Attention: The Hottest Commodity in Town and How to Reclaim It

Learn why attention is the new gold for corporations. Discover digital habits to reclaim our focus and time from endless distractions.

Have we ever stopped to think about what companies are really selling? It used to be simple: products we could touch and smell—like spices, beautiful fragrances, or valuable precious metals. For thousands of years, these were the things people bought and sold.

But something fundamental has changed in our world that has never happened before in history. The most valuable thing on the market today isn’t gold or oil. It’s our attention.

Our attention and awareness are the new gold which the brutal merchants are after. Apps constantly send notifications, videos designed to autoplay infinitely, and endless media feeds. Gigantic corporations are now embattled in an intense competition to toy with our attention. They treat our attention as a merchandise they can capture and hoard for their auspicious sale moment. The longer they keep our eyes and hearts glued to the screen, the more money they make. The commodification of human attention is the latest threat to our already diminishing natural existence.

The result of this constant battle for our attention is a massive shift in how we spend our time. With Gen Z averaging nine hours of screen time per day which amounts to 4.5 months a year, this is nearly half of one’s waking life given to platforms that exist only to monetize that time.

Fortifying our attention is the only way to reclaim our humanity. Our attention determines our existence. Disabling non-essential device notifications will help to save our drifting attention. Designating Digital-free zones at homes, say in bedrooms or dining tables, will also be useful. Hiding or deleting time-swallowing apps will force the mind to pause and think before falling into the distraction trap. Setting app usage time will remind us when we have exhausted our allotted daily time allowance. Finally, enabling screen time app stats on our home screen will testify how our attention scores on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Our time is finite, and we cannot afford to let our attention be the coal that feeds the furnace of greedy corporations.

Dec 09 2025