On the web, on our phones, tablets and online objects, platforms and apps capture our attention without restraint, with a single goal: to maximise the impact of advertising. But these practices come with deeply worrying negative externalities: at an individual level, they harm our health – particularly our mental health – and impair our cognitive abilities; at a societal level, they polarise opinions, facilitate the spread of misinformation and undermine democratic principles. In doing so, they fuel addiction, disinformation and polarisation, and fracture our societies for the sake of a few more clicks. This document provides slides in which we outline these mechanisms and their consequences, then review a number of possible solutions to address them and reclaim our attention. For this is the price we must pay to be able to collectively tackle and address the crucial issues of our time.
Gandon et al. (2026) studied this question.