The fix for attention problems is collective attentional freedom, not individual span

Evidence

Promises of silver bullets abound, but none will suffice, because there are no quick fixes to a challenge at this scale. No app is going to save us, because there is no “tech fix.” No drug is going to heal us, because there’s no “Big Pharma fix,” either. And don’t hold your breath for a regulatory fix, because, in the end, no law is going to be able to protect us…enough. Self-help regimens and yoga retreats are all well and good, but they are never going to be enough. So go ahead and practice mindfulness, or support sane legislation to fight back against “dark patterns,” or try a digital detox. Take your kid to the zoo, for that matter, and try leaving the phones at home. But ultimately the issue at hand isn’t going to be solved at the level of individual actions. The problem isn’t personal. It is structural and systemic. Indeed, no larger or more complex “system” has ever been achieved by human beings. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 209 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These attentional forms are a precious inheritance. They create the conditions of possibility for our being together—and being with ourselves, too. Without them, the world cannot but be senseless and mystifying—to anyone, but to its newest inhabitants above all. Without the formation of attentional capacities, our tottering tykes and teenagers alike would be incapable of moving through the world—which would be, after all, fashioned according to rules and patterns of behavior utterly beyond their grasp! And there can be no meaningful human freedom in an incomprehensible chaos. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt reminds us, the cultivation of shared forms of awareness and recognition and reflective judgment is how a human world doomed by human mortality is both sustained and continually made anew. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 289 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attention extraction unjustly commodifies the self and requires collective rather than individual remedy; Shared attentional forms are what make shared human freedom possible — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 289; Individual fixes cannot solve attention extraction because the problem is structural — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 209 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Attention extraction unjustly commodifies the self and requires collective rather than individual remedy #corroborates (0.90)
• Individual fixes cannot solve attention extraction because the problem is structural #corroborates (0.85) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 209
• Shared attentional forms are what make shared human freedom possible #expands (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 289
• Diverse attentional practices form a common arsenal against attention extraction #expands (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 436
• Deep disciplined attention resists appropriation better than shallow attention does #complicates (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 415
• Economic accounts of attention falsely derive the collective from individual activity #corroborates (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 79