Your attention please

As of September 2025, approximately 170 million Americans spend, on average, one hour every day in an app that is designed to maximize psychological grip. While Congress fixates on TikTok’s data collection usages, what hasn’t received enough attention is how the platform has successfully industrialized human attention itself.

Everything on TikTok is just kind of mediocre, because nobody watches anything for very long, so there’s no reason to make anything very good. And increasingly, this endless, relentless feed of bland mediocrity is eating every other type of cultural consumption in America.

We have let school shootings in America persist long enough that we have created a culture where kids grow up seeing them as a path towards fame and glory. Another consequence of how thoroughly the internet has flattened pop culture, politics, and real life violence. All of it now is just another meme you can participate in to go viral.

We’ve grown so intolerant of delay that we can’t sit through a full microwave countdown before intervening— preferring to eat it lukewarm than wait for zero.

“That’s enough screen time for today,” you tell your kid, urging them to turn off the video-game console or iPad. As for what they should do instead, you are not quite sure. And what about you? If only you could put down your phone and listen to your spouse, or read a book, or embrace the sensation of your own existence, then surely you would be a... See more