This is an interesting idea and I've heard it echoed often before. But, the more I think about it, the more it seems, to me, to be false.

It seems like it presupposes that there is not an upper bound on how much our attention can be captured by an information channel like the computer or the internet. Or, at the very least, that the upper bound is very high.

I'm not sure this is the case. It seems to me that we have a lower tolerance for attention capture than some people think. I'm not saying that it's not a problem - it's certainly a severe one. But there is a certain undercurrent of fatalistic thinking - a "beware; someday they will have 100% control of you" mindset - that no longer rings true.

After all, that's what books like Digital Minimalism represent. It's not just the ideas in the book that matter - the simple fact that the book itself exists is a testament to the idea that humans will eventually reach an 'enough' point and rebel when something has captured too much of their attention and given too little real value in return.

As a note - if you look up the Facebook Papers in the Wall Street Journal, they brought up an interesting point; there has been a slow and steady decline in Facebook use that has gone on for years now, and nothing Facebook has done has been able to counteract the trend. I take this as further evidence that, rather than things like the Metaverse taking us over, what will actually happen is that the Silicon Valley bubble will burst someday and we will find out a more reasonable and measured way to integrate the internet, social media, etc... into our lives.