Fifteen Minutes

The precipice of the attention economy

In late 2023, I took a break from social media.

Before that, I had spent a decade and a half keeping my fingers on the pulse of each social media trend and tactic, creating and managing the growth of brands online and drafting usage policies across the board. At some point, at least on the personal side, the cons of spending time on these networks outweighed the pros, as social media stopped being social around 2016.

This was when automation features really took off, and the output of content fantastically exceeded the rate at which people could thoughtfully absorb information. It was emotional labour to watch and worry as hundreds of thousands took on identical voices and adopted one aesthetic, promoting overconsumption when the consequences of human and environmental exploitation were staring us in the face. And I recognised, as a player in the attention economy, that many felt forced to dance to the algorithms in the hopes of creating much-needed lines of income.

The final straw was the arrival of AI-generated content that turned what was left of enjoyable posts into a mental game of discerning what is real and fake at a time when reality already feels wobbly.

When my professional responsibilities no longer extended to overseeing these channels, I switched them off completely. I installed three apps (Freedom, Opal, and Forest) that made it nearly impossible to access the networks during a self-assigned two-week disconnection window. This was in anticipation of having difficulty going completely cold turkey after so many years of being a heavy user. To my surprise, I never once had to override the apps. Time flew by without any digital “FOMO.”

I knew I would like to access some of the networks again because I enjoyed the connections and the content that pulled me in the first place: landscape photography, art, book reviews, recipes, and micro-dosing on research. But it was the personalised algorithm I wanted to bypass, knowing it would find a way to snatch minutes here and there and feed my revenge procrastination.

So in early 2024, I decided to employ a practice of fifteen-minute daily allotments on social media: counted time where I can access the channels I enjoy (including Reddit, a known time thief). A quarter of an hour limit per day seemed like an acceptable amount of time to gamble on these platforms. A boundary, not a breakup.

The first little while was a balancing act of which network brought the most return on (time) investment — this is where friends and colleagues can rightly laugh at my use of ROI measures in my private time. Over time, I got better at deciding which type of content delivered the dopamine hit quickly: Some mornings were livened by a #bookstagram post, afternoons were improved with humour, and evenings were better suited for direct messaging (more accurately, trauma bonding over memes).

A tinge of guilt initially accompanied this fifteen-minute practice. I felt I owed contacts a fair exchange of our social contract and recognition of the effort they’ve put in when messaging—although it was mostly meme sharing. But that feeling subsided as I reclaimed the time I wasted on endless scrolls and put it towards communicating privately via text messages, Zoom calls, and written letters to those who prefer a longer form of thoughtful correspondence.

I'm not writing this to exalt the virtues of disconnection or cast judgment on those who choose to make a living in that space. But I have been watching recent events unfold, and I once more question the amount of life tax we're paying out in time and anxiety to the Zuckerburgs, Musks, and Dorseys of the world. I am curious how many genuine ties we've let slip in favour of virtual winks and handshakes. And I wonder if the emotional numbing that doom scrolling delivers is our response to the voids left behind from our stolen time, attention, connection, and possibly sanity.

The irony is that I will shortly spend some of my fifteen minutes on Instagram sharing this post and announcing its existence. And while I don't know what you have planned for your next few minutes online, I sincerely thank you for spending the last three minutes with me.