Your attention is valuable, possibly one of the most valuable things you have. I don’t mean valuable in the sense that giving your attention to articles like this contributes financially to the well-being of online publishers and freelance journalists (although I am grateful you are here.)

No, I mean that your attention is valuable in that human consciousness – your consciousness – is a great miracle. You are a collection of atoms that are able to think, and that can also decide what you think about. The things that you pay attention to tangibly shape what you think about and ultimately how you interact with the world.

So it’s important to be intentional about what you want to pay attention to. And part of deciding what to pay attention to is deciding what to ignore. A recent episode of Never Post, an extremely good podcast about the internet that you should definitely subscribe to, featured a conversation about this. Podcaster Hans Buetow interviewed academic Stephan Lewandowsky, co-author of the paper Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens. From the abstract:

Low-quality and misleading information online can steal people’s attention, often by provoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. To resist certain types of information and actors online, people need to adopt new mental habits that help them resist the temptation to seek attention and consume potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy should include the competence of critical ignoring: choosing what to ignore and where to invest your limited attentional resources.