Social Atomization: A Sad Consequence of the Attention Economy

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "How to Do Nothing" by Jenny Odell. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Do you enjoy people for the sake of enjoying people? Do you have genuine friendships—or just glorified networking experiences?

In her book How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell argues that doing nothing is meant to solve the problems created by the attention economy—the mindset of placing a monetary value on time and attention. One of these problems is social atomization.

Continue reading to understand this phenomenon and how it affects us all.

Odell explains how the attention economy works and explores its negative impacts. One of its consequences is social atomization. Social atomization is people becoming disconnected from one another and their communities.

Odell explains that, in the 1980s, corporate deregulation—the elimination of laws and rules regarding corporate conduct—as well as the loss of labor power allowed the wealthy and major corporations to monetize much larger portions of people’s lives. The cutting of social safety nets and stagnation of wages also put people in a situation where they couldn’t say no to more work or worse working conditions without risking their livelihoods. This economic shift led to a mindset shift: People had to start thinking of their time and attention in terms of monetary value.

(Shortform note: The concept of the attention economy was first proposed by 20th-century American psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon and amounted to a shift in how to understand information. Simon suggested that instead of thinking of information—advertising, media, ideas, and so on—as a scarce commodity sought out by consumers, we should instead think of the attention of consumers as a scarce commodity sought out by information (or the people who create it). This understanding informs many of the economic shifts Odell discusses, as companies changed strategies to adapt to a new, information-rich world.)

Since people are “always on,” they have less time to devote to nurturing connections with the people around them. In addition, succeeding in the attention economy requires people to constantly advocate for or “market” themselves through things like self-promotion or networking. This leads them to see each other as customers, or potential sources of monetary value, rather than as friends and community members.

Social atomization has contributed in large part to the modern era’s epidemic of loneliness and lack of meaning in life, explains Odell. It also hampers social and political activism—when people lack deep connections with one another, it’s more difficult to organize them in pursuit of a specific goal.

Social Atomization and Capitalism

Many socialist, Marxist, and leftist scholars argue that social atomization is not just a feature of the attention economy but actually inherent to capitalism. To explore this argument, let’s contrast capitalism with another economic system: feudalism.

Feudalism: Under feudalism, people were born into a community and generally stayed in that community for their entire lives. Each person had their own specific role within the community—the town blacksmith, the feudal lord or vassal, the family assigned a specific parcel of land, and so on—and therefore everyone worked together as part of a cohesive whole. Feudalism was by no means idyllic, and people were often impoverished and exploited. But, because the community was the basic social unit, people were not atomized.

Capitalism: Under capitalism, people often have to leave their homes and communities behind to find work, traveling to a new place with economic opportunities where they don’t know anyone. Instead of everyone having their own unique role, workers compete with one another for jobs, while businesses compete with one another for customers—meaning they’re actively at odds with one another instead of being part of a larger whole. Some scholars argue that the separation of the working class into competing individuals is purposeful on the part of the employer class, as it prevents labor organization.

Odell argues that doing nothing (devoting time and attention to things you care about that are hard for capitalism and the attention economy to monetize) helps prevent atomization. Once you escape the attention economy mindset, you’ll stop viewing others in terms of monetary value and will instead start viewing them as members of your community. With that perspective, you can connect with the world around you by forming genuine social bonds. This not only helps address personal loneliness and emptiness but also helps people band together to organize around social issues.

Social Atomization: A Sad Consequence of the Attention Economy