Abstract

This paper develops an empirically responsible account of the attention economy. Almost all existing philosophical accounts of the moral and psychological harms of the attention economy rely on vague metaphors and folk psychological theorizing about the nature of attention and control. Drawing on recent work from across the cognitive sciences, we argue that a valuationist approach provides a more empirically robust and conceptually rich account than prevailing models of the attention economy, which emphasize addiction, compulsion, and loss of control. The valuationist framework posits that decision-making, including attention allocation and self-control, is fundamentally driven by representations of value. We contend that the attention economy's impact is best understood as shaping these value representations that influence decision-making. Contrary to folk psychological notions of irresistible urges or hijacked autonomy, we argue that users maintain the capacity for choice and control. Moreover, our account can still capture the common phenomenology of feeling 'pulled' towards digital distractions. The first half of the paper unpacks the valuationist framework, with a special emphasis on valuationist accounts of attention and control. The second half of the paper applies this framework to better understand the moral and psychological harms associated with the attention economy.