A couple of months back I had written about the economics of distraction. Recent observations suggest I'd massively overestimated the elasticity of demand for distraction
This reminds me a lot of how anxiety works for my own brain. It really feels like if I can just solve whatever the THING is that I'm worrying about, then I'll stop worrying forever and everything will be fine. But then I solve the thing...and my anxiety just finds some brand new shiny thing to worry about! Obviously external stuff does matter, and reducing major stressors definitely helps out, but also there is an internal component where I have to work on addressing the anxiety itself, not whatever the current external stimulus is.
precisely how it works for me as well. there is always something to worry about. if there isn't you start worrying that there isn't anything to worry about!
You have messed up the Econ 101 here. The commodity that is being priced here is distraction as a whole, not distraction via a specific channel, Twitter or whatever. The price you are paying is the effort you are putting in to obtain the distraction. As you yourself mention, when you gave up Twitter, you were able to easily obtain Reddit. This means that you did not in fact have to pay extra to obtain a supply of the commodity. Your experiment does not prove that the demand for distraction is highly inelastic. To test the hypothesis properly, you need to find a way to reduce the supply of distraction. Put away your phone and maybe even your laptop and try to write on paper. Then you'll find out how inelastic the demand is.
This reminds me a lot of how anxiety works for my own brain. It really feels like if I can just solve whatever the THING is that I'm worrying about, then I'll stop worrying forever and everything will be fine. But then I solve the thing...and my anxiety just finds some brand new shiny thing to worry about! Obviously external stuff does matter, and reducing major stressors definitely helps out, but also there is an internal component where I have to work on addressing the anxiety itself, not whatever the current external stimulus is.
precisely how it works for me as well. there is always something to worry about. if there isn't you start worrying that there isn't anything to worry about!
You have messed up the Econ 101 here. The commodity that is being priced here is distraction as a whole, not distraction via a specific channel, Twitter or whatever. The price you are paying is the effort you are putting in to obtain the distraction. As you yourself mention, when you gave up Twitter, you were able to easily obtain Reddit. This means that you did not in fact have to pay extra to obtain a supply of the commodity. Your experiment does not prove that the demand for distraction is highly inelastic. To test the hypothesis properly, you need to find a way to reduce the supply of distraction. Put away your phone and maybe even your laptop and try to write on paper. Then you'll find out how inelastic the demand is.