Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Nov 19;8(4):497.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare8040497.

The Struggle for Human Attention: Between the Abuse of Social Media and Digital Wellbeing

Santiago Giraldo-Luque  1 , Pedro Nicolás Aldana Afanador  1 , Cristina Fernández-Rovira  2
Affiliations

The Struggle for Human Attention: Between the Abuse of Social Media and Digital Wellbeing

Santiago Giraldo-Luque et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Human attention has become an object of study that defines both the design of interfaces and the production of emotions in a digital economy ecosystem. Guided by the control of users' attention, the consumption figures for digital environments, mainly social media, show that addictive use is associated with multiple psychological, social, and physical development problems. The study presented develops a theoretical proposal regarding attention. In the first part, the research analyzes how attention has been studied and how it behaves using three disciplines: neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and economics. In the second part, considering this general framework, the study uses categories of the three disciplines to explain the functioning of social media, with special emphasis on their interactive, attractive, and addictive design. Finally, the article presents, as a practical example of the exposed theory, the main results of two case studies that describe social media consumption among young people. The research shows the relevance of the theoretical study of attention as a key element by which to understand the logics that dominate the interactive design of social media. It also uses a multidisciplinary perspective. The addictive behaviors identified in the two examples support the theoretical proposals and open research lines oriented to the measurement and understanding of the attention given to social media.

Keywords: addictive design; attention; digital wellbeing; economy; neurophysiology; neuropsychology; social media.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. We are Social Digital in 2020. [(accessed on 3 September 2020)]; Available online: https://wearesocial.com/digital-2020.
    1. Patino B. La Civilización de la Memoria de Pez. Pequeño Tratado Sobre el Mercado de la Atención. Alianza Editorial; Madrid, Spain: 2020.
    1. Filley C.M. The neuroanatomy of attention. Semin. Speech Lang. 2002;23:89–98. doi: 10.1055/s-2002-24985. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Fernández-Rovira C., Giraldo-Luque S. Redes sociales y consumo digital juvenil: Economía de la atención y oligopolios de la comunicación en el siglo XXI. Prof. Inf. 2020;29:17. (En prensa)
    1. McCallum W.C. Attention. Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 June 2015. [(accessed on 6 December 2019)]; Available online: https://www.britannica.com/science/attention.

LinkOut - more resources