No Such Thing as Free Brain Time: For a Pigouvian Tax on Attention Capture

Attention is a shared resource, not just individual choice: The paper argues that attention should be understood as a "common good" rather than merely a personal cognitive ability, meaning excessive exploitation by digital platforms harms society collectively, not just individual users.

The attention economy creates significant unpriced harms: Digital platforms generate negative externalities—including diminished personal agency, health problems, and democratic erosion—that companies don't pay for, creating a fundamental market failure where the true social costs of engagement-driven design are invisible to decision-makers.

A Pigouvian tax could align incentives without restricting freedom: Rather than banning platforms or limiting user choice, the paper proposes taxing attention capture to make companies internalize the social costs of compulsive engagement, which would encourage them to redesign platforms while preserving user autonomy.

Current harms extend beyond individual wellbeing to democracy itself: The paper identifies that excessive screen time and attention capture contribute to political harms including "democratic erosion and inequality," suggesting this is not merely a personal health issue but a systemic threat to democratic functioning.

Market dynamics have transformed attention into a tradable commodity: Digital intermediaries now actively enclose and exploit attention as a scarce resource through market mechanisms, fundamentally changing how this basic human capacity functions in society.