Are Autonomy Criticisms of the Attention Economy Fundamentally Flawed?

Over the last decade, critics of the contemporary attention economy have voiced a variety of concerns about smartphones and social media. Psychologists have written extensively about the impact of these technologies on our mental health and cognitive capacities. Social scientists have shown how the attention economy contributes to polarization and diminishes public trust in vital institutions. A quick glance at this literature is likely to give the impression that there is consensus around the idea that we should be concerned about the attention economy. But among these seemingly unified critics, there is substantial disagreement about why, exactly, social media is morally problematic. In this paper, we focus on the debate over autonomy and manipulation. On one side of the debate, there are those who argue that the attention economy is morally problematic because it undermines users’ autonomy. On the other side, it has been argued that we should reject the autonomy view, as accusations of manipulation and compulsion are overblown and lack empirical credibility. Our aim in this paper is to defend the autonomy view and to show how it can respond to these criticisms.