Screens and Economy

Faced with alarmist projections about the economic impact of screens, I question the relevance of measuring our collective future solely through GDP, which forgets the essential: human well-being and the ecology of attention.

Hilarity in the Face of Catastrophist Projections

I burst into laughter upon discovering the study commissioned by the French Treasury on the supposedly disastrous effects of screens, or rather their usage, as I specify in my article Nuanced Screen Cloud, on future GDP points. My hilarity stemmed from a delicious paradox: Solal Chardon-Boucaud, the author of this study, himself acknowledges that these are merely extrapolations and hypotheses. Yet these projections serve a very particular vision, that of the intrinsic dangerousness of screens, which we attempt to quantify in GDP points as if this indicator had become our North Star.

Impact on French GDP of the main negative externalities generated by the attention economy

They generate [...] significant negative externalities for users and society (e.g., loss of productive time, impact on cognitive faculties or mental health). These could reach – according to a review of existing literature – between 2 and 3 GDP points in the long term for the quantifiable portion of these impacts. This order of magnitude – which must be considered with caution due to the hypotheses on which it is based – depends primarily on the deterioration of children’s cognitive abilities, which will reduce their future productivity when they enter the labor market (cf. Graph).

In the long term (2060 horizon), the deterioration of cognitive abilities linked to the attention economy could have an impact on economic activity between 1.4 and 2.3 GDP points, according to the methodology detailed in the rest of the document. In the short term, the impact of externalities generated by the digital attention economy would already be around 0.6 GDP points.

This approach reveals a form of economic magical thinking. We project losses of 2 to 2.9 GDP points by 2060, adding up supposed effects on mental health, productivity, and cognitive abilities. But these calculations rest on a cascade of hypotheses: that current usage continues linearly, that human adaptations don’t exist, that technology remains frozen. Economist Joseph Stiglitz already reminded us in 2009, in his commission on measuring economic performance, that “what we measure affects what we do”. By measuring only GDP, we direct our gaze toward a single dimension of reality.

The irony reaches its peak when we realize that the same screens accused of undermining our economy constitute precisely one of the most dynamic sectors of this same economy. Digital companies, these decried “attention captors,” generate billions of euros in wealth, create jobs, transform our ways of working. How can we simultaneously deplore their negative impact on GDP and ignore their positive contribution to this same indicator? Of course, he tries to nuance in this “study,” based on other studies with no critical spirit whatsoever, presented as objective, but since his vision is exclusively based on economic criteria, the text is a paradox in itself. On the subject of “studies,” I refer to my article A Study Here, a Study There, the Illusion of Objectivity in the Era of « Fact-Checking ».

GDP, This Faulty Compass of Collective Well-Being

The obsession with GDP reveals a profound confusion between monetary wealth and social health. Nations can display stratospheric GDPs while harboring deeply unequal and unhappy populations. The Easterlin paradox, demonstrated as early as 1974, shows that beyond a certain threshold, increases in GDP per capita no longer correlate with experienced happiness. The United States, despite one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, experiences an epidemic of depression and anxiety, particularly among young people.

It’s precisely this impasse that led Bhutan, about forty years ago, to propose Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an alternative to GDP. This initiative, far from anecdotal, questions our political judgment criteria. Every law, every public decision is evaluated according to its ability to contribute to citizens’ well-being, not just economic growth. Four pillars structure this approach: equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of culture, environmental protection, and good governance. Could this framework enlighten us on the question of screens?

Anthropologist David Graeber, in “Bullshit Jobs” (2018), already highlighted the absurdity of measuring an activity’s social value by its sole contribution to GDP. An advertiser creating artificial needs contributes more to GDP than a nurse who saves lives. Similarly, compulsive scrolling on social networks generates economic value (advertising, data), but does it destroy our social fabric? The question deserves better than an accounting answer.

The Ecology of Attention Against the Economy of Capture

The expression “attention economy” structures the current debate, but it locks us into a market logic. I prefer to speak, with philosopher Yves Citton, of a necessary “ecology of attention.” This perspective shifts the question: rather than measuring how much screens cost us in GDP points, let’s ask ourselves how to cultivate uses that enrich our lives, individually and collectively.

The real challenge is at the political and educational level. With what tools, what industries, what ethical frameworks do we build our screen-mediated relationships? Regulation by law, often invoked as a miracle solution, faces a fundamental contradiction: how to legislate against tools that constitute the most powerful economic development axes of our era? Outright prohibition is a technocratic utopia, ignoring the complexity of uses and the diversity of needs.

The ecological approach rather suggests thinking in terms of balances and diversity. As in permaculture, where an ecosystem’s richness comes from the variety of its components and the quality of their interactions, a “digital permaculture” would value the multiplicity of uses, the quality of exchanges, the creative capacity of digital tools. If this approach were to lower GDP, wouldn’t that be a sign that this indicator poorly measures what really matters?

Rethinking Value Beyond Economic Indicators

The fixation on supposed GDP losses reveals a form of alienation: we judge our collective future by an indicator that measures neither well-being, nor creativity, nor the quality of social bonds, nor the real mental health of populations. Robert Kennedy already said it in 1968: “GDP measures everything except what makes life worth living.”

The Treasury study, in its desire to quantify the unquantifiable, participates in a broader trend of reducing complex social questions to technical problems. But the question of screens cannot be resolved through econometric calculations. It calls for reflection on the type of society we want to build, on the values we wish to promote, on the bonds we desire to weave.

What is the integrity of a political project whose sole horizon would be the accumulation of GDP points, disregarding citizens’ real well-being? If our screens allow us to maintain connections with distant loved ones, access knowledge, create and share, their value far exceeds their impact on measurable productivity. Economist Amartya Sen reminds us that authentic development consists of expanding individuals’ “capabilities” – their real freedom to lead lives they have reasons to value. Screens, from this perspective, can be both tools of emancipation and alienation, depending on how they are used and the context in which they operate.

For a Humanist Approach to Digital Technology

My initial laughter at this study was not mocking but liberating. It expressed relief at seeing so clearly exposed the absurdity of our obsession with indicators disconnected from real life, while attempting to be connected to it. Catastrophist projections about screens, dressed in the scientific authority of economic calculations, poorly mask their ideological function: justifying increased control over practices that escape traditional frameworks.

Rather than fantasizing about hypothetical GDP losses, let’s work to build a digital culture that serves human flourishing. This requires education, creating non-commercial public digital spaces, developing alternatives to predatory platforms, and valorizing creative and solidarity-based uses. If this transformation were to result in a GDP decrease, it might be a sign that we have finally understood that a society’s value cannot be measured by its market production alone.

The ecology of attention I call for does not consist of demonizing screens, but of cultivating conscious, chosen, enriching uses. It recognizes that our attention is a precious resource that deserves better than being captured and monetized. It affirms that collective well-being transcends economic indicators. And it invites us to laugh, together, at these desperate attempts to reduce human complexity to columns of numbers.