In the last decade and a half, a profound and unsettling shift has occurred in the daily experience of billions. The catalyst? A suite of interconnected technologies that have fundamentally altered what it means to be a person in the modern world. Nearly 70% of the global population now owns a smartphone, devices that account for a staggering 95% of all internet access points. On average, people spend close to half their waking hours staring at screens, a figure that rises sharply among younger generations in affluent nations.
The Mechanics of a New Exploitation
History shows that every technological leap brings with it novel forms of exploitation. The rise of society-scale digital platforms is a textbook case. A radical new method of extracting value from humanity has emerged: it can be termed 'human fracking'. Much like industrial frackers pump high-pressure detergents into the earth to release oil, human frackers pump a relentless stream of addictive, algorithmically-optimised content into our field of vision. Their goal is to fracture our focus and force a slurry of human attention to the surface, where it can be harvested and sold.
This practice, whether applied to the planet or the human mind, creates instability, toxicity, and despoliation. We now understand that the reckless exploitation of our natural environment has pushed human survival to the brink. The parallel 'gold rush' into the inner landscape of the human psyche is well on its way to achieving similarly destructive, if more insidious, results.
Why Our Attention Is Everything
The stakes could not be higher. What the frackers commodity as mere 'screen time' is, in reality, the essence of our humanity: our capacity to care, to think deeply, and to connect with the world and each other. To put a price on this is to commodify our very being. The issue is not smartphones or social media per se, but the systematic land-grab into human consciousness—a territory big tech treats as an unclaimed frontier, ripe for colonisation and profit.
Yet, there is hope. New forms of exploitation invariably breed new forms of resistance. The vast wealth of the world's largest corporations is built on the substrate of our shared human experience. This fight for our attention is the latest chapter in an age-old struggle between those who reduce people to monetary value and those who champion a richer vision of human flourishing.
The Birth of a Resistance Movement
So, what can be done? Regulatory efforts remain fragmented and are actively opposed by powerful vested interests. Proposed pharmacological 'fixes' for the mounting psychological damage often merely monetise the problem in a different way, making us more compliant. The solution must be more fundamental.
The answer lies in collective action. We, the people, must unite in decisive solidarity. We must say 'no' to the human frackers by insisting that our attention is intrinsically human, it belongs to us, and we will wield it to build the world we wish to inhabit. In short, we need a movement.
This is not a pipe dream. Major cultural shifts can happen with astonishing speed. The modern environmental movement was virtually non-existent in 1950 but became a global force by 1970. Similarly, a consensus on the deadly dangers of smoking emerged in less than two decades. We are now at a comparable inflection point regarding our attention.
Across political and social divides—from MAGA Republicans to progressive activists—there is a growing, shared unease about a world dominated by endless scrolling, where military-grade persuasion technologies target children to keep them hooked. Politicians on both the left and right are beginning to recognise this as a potent electoral issue.
This nascent fightback is being called 'attention activism'. It focuses on building broad coalitions, promoting the life-giving power of focused thought, and creating sanctuary spaces free from algorithmic extraction. The core truth is that we already possess the tools for resistance: the activities we love and care about that exist beyond the reach of the feed. True human attention is not a click or a swipe; it is love, curiosity, daydreaming, and care for ourselves and others.
Just as the Industrial Revolution created the 'proletariat' and gave rise to labour politics and unions, the new system of human fracking is turning us all into 'attentional subjects'. This brings profound new vulnerabilities, but also the seed of a new collective power. A new politics of attention—a fight for what some term 'attensity', or the true freedom of focus—is on the horizon. By deploying our attention with purpose and solidarity, we can defy the frackers and insist on creating a world fit for human beings.
