The Attention Tax

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine you wake up tomorrow and every app on your phone displays a small counter in the corner—not your notifications, not your likes, but the number of minutes you've spent inside it this week. Just a quiet, honest number.

Most of us would be appalled. Not because we don't know we're spending the time—we do, vaguely, the way we know we should floss—but because seeing it quantified would make the transaction visible. And the entire economy of attention depends on that transaction staying invisible.

I used to think the problem was distraction. That if we could just focus harder, we'd win. But distraction is a symptom. The disease is the systematic undervaluing of our own time by the platforms that harvest it.

Think about what you're actually trading when you scroll. Not just minutes. You're trading the version of yourself that might have existed if you'd spent those minutes differently. The person who read that chapter. Who called that friend. Who sat with the boredom long enough for an idea to surface.

That person is the attention tax. And nobody's filing a return.