After being forced to quit social media, political journalist Rafael Behr was able to see its corrosive influence clearly. How can we repair the damage caused by a system that plays on our worst impulses?
In the first weeks of my convalescence I developed a capacity for time travel. I had to spend a lot of time in bed and, floating on the edge of wakefulness, half-conscious, I discovered I could explore scenes from my past in exquisite detail. I wondered if it was a side effect of my various medications and whether it would be permanent. It was almost hallucinogenic and not unpleasant. I couldn’t replay whole scenes from my youth, but I was able to transport myself back to old places – only interiors. I could feel the contours of the Artex on the walls of my childhood home in the late 70s. I could smell the damp on the charcoal-coloured carpet in the living room of the flat I rented with friends when I left university.
I could explore these spaces with fingertip precision, inch by inch. I remembered the angles of door handles and the action on light switches.
In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
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