Skip to content

Attention Economy Calculator

Run the Attention Economy Calculator MicroSim Fullscreen
Edit in the p5.js Editor

About This MicroSim

This MicroSim reveals the hidden economics of "free" social media platforms by calculating how much advertising revenue your daily screen time generates for companies like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Students set their daily usage for each platform, then see their annual attention value in dollars alongside opportunity costs: how many books they could read, skills they could learn, or wages they could earn with that same time. The sim makes visible the economic transaction that happens every time you scroll.

How to Use

  1. Set your daily screen time for each platform using the sliders in the control area. Each slider ranges from 0 to 180 minutes (3 hours). The platform name and current minutes are displayed to the left of each slider.
  2. Click "Calculate My Value" to generate the full report. Before clicking, the display shows platform icons as colored circles.
  3. Review the bar chart showing daily time per platform, with the dollar amount of ad revenue each platform earns from your usage displayed next to each bar.
  4. Read the Daily Summary section showing total screen time in hours and total ad revenue generated per day.
  5. Check the Annual Attention Value section to see your yearly totals: hours spent on platforms and total annual ad revenue you generate for these companies.
  6. Examine the Opportunity Cost section to see what else you could do with that time: number of books you could read (at 6 hours per book), hours available for learning a new skill, and potential earnings at $15/hour.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/economics-course/sims/attention-economy/main.html"
        height="482px"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Grade Level

9-12 (High School Economics)

Duration

10-15 minutes

Prerequisites

  • Understanding of the concept that "if the product is free, you are the product"
  • Basic familiarity with how advertising works on social media
  • Ability to calculate simple rates (dollars per minute, hours per year)

Activities

  1. Exploration (5 min): Enter your honest daily screen time for each platform and click Calculate. Record your annual attention value and the number of books you could have read instead. Discuss with a partner: were you surprised by the results?
  2. Guided Practice (5 min): Compare two profiles: a light user (15 minutes per platform) and a heavy user (90 minutes per platform). Calculate the difference in annual ad revenue generated. Discuss why platforms design features like infinite scroll and notifications to maximize screen time.
  3. Assessment (5 min): Write a short economic analysis answering: Who are the buyers and sellers in the attention economy? What is the "product" being sold? Calculate your personal opportunity cost of social media use in both time and potential earnings, and propose a specific plan to reduce your screen time by 30 minutes per day.

Assessment

  • Students can explain how "free" platforms monetize user attention through advertising
  • Students can calculate the annual dollar value of their attention to advertisers
  • Students can define and calculate opportunity cost in the context of screen time
  • Students can identify the economic incentives that drive platform design decisions

References

  1. Attention Economy - Wikipedia article on the attention economy and how human attention is treated as a scarce commodity
  2. How Do Social Media Companies Make Money? - Investopedia explanation of social media advertising revenue models
  3. Opportunity Cost - Wikipedia article on opportunity cost, a fundamental concept used in this simulator's analysis