Biggest addiction of our time
When we talk about addiction, we tend to focus on substances: drugs or alcohol. But there is another addiction shaping behaviour on a mass scale, quietly influencing how we think, relate and understand ourselves. It does not arrive with warning labels or rehab clinics and it is often seen as ambition or self-expression rather than dependency. That addiction is attention.
Not attention as a by-product of meaningful contribution, but attention as a primary goal. Not connection, understanding or belonging, but visibility. Being noticed has increasingly replaced being known.
The Attention Economy and the Brain
From a neuroscience perspective, this shift is neither accidental nor purely moral. Human beings are deeply social organisms, evolutionarily wired to seek approval and inclusion. For most of our history, social attention signalled safety and survival. Modern digital environments exploit this wiring through reward systems built on intermittent reinforcement, a mechanism long understood in behavioural psychology. Likes, views and comments provide small, unpredictable dopamine rewards that train the brain to seek repetition. Over time, attention-seeking behaviour becomes habitual, not because people are shallow, but because the brain is doing exactly what it evolved to do in a distorted environment.
Psychologically, this has significant consequences. When external validation becomes frequent and measurable, it begins to shape identity formation. Self-worth shifts from being internally anchored to being externally contingent. Research on contingent self-esteem shows that when individuals rely on approval, visibility or praise for their sense of value, emotional stability decreases while anxiety and reactivity increase. The self becomes something to manage and perform rather than inhabit.
Sociologically, the attention economy has profoundly altered group dynamics. Belonging, once rooted in shared values, mutual responsibility and trust, is increasingly mediated by performance. Social psychologist Erving Goffman described life as a series of performances long before social media existed, but the difference today is scale, permanence and monetisation. The private backstage has shrunk, while the public stage has expanded beyond context or proportion. Every experience is potentially content, every opinion a signal, every emotion a brand asset.
How Far Are We Willing to Go to Be Seen?
This shift has changed how truth, suffering and morality function in public space. When attention is rewarded above accuracy, emotional intensity outperforms nuance. Pain becomes persuasive, outrage becomes adhesive and complexity becomes inconvenient. As a result, we see the rise of exaggerated victimhood, performative moral positioning and the elevation of figures whose primary qualification is visibility rather than wisdom or competence. This is not merely a cultural irritation; it is a structural problem. Sociological research shows that when incentives reward extreme positions, moderate voices retreat, and collective reasoning deteriorates.
Group psychology further explains why this dynamic accelerates. Humans are highly sensitive to social proof, especially under conditions of uncertainty. When visibility signals status, people imitate what receives attention, not necessarily what is ethical, truthful or constructive. Over time, this creates a feedback loop in which group norms shift towards whatever is most emotionally contagious. Trust erodes, not only in institutions and media, but between individuals, because when everything is potentially for sale, authenticity becomes suspect.
How much does it really cost us?
This erosion of trust may be one of the most damaging consequences of the attention economy. Trust relies on the belief that not everything is transactional, that some expressions are sincere rather than strategic. When confession, vulnerability and even outrage are routinely monetised, people become more cynical, more guarded and less willing to believe in genuine intent. Sociologists have long warned that societies cannot function without a baseline of shared trust, yet attention-driven cultures steadily undermine it.
There is also a cognitive cost. Constant stimulation and emotional escalation place sustained pressure on attentional systems in the brain. Neuroscience research indicates that environments favouring speed and novelty reduce the brain’s capacity for deep focus, long-term planning and reflective judgement. This does not make people less intelligent, but it does make thoughtful engagement harder to sustain. When reaction is rewarded more than reflection, collective intelligence suffers.
At the individual level, this creates a quiet but pervasive loneliness. Visibility is mistaken for connection, exposure for intimacy, and recognition for belonging. Yet human nervous systems do not register metrics as care. They respond to presence, safety and mutual attunement. Being seen by many is not the same as being held by a few. When life becomes a performance, solitude begins to feel like disappearance, and silence like failure.
The Antidote: Less Performance, More Presence
The antidote is neither withdrawal nor moral panic. It is discernment. Psychological wellbeing is consistently associated with autonomy, meaning and genuine connection, none of which require constant visibility. Silence allows the nervous system to recover. Privacy provides psychological safety. Intimate relationships restore trust because they exist outside performance and reward structures.
Choosing not to share everything is not disengagement; it is boundary-setting. Refusing to monetise every experience is not irrelevance; it is integrity. In a culture that equates attention with worth, the quiet decision to live without constant spectatorship becomes an act of resistance.
Attention can amplify meaning, but it cannot replace it. Visibility may feel powerful, but it is belonging that sustains. And in a world increasingly organised around performance, the most grounded lives are often those unfolding just beyond the spotlight, where nothing needs to be sold in order to be real.
Because the moments that shape us most deeply are rarely the ones anyone else sees.
