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

2025-09-08

AI Summary

Digital platforms commodify human attention, generating negative externalities—including diminished individual agency, adverse mental and physical health outcomes, and democratic erosion—constituting a canonical market failure. This paper critically retheorizes attention as a scarce public resource intrinsically tied to human agency, well-being, and democratic functioning—not a privately appropriable asset. Drawing on interdisciplinary foundations in philosophy, economics, and law, it proposes the novel policy instrument of an “attention Pigouvian tax” to internalize the social costs of digital addiction. The study further systematizes a governance spectrum ranging from informational interventions to design-based regulation. By shifting regulatory logic from private-property paradigms toward public-interest stewardship, the research advances a theoretically grounded and policy-viable framework for global digital governance. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Responsible Web: Technology governance, policy, and regulations
• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization

Abstract

In our age of digital platforms, human attention has become a scarce and highly valuable resource, rivalrous, tradable, and increasingly subject to market dynamics. This article explores the commodification of attention within the framework of the attention economy, arguing that attention should be understood as a common good threatened by over-exploitation. Drawing from philosophical, economic, and legal perspectives, we first conceptualize attention not only as an individual cognitive process but as a collective and infrastructural phenomenon susceptible to enclosure by digital intermediaries. We then identify and analyze negative externalities of the attention economy, particularly those stemming from excessive screen time: diminished individual agency, adverse health outcomes, and societal and political harms, including democratic erosion and inequality. These harms are largely unpriced by market actors and constitute a significant market failure. In response, among a spectrum of public policy tools ranging from informational campaigns to outright restrictions, we propose a Pigouvian tax on attention capture as a promising regulatory instrument to internalize the externalities and, in particular, the social cost of compulsive digital engagement. Such a tax would incentivize structural changes in platform design while preserving user autonomy. By reclaiming attention as a shared resource vital to human agency, health, and democracy, this article contributes a novel economic and policy lens to the debate on digital regulation. Ultimately, this article advocates for a paradigm shift: from treating attention as a private, monetizable asset to protecting it as a collective resource vital for humanity.

Problem

• Addressing negative externalities of attention economy
• Proposing Pigouvian tax on attention capture
• Protecting attention as collective resource

Innovation

• Proposes Pigouvian tax on attention capture
• Aims to internalize negative externalities
• Incentivizes structural platform design changes