“Do you remember the world before cell phones?”
The question appears at the beginning of Your Attention Please, a documentary premiering this week at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And it hit me harder than I expected. As a 27-year-old technology journalist, I realized I didn’t have many clear memories of life before smartphones. My adolescence took place alongside the rise of smart phonessocial media, push notifications and the routine of endless scrolling. Like many people my age, I’ve spent most of my life in the attention economy – never really getting out of it.
This is the difficult territory that the documentary explores.
CNET was granted exclusive early access to the film’s trailer, embedded below.
Explore how technology shapes our behavior
Director Sara Robin said she initially decided to make something smaller: a documentary about people trying to reclaim their attention span by ditching their unhealthy phone habits. In an interview with CNET, Robin described the idea as a personal story about focus and self-control in an age of constant distraction.
As Robin interviewed researchers, technologists, and families impacted by social media and cyberbullying, the film’s reach expanded. What began as a question about individual habits quickly became a broader investigation into how modern technological systems are designed to shape human behavior. The story spans from the rise of social media to the emerging influence of AI.
Over time, Robin and his collaborators kept hearing the same observation from different corners of the digital world: social media hasn’t just changed the way people communicate; he quietly rewired what we value. Experiences that were once private or emotional – friendship, affection, belonging – began to acquire digital equivalents. Followers, likes, comments, views, and shares began to be how we perceived our own worth. In the architecture of social platforms, these numbers function as a kind of social currency.
Trisha Prabhu, digital safety advocate and inventor of anti-cyberbullying technology ReThink, says social platforms have done more than create new spaces online. She says they fundamentally reshaped how social validation works. The metrics that define popularity often reward attention-seeking behavior and amplify conflict, while true connection is now harder to quantify and, therefore, easier to ignore.
Prabhu warns that the same dynamics that are already driving problems like cyberbullying could accelerate as automated systems become more capable. AI tools can generate abusive messages at scale, produce convincing impersonations, or create deepfakes that spread quickly online. In some cases, technology may even blur the line between human interaction and machine-generated communication, which could worsen loneliness or encourage harmful behaviors.
“AI exacerbates existing harms [like automating cyberbullying]but I also think that AI creates completely new harms,” Prabhu told CNET. “There are reports of AI tools encouraging users, including underage users, to hurt oneself…Even for the everyday user who doesn’t experience an extreme outcome, I think we need to ask ourselves how much time and connection we want to devote to an AI tool versus another human being.
Attract attention
What struck Robin while filming the documentary was how universal these anxieties were. In conversations with families, educators, and advocates around the world, the themes were remarkably consistent: overstimulated attention, less focus in classrooms, growing anxiety among young people, and a lingering sense of dread that comes from always being plugged in.
These shared concerns helped spark a coordinated moment around the film’s release.
On March 11, more than 25 organizations focused on digital well-being will simultaneously release the trailer for Your Attention Please as part of an initiative called Stand for Their Attention. What started as a small collaboration between five groups quickly grew as word spread through defense networks. The coalition now includes organizations such as Common Sense Media, Protect Young Eyes, Mothers Against Media Addiction, the Center for Humane Technology, Smartphone Free Childhood, and Scrolling to Death.
The idea behind the synchronized launch is simple: use the attention surrounding the documentary to shine a light on the growing movement already working to reshape digital culture.
Many people feel overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, Robin says, but behind the scenes, a growing ecosystem of advocates is experimenting with ways to create healthier digital environments, from redesigning products to changing standards around screen use.
The campaign also comes at a time of growing interest in the attention economy. Lawmakers in the United States and abroad are increasingly debating how social platforms affect youth mental health and childhood development. Boycotts around the use of AI are increasing. Researchers are studying how these algorithms and chatbots influence behavior. Individuals are trying to understand what part of technology has its place in daily life.
What can we do about this?
Despite the weight of these conversations, Robin says the goal of the film is not to leave audiences powerless. In fact, the public’s growing awareness of AI has made it more optimistic than it was in the early days of social media. She says the systems that shape digital life are built by individuals, which means they can also be rebuilt.
“We have more power than we think,” Robin said. “And there are many different ways to get involved in that, from changing individual habits, to changing the culture of your own family and community, to designing technology differently, to engaging in these conversations, to pushing for legislative change.”
The film deliberately avoids presenting a single solution.
Instead, Your Attention Please asks a broader question: What happens when attention, one of the most human aspects of our lives, becomes one of the most valuable commodities in the global economy? And perhaps more importantly, what kind of digital world do we want to build next?
