Estimated read time: 5 minutes
There is a strange tension – a sort of silent fatigue a lot of people get in the early evening nowadays. Not necessarily from work, or exercise, but from consuming. Texts, news, reels, movies, podcasts, music, none of it sticks. By bed time, it’s like you’ve lived an entire day on input mode without recognition or even a single original thought to show for it.
We are living in an era where our attention is bought, sold, manipulated, and harvested like crude oil. The good news? There is an awareness growing on this topic. The bad news? No one is actually addressing the issue. This system doesn’t just entertain us or distract us. It rewires us as humans. Social anxiety, chronic indecision, the feeling that every conversation you have with someone in this generation is unbearably shallow – these are equivalent to the red lit button with a big label “WARNING”.
This has been studied, confirmed, and presented many times, it is now fact that we’re running our minds like machines with no off switch, and no longer like humans. The 24/7 dopamine. The algorithmic echo chambers, it lights up the parts of the brain the same way hard drugs do. We’re outsourcing curiosity to whoever we follow online. Losing the ability to think for ourselves. Building digital identities based solely on perception. And in my biased opinion – most importantly, the inability for people to be comfortable alone.
This is what we’re gonna talk about.
Why is this so important?
We’re consuming more information in a day than most people did in twenty just a couple decades ago, and before social media. A study done by UC San Diego, in 2009 the average person consumed 25 gigabytes of information a day. In 2025, the estimate is closer to 85gb. That is a 240% increase in information exposure per day. Yet we feel more confused, less certain, and more mentally drained than ever. Not because of a lack of intellect – but because there is no space to process information when you need to. An overheating system, literally.
How I See The Issue.
We live in a constant dopamine loop. 24/7. App after app, video after video, notification after notification. The brain doesn’t get a chance to settle before it’s onto the next hit. If you look at the studies, not that you even need them to feel it – these content applications literally light up the same reward pathways in your brain as heroin or cocaine.
But there’s a kicker: you’re not even getting high on your own thoughts or personal insight, you’re getting high on other peoples takes and opinions. As we go through this reward loop, we’re outsourcing our creativity and curiosity at the same time. We don’t think deeper, we don’t ask why, we just consume the answers of someone else that did, and at a rapid pace… this is a structural human issue. As we grow older, and mature into this digital environment, we seem to be connecting more than ever, but in an increasingly inhumane way. What results from all of this, is a society that is marginally dulling it’s emotional and intellectual muscles, the very things that make us human. Slowly, scroll by scroll.
Now, there is something to be said about the science behind scrolling vertically, the pace at which we do so, and why it’s designed that way. However, I’m more concerned with how willingly we’ve handed over the steering wheel. It’s common to hear people talk about “the algorithm” like it’s some mysterious external force, “the algorithm made this viral”, “my feed has been wild recently”. But that kind of thinking dodges your personal involvement. Truth is, your algorithm is a mirror, and it gives to you exactly what you give to it. You feed it preferences, consciously or not, and it gives you the exact thing it knows will keep you watching. It’s frictionless. Addictive. And for 90% of people, what feels like gaining insight, is really just reinforcement.
This is extremely dangerous – especially in a society like we have in 2025, divided in many ways, emotionally reactive, narrow minded and egotistical. Our digital age is one big echo chamber of confirmation bias at scale. It reflects your beliefs, your values, your moods, your fears straight back to you – it’s enough to keep you informed but not enough to challenge you. You can see this in real life: It’s how you end up with a guy in one city convinced the world is falling apart, while someone two blocks away thinks we’re living in a golden age. Both may be smart. Both may have “done their research.” But interestingly both are living in carefully curated realities.
We now know that an environment that has you hooked on emotional padding, validation, and confirmation bias, is rather addictive to say the least. Try pulling someone out of that… tell them to sit outside for 60 mins, no music, no phone, nothing to fiddle with, just nature and their thoughts, to look at the sky and just think (and not to sleep just to kill time). That stillness to the average person feels unbearable because their not used to being the source of their own attention. Their used to the artificial fix.
A society that feels hollow when they don’t have that constant input, if we can’t be curious without scrolling through other opinions, if we can’t feel valuable through our own attention without the fake digital applause, then what are we? We’re not original, we’re not curious, and to be blunt, we’re not psychologically healthy. Just plugged-in. A highly stimulated version of someone else’s thoughts.
The older I get, the more I agree with my parents. It was always that damn phone.
Prediction.
I will continue to keep believing in humanity. Although it is tough at times, I truly think everyone will inevitably realize that real life, is in life outside of digital. I know there’s a good chunk of the population that already understand this, however it is the few and not the many unfortunately. I think this path we’re going down with AI, and new innovative technology will actually force people to become more human. Our physiological uniqueness on this planet is all we’ll have left, our ability to think, make rational decisions, to act with intent, to feel, to love, to connect as people in real life. That would be my prediction, I do think within the next 5-7 years, a large percentage of people will realize this and become more intentional in living a human life again.
I don’t even want to acknowledge what society looks like if we don’t.
Nick Trent
Thinking In Public - Nick Trent 
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