Attention, from the other side of the feed

For a few years my job was, in a sense, to compete for attention. Social media marketing for a hotel group in Vietnam, then digital marketing for a retail brand in Singapore. We planned content calendars, tested headlines and images, watched which posts people stopped scrolling for.

I do not regret that work. Good marketing can be useful: it tells people about something they may actually want, and it can be honest and creative. But having stood on that side of the feed, I see my own phone a little differently now.

A few things I learned there that I still think about:

The feed is designed, not neutral. What appears, in what order, and how easy it is to keep going, are all decisions made by someone. Knowing that does not make you immune, but it helps to remember that "just one more" is a feature, not an accident.

Attention is limited and it is the real cost. A platform can be free and still expensive. Every scroll spends something that could have gone to reading, thinking or talking to someone.

Interest and value are different things. In campaigns we optimised for engagement because it was measurable. But the things that catch attention fastest are often not the things that matter most afterward.

As a researcher I now need long stretches of focus, and I have had to build some defences. Notifications mostly off. Reading in longer blocks. Checking social media deliberately rather than by reflex. None of this is radical, and I am not always consistent.

I do not think the answer is to leave social media entirely. It connects people, including me with family and friends at home. The point is to choose when to give attention instead of having it quietly taken. Having worked on the other side, I know how much skill goes into taking it.

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Photos: 4601460, binmassam on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.