8.1 Polestar Cases Revisited

In the introduction, we issued a promissory note that we would revisit our three polestar cases in order to demonstrate the importance of the lessons we learned throughout the book. First, there was Esther, who struggled to accomplish her aim of reading because she kept falling prey to the temptation to get out her phone and check Instagram. Second, there was Monica, who felt a Pavlovian pull to check a Slack notification, and she found the constant interruptions were taking a toll on her productivity and her peace of mind. Finally, there was Damon, who was alarmed to discover that his Facebook feed had devolved into a “battleground among partisan echo chambers.”

The resources of this book should allow us to see that these are not disparate phenomena. On the contrary, each situation demonstrates different ways that our autonomy (both at the individual and group level) is being undermined by our relationship with the attention economy. Esther’s situation exemplifies the importance of the duty we owe to ourselves to be digital minimalists. If Kant is right about the moral weight of humanity (the capacity to set and pursue our own ends), then we should recognize that we have a duty to ourselves to be more intentional about our relationship with mobile devices and social media.Footnote 1 These are powerful tools of behavior modification that can undermine our capacities and our authenticity.

This duty to ourselves is similar to what Carol Hay called the “obligation to resist one’s own oppression” (2011). If we acquiesce in our own oppression, we demonstrate a failure to respect our own autonomy. As she puts it, “If Kant is right and our rational nature has ultimate value, then we ought to protect this nature by protecting all of it, including our capacity to act rationally. Oppression can harm rational capacities in a number of ways…” (23). In Chap. 3, we saw the many ways that the problematic use of mobile devices and social media can harm our rational capacities. This may not be tantamount to oppression, but the duty to resist it is grounded in the very same reasons.

The duty to resist technological heteronomy also resembles Thomas Hill’s discussion of servility and self-respect (Hill 1973). Hill argues that “The objectionable feature of the servile person, as I have described him, is his tendency to disavow his own moral rights either because he misunderstands them or because he cares little for them” (97). He also points out how other people stand to gain from those who sheepishly disavow their own rights: “A submissive attitude encourages exploitation, and exploitation spreads misery in a variety of ways…When people refuse to press their rights, there are usually others who profit” (90, emphasis added).

In Chap. 5, we explained why the problem of the attention economy should not be understood entirely as one of individual responsibility. Those who seek to profit from capturing our attention have deployed a variety of manipulative tactics to undermine the autonomy of others. Esther notes the feeling of what Eyal (2014) calls “internal triggers.” As Eyal explains, successful products get us to perform behaviors (such as unlocking our phones and opening apps) before we’ve even had a moment to consciously reflect on what we are doing. Monica, on the other hand, was disrupted by external triggers—notifications that reminded her to check in with the kind of communication platform that many employers require employees to use.

Once we appreciate the social nature of the problem, we should see that it goes far beyond individuals and the duties they owe to themselves. Parents have duties to safeguard their children from the dangers of addictive technology, and teachers have similar duties to their students. In both cases, the cultivation of autonomy is a constitutive aim of the activity. Successful parents and teachers are ones who protect the child’s “right to an open future.” All human beings have an innate right to set and pursue their own ends. But we jeopardize that right by allowing children and students to fall prey to the seemingly irresistible pull of the dopamine-driven attention economy.

For this very reason, we also argued that the state may be justified in using its coercive power to hinder some of these hindrances to freedom. As people have become increasingly aware of the scope of this problem, promising legislation has begun to emerge around the globe. France gave workers the “right to disconnect” by requiring employers to negotiate tech policies with employees. Utah requires tech companies to get parental permission before allowing children to open social media accounts. Schools and daycares are beginning to reconsider their policies about screen time. After recognizing that this is a social problem, we must start looking for collective solutions. We can all play our part in this saga of moral progress by being digital minimalists and attention ecologists.

Finally, we should now appreciate the importance of Damon’s concern about his Facebook feed. What he saw was far more than a lamentable disagreement between his family and friends. It was a paradigmatic illustration of the breakdown of the kinds of social trust that are necessary for us to live in a rightful condition with one another. Once we have developed an appreciation of the ways that social media and mobile devices have fueled the fires of polarization and moral outrage, we must recognize that our commitment to democracy requires us to act. We cannot sit idly by as these vital institutions crumble under the weight of forces we have created. From the genocide in Myanmar to the riots on Capitol Hill, we can no longer ignore the scope of the problem (Fisher 2022). The stakes are simply too high.

8.2 Some Reflections on Optimism

Before wrapping up, we would like to address an objection that we have encountered on many occasions. After we explain the disastrous effects of mobile phones and the attention economy in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka, defenders of these technologies sometimes reply by arguing that social media can also be a tool for mobilizing social movements and bringing about positive change. They point to examples like the Arab Spring to argue that social media and mobile phones could be tools of liberation rather than oppression.

Our response to this kind of social media optimism is twofold. First, as we have explained many times throughout the book, we are not opposed to using technology in ways that are conducive to our individual and collective ends. It is perfectly consistent with our position to claim that mobile devices can facilitate our ability to communicate and organize. But, on the other hand, we are deeply skeptical about the prospects of relying on social media and the attention economy when it comes to bringing about positive social change.

For starters, even when social media enables people to organize quickly (getting people to show up for a spontaneous protest within 24 hours, for instance), it has proven to be an ineffective tool for organizing robust social movements.Footnote 2 The efficacy of protests and social movements is going down just as the quantity of such events goes up.Footnote 3 Social media optimists who point to the Arab Spring fail to appreciate the work of Zeynep Tufekci, Erica Chenoweth, and other social scientists who have shown that social media “really advantages repression in the digital age much more than mobilization” (Fisher 2022, 251).Footnote 4 First, social media quickly becomes a tool that is used by repressive regimes to crush these movements.Footnote 5 It makes it much easier for these movements to be monitored, infiltrated, and disrupted. Second, there are reasons to think that the reliance on social media for organizing is making movements less effective precisely because it has replaced forms of organizing that were more effective at building resilient communities.Footnote 6

If we embrace techno-optimism and put our faith in social media activism, then we do so at our own peril. As we have argued throughout the book, the companies who built these platforms are simply in the business of capturing as much of our attention as possible. This means that their ends are not always aligned with our own. The attention economy is very good at generating ad revenue, but we have seen that it is markedly worse at bringing about positive social change.

But this is not the only reaction that we have encountered when presenting this work. On the flip side of techno-optimism, we are also frequently confronted by pessimism about the prospects for improving the situation. Many people recognize that the attention economy poses a problem, but they are skeptical about possible solutions. We are sympathetic to their concerns. Disengaging from the attention economy and mobile devices is easier said than done. And in the case of young people, damage was done to their agency before they had any say in the matter.

Nevertheless, we should not abandon hope. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant sums up reason’s interests in three questions: “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?” (A805/B833). The question about hope implicates both practical and theoretical reason. It is at the intersection of these faculties that Kant raises questions about happiness and our worthiness of it. As Andrew Chignell (2022) points out, the third question has been unjustly neglected.

Kant’s views on hope show us how our attitude about our moral condition can shape our ability to do what is right. Without hope, we might ignore our duty and give in to temptation, following whatever path we believe will lead us to happiness. Although Kant’s ethics grounds rightness in the maxims of our actions rather than their consequences, Kant was not insensitive to important facts about human psychology. Kant thought we might be discouraged to see wicked people prosper and to watch as the efforts of virtuous people come to naught and fail to make changes in the world. Because of this, Kant argues that we are morally justified in believing things that theoretical reason cannot possibly prove.Footnote 7

Chignell (2020) extends Kant’s thinking about practical belief to argue that we have moral-psychological reasons for believing that change is possible and that our actions might play a part in building a better world. He writes, “[I]f we morally ought to act a certain way, and we are threatened by resolve-sapping despair, then we are prima facie morally justified in seeking strategies that will sustain our hope and thus our commitment to the ought in question” (237). Luckily, we do not have to pin our hopes on our actions as individuals. We should also see the potential for improvement in future generations as we collectively improve people’s understanding of this problem and ways to respond to it.

This will require us to commit heavily to the aim of education.Footnote 8 The first step to responding to this issue is simply recognizing it as a problem. We must see what is at stake and why it matters morally. In some cases (particularly the social/political issues), people are beginning to wake up to the gravity of the issue. The conversation about the effect of the attention economy on democracy and social cohesion is becoming harder to avoid. The second step requires us to make progress with our educational efforts. This is work that must be done collectively.

Kant has been unfairly maligned as someone whose thinking is excessively individualistic. Much of Kant’s work, especially his writings about anthropology, history, and education, emphasize the importance of the social conditions in which human beings are raised. Indeed, Kant hoped that all of human history was headed in a direction of moral progress—one that would culminate in a rightful civil condition and moral culture:

[T]here was always left over a germ of enlightenment that developed further through each revolution and this prepared for a following stage of improvement … [T]here will be opened a consoling prospect into the future (which without a plan of nature one cannot hope for with any ground), in which the human species is represented in the remote distance as finally working itself upward toward the condition in which all germs nature has placed in it can be fully developed and its vocation here on earth can be fulfilled. (Idea 8:30)

By making strides in education, legislation, and social relations, we may improve the attentional ecosystem to such an extent that we will begin to engage with technology in ways that enhance our autonomy rather than undermine it. In the meantime, as we work toward building that world, we can improve our own lives and the lives of those around us by taking small steps. We can spend less time on our devices and more time on activities that fill our lives with meaning. We can break free of the chains we have chosen to put in our pockets and gaze at for hours on end. Instead of being bound by a dopamine-driven cycle of endless media content, we may choose to bind ourselves to the only true product of our rational will: the moral law.