It’s a timeless reality: we give our time to work, and in return, we receive money to support the life we hope to live.
Yet, the distinction between "need" and "want" has become dangerously blurred. We are saturated with nuance—Buy this, not that; watch this, not that; go here, not there— which makes us believe we are exercising choice, while decisions are being subtly made for us. We remain largely unconscious of the profound consequences. This is having a lasting impact on the new generation of people entering the workforce.
Time and money both seem to accelerate, moving faster and becoming easier to spend. In the age of constant digital input, the truly difficult decision is no longer where to spend our money, but where to place our attention.
Attention has become the new currency, yet unlike money, we are often unaware of the astronomical amount we are spending. When, and how, do we draw a line against this constant consumption of our focus? The traditional wisdom prioritizing money may be obsolete; in today's world, time and attention are the ultimate non-renewable resources.
This phenomenon isn’t a new concept, but it is a new epidemic. The attention economy was first defined by Herbert A. Simon in 1971, working on the principle that "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". More than ever, we can know about every incident globally at any time of the day and constantly. This constant knowledge of events fuels the uncertainty in life with more awareness than ever before. Our attention is filled with information all around us, leaving little time to really understand where we are placing our time in the present place we stand.
The ongoing concern for time goes hand in hand with the ongoing rejection of traditional work styles from new generations. Due to the lasting uncertainty in the ever-changing technological impact on the world, Gen Z has grown up with great uncertainty. From various economic conditions, most recently the 2020 pandemic, there is a lack of knowledge of when our limit is reached. Having a sense of stability and reliability in economic conditions is not something that has come innate. As a result, distraction with media is a byproduct of a need for community and engagement. However, it becomes an overarching concern when it is overused rather than a tool.
Uncertainty drives the decisions in young people today, knowing if commitment one day will be valued the next. Relating back to the constant need to gratify the short term and fulfill the now uncertain, if we will be able to do so tomorrow. We all want to have fun in life, but instead of choosing what we do with our time, algorithms choose for us.
What once was an issue for the individual has become increasingly more difficult when the attention economy relies on this factor to run each day. Once the recognition of attention to fuel the economy, the addictive nature became stronger as algorithms grew to adapt to personal needs, resulting in the addictive nature of social media and algorithm-driven pressures.
No one knows what to do when it is embedded into each crack of the foundation throughout these applications. Prioritizing the addictive isolated experiences over ethical social design, all for ads and money. Social media is designed to encourage the attention of consumers, and we are all just the players, however completely unaware. Dreaming of a world where we have flexibility and reliability, but what if I told you we could all just be hypocritical if we don’t take control?
We go to work or school all day just to clock into our second shifts of free labour for algorithms feeding industries to take our time in turn, and for them to make more money. Time is limited, but as we know, money isn’t; there is always more to be made, more to come, but time is limited. We are only alive for so long, yet we feed into constant labour,r which our generation is trying to escape. Drawing back to the criticism of the traditional workforce has been seen, but are we any better if we live our lives with the media? At the end of the day, isn’t our time just defined numerically with money? Just as monetary policy shapes the economy, attention is one of the most valuable assets we possess.
Our attention is a byproduct of the world we have grown up which is driven by algorithms, and that leaves people uncertain and confined by norms. The old saying if your friends all jump off a bridge, would you too? The rapidly changing digital world makes it hard to define when and where we should draw our limits and decide what is beneficial to our lives. The new generations want to focus on quality over quantity, which is crucial to enjoy our lives and being more productive, but in turn, we must recognize what productivity is and what adds value in our own lives.
“Inactivity is the condition of the possibility of experience” (Kant). We will never know what we want if we never give ourselves the chance to think, but once again, that’s up to you to decide, as it would be hypocritical of me to tell you otherwise.
The case for rejecting the 9-to-5 is solid; it speaks to a desire for genuine quality of life. But is that rejection meaningless if the vacuum is filled by passive media consumption? The central issue that particularly plagues adolescence is this: How do we identify our true desires, and what drives them? Ignoring this question is a debt that compounds. The longer we delay defining our personal 'why,' the more difficult the path ahead becomes, irrespective of our eventual achievements.
References:
Bruineberg, J. (2025). Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy. Philosophical Psychology, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2502428
Piché, C. (2016). Kant on the “conditions of the possibility” of experience. In H. Kim & S. Hoeltzel (Eds.), Transcendental Inquiry: Its History, Methods and Critiques (pp. [insert page range]). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.