there; I don’t make adve... See more

Once upon a time, when checking and scrolling were not an option, there existed so much interstitial space. The gap between one activity and another was an open field, a transitional territory.

Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting.