How the Attention Economy Is Devouring Gen Z — and the Rest of Us
About this episode
Economics writer Kyla Scanlon joins Klein to diagnose Gen Z's condition: an end to predictable progress, with housing out of reach and AI threatening entry-level white-collar jobs, producing a 'barbell' response of tool-belt pragmatism versus moonshot risk-taking. Scanlon argues attention is now the foundational economic input — 'attention is infrastructure' — converted into capital by algorithms, fueling a speculative economy of crypto, prediction markets, and personal branding. She calls Trump the 'first human-algorithm hybrid president,' whose politics are pure attention capture detached from outcomes, and explores how frictionless digital life creates meaninglessness, drawing on C.S. Lewis's 'Screwtape Letters.' The episode closes on physical friction and embodied community as antidotes to an economy that devours attention.