Networks, Games, and the Capture of Attention
Networks, Games, and the Capture of Attention
Subtitle: Psychopathology of the Brazilian State
1. Opening — Fractal, 17 Years Old
You open your phone “just for a minute.”
When you notice, an hour is gone.
But it is not only time.
Your eyes are restless.
Your breathing is shorter.
Your finger keeps scrolling before you even decide.
This is not only lack of discipline.
It is a dispute for attention.
And when attention is captured, the body stops belonging to itself.
2. Deepening
We used to think technology was a tool.
But today, technology is an environment.
Social networks, games, short videos and platforms do not only compete for users. They compete for conscious life-time.
The logic is simple:
The longer you stay,
the more data you produce.
The more data you produce,
the more predictable you become.
The more predictable you become,
the more profitable you are.
This is the center of surveillance capitalism.
Algorithms do not primarily learn what makes you well. They learn what keeps you engaged.
Notifications produce micro-urgency.
Infinite feeds fragment attention.
Variable rewards train repetition.
The result is not only psychological. It is political.
A population with fragmented attention has more difficulty sustaining memory, historical reasoning, and critical thinking.
When attention is captured, truth becomes emotional dispute.
Politics becomes chaos.
Religion, politics and technology begin to merge inside the same battlefield: the management of collective emotion.
In the past, control often came through force.
Later, through information.
Now, through attention.
And while people fight inside the feed, the structural game remains hidden: wealth, data extraction, algorithmic influence, and the old “things of the rich” reorganized in digital form.
3. Metacognition
Now bring this back to the body.
When you pick up the phone, who begins the movement?
You?
Or the platform already living inside your habit?
Notice:
Does your breathing change?
Does your body accelerate?
Do you feel urgency without a clear reason?
This is where the capture begins.
Not in one big decision.
But in many tiny invisible movements.
When attention is captured, Jiwasa weakens.
The “we” disappears.
You become alone in the feed.
Alone in the algorithm.
Alone inside your own head.
Try this:
Stay two minutes without stimulation.
No phone.
No music.
No screen.
Just feel the body.
If discomfort appears, that is already knowledge.
The goal is not to reject technology.
The goal is to recover the ability to return.
Return to the body.
Return to real time.
Return to the “we.”
Without that, any narrative can carry you.
With that, choice begins again.
References in Didactic Order
Books
Byung-Chul Han — The Burnout Society
Shows how modern control often works through self-pressure, acceleration, performance, and exhaustion.Shoshana Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Explains how human behavior, attention, and prediction became economic raw material.David Graeber & David Wengrow — The Dawn of Everything
Challenges the idea that hierarchy, domination, and control are natural or inevitable.Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death
Shows how media systems can transform politics, truth, and public life into entertainment.Anna Lembke — Dopamine Nation
Helps explain how fast reward cycles reshape desire, attention, and repetition.
Post-2021 Publications and Reports
U.S. Surgeon General Advisory — Social Media and Youth Mental Health (2023)
Warns that social media can affect sleep, attention, emotional regulation, and mental health in young people. (Wikipedia)Metzler et al. — Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms Influencing Political Polarization and Misinformation (2023)
Shows how digital media mechanisms can amplify polarization and misinformation through engagement dynamics. (PubMed Central)Fassi et al. — Social Media Use and Internalizing Symptoms in Clinical and Community Adolescent Samples (2024)
A systematic review and meta-analysis associating social media use with internalizing symptoms in adolescents. (JAMA Network)Sala et al. — Social Media Use and Adolescents’ Mental Health and Well-Being (2024)
An umbrella review showing that social media brings both risks and opportunities, depending on context, intensity, and vulnerability. (ScienceDirect)Agyapong-Opoku et al. — Effects of Social Media Use on Youth and Adolescent Mental Health (2025)
Reviews evidence that social media effects are individual and shaped by moderating factors. (PubMed Central)Fassi et al. — Social Media Use in Adolescents With and Without Mental Health Conditions (2025)
Finds that adolescents with mental health conditions report more time on social media and more vulnerability to social comparison and feedback. (nature.com)
