Attention Is The New Currency.

Ever since 2020, it seems like days have been shorter, time has moved faster, and people have felt more impatient. It is no surprise that TikTok and Instagram blew up during lockdown. In fact, the term “doom scrolling” became the “word of the year” during COVID. Reels launched mid to late 2020. People were fed endless video feeds. Algorithms got better the longer you watched, and there was no stopping point. In general, there was just more screen time TV, Netflix, and constantly picking up the phone and checking updates.

But people weren't only doom scrolling more or getting more screen time, they were also constantly being fed bad news. It was an endless cycle: boredom, mental chaos, fixed with a quick and easy dopamine hit from social media. What did this lead to? To this day, people are addicted to picking up their phones, checking notifications, and getting a rush of dopamine from social media, leading to people with more impatience, short temper, irritability, and even an increase in mental health issues.

Notice how even music has been affected. Back in the day, songs used to be longer. Now, humans are so impatient that we can only listen to a 3 minute song before changing it. Spending long periods of time behind a screen makes time go by so fast, before you know it, the whole day is almost gone, and you feel tired, unproductive, and maybe a little ashamed.

What am I saying here? The most powerful people in the world have so much money, it gets to a point where they don't even care about the money anymore. They are fighting for our energy and time. At the end of the day, money is paper that is printed from digits on a screen. It comes and goes. Time and energy are the only real valuable assets that we have because we cannot get them back. The more energy we are drained of, the weaker we become and the more reliant we have to be on the government, leading to them having more power.

Notice how younger people think that the elderly seem to have so much wisdom. Conversations with them are often eye opening, you could listen to them for hours. It's not just because they have lived longer than this generation, but because they have so many memories and stories to tell.

What is going to happen when this generation is old? Will they have just as many exciting memories, or will they question their own past because so much time was spent behind a screen doom scrolling, questioning what they should write as a caption, going on a trip and being so eager to post to the world the pictures they took, or sitting at a social dinner picking up the phone every five minutes?

My point is, try putting down your phone. Get outside in nature. Challenge yourself and see how much longer the day feels. Stop letting the most powerful people and institutions in the world take more than just taxes from us.