Human Capacity in the Attention Economy

Modern digital environments are engineered to seize our attention, but our brains aren’t built to handle the constant pull. In Human Capacity in the Attention Economy, Sean Lane and co-authors reveal the science behind this growing attention crisis. Drawing on cognitive psychology and neuroscience, they show how technology overwhelms our limited attentional capacity—disrupting memory, learning, emotional balance, and even social development. Especially vulnerable are children, whose brains are still developing. The book’s message is clear: without conscious control and redesign of our digital world, we risk long-term cognitive and societal harm. Attention, once scattered, may be hard to reclaim.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1chs39c