A Poverty of Attention: Addictive Technology in the Digital Economy

Abstract

This thesis develops a theory about digital addiction and attention markets: that a firm's choice to monetize a digital product via advertising incentivizes and thus causes the firm to increase the addictiveness of that product. The addictive product then captures more of users' attention than is in their interests. First, I develop a novel economic-theoretical model that generates this claim about advertising and addictiveness, along with several other claims about welfare and firm competition in attention markets. I position this theory alongside others in the literature to explain the tension between, on one hand, the extraordinary amount of time that humans dedicate to certain digital services and, on the other, the nonexistent-to-negative effects of those services on subjective well-being. Second, I perform an original quantitative analysis of the association between the portion of a user's digital environment that is ad-funded and the markers of addictive use they express. I find that this association is positive, statistically significant, and large. This descriptive evidence is consistent with the findings of the economic-theoretical model, although it cannot on its own confirm them. Third, I present a set of philosophical and political-theoretical propositions that bridge the argumentative gap between analytical showings of addiction-enabled attention extraction and public policy action. This thesis contributes to the digital technology economics and policy literature by way of an economic formalization and quantitative analysis of advertising-driven digital addiction. It also offers a comprehensive treatment of that topic, from analytical derivation and empirical support to philosophical validation and policy solutions.