Social Media and AI Demand Your Attention All the Time. This New Documentary Says That’s Bad
“Do you remember the world before cell phones?”
The question comes up early in Your Attention Please, a documentary premiering this week at Southwest in Austin, Texas. And it hit me harder than I expected. As a 27-year-old tech journalist, I realized that I don’t have many vivid memories of life before smartphones. My youth is unfolding and growing up smartphonessocial media, push notifications and endless scrolling process. Like many people my age, I’ve spent most of my life inside the attention economy — without going outside.
That’s an uncomfortable place the documentary explores.
CNET was granted exclusive early access to the film’s trailer, embedded below.
It examines how technology shapes our behavior
Director Sara Robin said she originally set out to do something small: a documentary about people trying to regain their focus by breaking unhealthy phone habits. In an interview with CNET, Robin described the idea as a personal story about focus and self-control in a time of constant disruption.
As Robin talks to researchers, professionals and families affected by social media and cyberbullying, the scope of the film expands. What began as a question about human behavior quickly became a larger investigation into how modern technological systems are designed to shape human behavior. The story goes from the rise of social media to the emerging influence of AI.
Along the way, Robin and his collaborators kept hearing similar comments from different corners of the digital world: Social media has not only changed the way people communicate; quietly re-evaluate what we value. Experiences that were once private or emotional — friendship, love, presence — began to find numerical equivalents. Followers, likes, comments, views and shares started to become how we perceived our self-esteem. In the construction of social networks, those numbers serve as the social currency.
Trisha Prabhu, a digital safety advocate and founder of anti-cyberbullying technology ReThink, argues that social media has done more than create new online spaces. He says they fundamentally changed how social verification works. Metrics that define popularity tend to reward attention-seeking behavior and increase conflict, while real communication is now harder to measure and, therefore, easier to ignore.
Prabhu warns that the same forces that are already driving problems like cyberbullying could accelerate as automated systems become more efficient. AI tools can generate abusive messages on average, generate convincing simulations or create deepfakes that spread quickly on the Internet. In some cases, technology may even blur the line between human interaction and machine-generated communication, which may deepen loneliness or encourage destructive behavior.
“There is an AI that amplifies existing damage [like automating cyberbullying]but I also think there’s AI that’s causing a whole new harm,” Prabhu told CNET. “There are reports of AI tools encouraging users, including young users, to self harm… Even for a daily user who doesn’t get an extreme result, I think we have to ask ourselves how much of our time and connection we want to spend with an AI tool as opposed to a human companion.”
Bringing attention
What struck Robin when he was filming the documentary was how these worries felt. Throughout the interviews with families, teachers and advocates around the world, the themes were remarkably consistent: attention overload, reduced focus in classrooms, growing anxiety among young people and the constant sense of fear that comes from being constantly connected.
Those shared issues helped spark a collective moment around the film’s release.
On March 11, more than 25 organizations focused on digital health will simultaneously release the trailer for Your Attention Please as part of an initiative called Stand for Their Attention. What started as a small collaboration between five groups quickly grew as word spread through advocacy networks. The coalition now includes organizations such as Common Sense Media, Protect Young Eyes, Mothers Against Media Addiction, Center for Humane Technology, Smartphone Free Childhood and Scrolling to Death.
The concept behind the syncretic initiative is simple: Use the attention surrounding the documentary to highlight a growing movement that is already working to reshape digital culture.
Many people feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem, says Robin, but behind the scenes, a growing ecosystem of advocates is experimenting with ways to create healthier digital environments, from product redesign to changing norms around screen use.
The campaign also comes at a time of growing scrutiny about the attention economy. Lawmakers in the US and other countries are increasingly debating how social media affects youth mental health and child development. Boycotts around the use of AI are starting. Researchers are studying how these algorithms and chatbots influence behavior. People are trying to figure out how much technology there is in everyday life.
What can we do about it?
Despite the weight of those conversations, Robin says the film’s goal isn’t to leave the audience feeling powerless. In fact, the rapid increase in public awareness of AI has made it even more optimistic than in the early days of social media. The systems that make up digital life, he says, are built by humans, which means they can also be rebuilt.
“We have more power than we think,” said Robin. “And there are many different ways to get involved in this, from changing individual habits to changing the culture in your family and community, to designing technology differently, to engaging in these conversations, to driving change in the law.”
The film deliberately avoids presenting a single solution.
Rather, Your Attention Please asks a broader question: What happens when attention, which is part of human life, becomes one of the most valuable commodities in the global economy? And perhaps most importantly, what kind of digital world do we want to build next?
