Attention Design
Articles on how interfaces are built to hold attention: ranking, defaults, autoplay, infinite feeds and missing stopping cues. This is the area where the primary sources are strongest. Start with the guide, or browse the shorter pieces below.
Articles in this topic
What Your Feed Knows About You That You Will Not Admit
Your feed seems to know the version of you that you would not admit to. It does, because it learns from what you do, not what you say. Here is what a social media algorithm actually reveals, why it is neither mind control nor neutral, and how to use the mirror.
Why your teenager can't put TikTok down
When your teen says "five more minutes" and means it, and an hour later is still scrolling, the difficulty is not discipline. It is a feed built specifically for them. Here is what is really happening, and what actually helps.
Why You Can't Stop Scrolling in Bed at Night
The reason the loop repeats isn't the one you've been blaming, which means the fix isn't the one you keep failing at. It isn't weak willpower - it's the setup.
Your phone isn’t the problem. Its defaults are.
The reason you keep checking your phone has less to do with willpower than with the phone itself: it is a carefully tuned object, and almost nothing about how it behaves was set by you. The useful move is to change the defaults so the device stops fighting your attention.
The Doomscrolling Loop: Why Bad News Feels Impossible to Put Down
Why does one alarming headline turn into twenty minutes of scrolling that resolves nothing? The evidence behind the doomscrolling loop, and how to interrupt it.
The Weekly System
Join the launch list for one calm, research-led email about attention, memory, learning and the systems designed to hold your attention. No noise, no panic and no unsupported certainty.