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If I am not careful, my cellphone will wake me up in the wee hours with buzzes or pings to let me know that news organizations and family members on the other side of the world, in different time zones, are trying to get my attention. Is it too dramatic to say that "there is a global war" for our attention? I don't think so. Last year I did a little experiment with students in my Media Economics course . Each of them was asked to keep track of how many notifications or alerts they received on their phones or computers during a 45-minute lecture. The average was about 15 alerts, or one every three minutes. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat were the chief distractions. For a professor leading a class, these alerts could be considered competition. (At left, Christian Zibreg tells how to remove distracting messages from the locked screen.) The distraction industry The competition for user attention has never been greater, and every news site and app is fin...

As a professor, I often wonder what effect my class presentations are having on the minds of my students. Honestly, is it really possible for any human being to pay attention completely to a class for 45 minutes? Or does the mind wander? While I am explaining the theory of market externalities , every media company in the world is fighting for the attention of those students. These companies are desperate to attract eyeballs for their content and their advertisers' messages. They have developed ever more powerful tools to distract people from what they are doing and look at their smartphones. They use pings, vibrations, badges, flashing lights , lock-screen messages, and who knows what else. What human being could pay attention to me when they receive a notification on their smartphone that their ex has commented on their new profile photo? Or that there is breaking news about the latest silly statements by a president? It's no contest. Versi�n en espa�ol The Notification Exp...