Attention Is Territory

Social Media, Dopamine, Algorithms, and Algorithmic Zone 3

We continue this block in Jiwasa — we together — with a simple and very serious idea:

attention is territory.

Before saying that someone “uses their phone too much,” “wastes time,” or “has no focus,” we need to change the question. Maybe the problem is not only a lack of discipline. Maybe the question is:

who is organizing our attention?

Because when a platform captures our gaze, our time, our desire, our comparison, our anger, our curiosity, and our need to belong, it also begins to organize our Tekoha — the internal territory of the body.

This blog is part of the shared BrainLatam2026 block on behavioral studies, adolescence, Decolonial Neuroscience, Tekoha, APUS, Jiwasa, interoception, elasticity, and Zone 3.

Whoever captures our attention begins to organize our Tekoha

In BrainLatam2026 language, APUS is body-territory: what we see, touch, hear, eat, walk through, inhabit, and share.

Tekoha is what happens when that territory enters the body.

So, when we spend many hours on social media, it is not only “content” entering us. Rhythm enters. Comparison enters. Language enters. Urgency enters. Desire enters. Fear of missing out enters. The feeling that everyone else is living better, earning more, looking better, being more accepted, more desired, or happier also enters.

The body responds.

Breathing changes.
Sleep changes.
Posture changes.
Attention fragments.
Comparison grows.
Elasticity decreases.

Little by little, Tekoha may stop being organized by the real body, real friendships, walking, school, family, community, food, silence, and territory — and start being organized by an endless sequence of stimuli.

The algorithm does not need to hate us to hold us

The algorithm does not need to be “evil” like a person. It may simply optimize engagement.

That means: showing more of what keeps attention.

If an image holds attention, more images come.
If controversy holds attention, more controversy comes.
If comparison holds attention, more comparison comes.
If insecurity holds attention, more content around that insecurity comes.
If strong emotion holds attention, more strong emotion comes.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory states that social media can offer connection and community, but also raises concern about possible harms, especially because the evidence was not sufficient to conclude that social media platforms are safe enough for children and adolescents. (Time) The National Academies’ 2024 report also emphasizes that effects are not simple: they depend on platform design, type of use, age, family context, social vulnerability, and the balance between risks and benefits. (HBSC)

So the point is not to demonize technology.

The point is to stop pretending that platforms designed to capture attention are neutral.

Dopamine is not simply “pleasure”

A lot of people talk about dopamine as if it were only the “pleasure hormone.” That is too simple.

In neuroscience, dopamine is deeply linked to seeking, salience, motivation, reward learning, and prediction error — the process through which the brain updates expectations when something is better, worse, or different from what was expected. A 2023 review on reward prediction error describes dopaminergic signaling as central to learning-related behaviors and expectation updating. (Frontiers)

This is why a social media platform does not need to make us deeply happy to keep us there.

It only needs to deliver:

a novelty,
a possible like,
a comment,
a message,
a comparison,
a controversy,
a fear of missing out,
a video that starts before we decide,
a small and unpredictable reward.

That pattern is powerful because it keeps the body searching.

In BrainLatam2026 language:

dopamine is not only pleasure; it is the body being called to search for more.

Algorithmic Zone 3

Algorithmic Zone 3 happens when the body becomes stuck in constant stimulation, comparison, urgency, and reward-seeking.

It is not a moral failure.
It is not lack of character.
It is not “this generation is weak.”

It is a body trying to regulate itself inside an environment designed to pull attention again and again.

In algorithmic Zone 3, we may notice:

broken attention,
worse sleep,
mental tiredness,
irritation,
constant comparison,
difficulty staying in silence,
checking the phone without knowing why,
feeling that resting means missing something,
difficulty feeling the body without external stimulation.

The WHO Regional Office for Europe reported that problematic social media use among adolescents increased from 7% in 2018 to 11% in 2022, with signs such as difficulty controlling use and negative consequences for daily life and well-being. (World Health Organization) A 2025 CDC study using data from teenagers aged 12 to 17 found that four or more hours per day of non-school screen time was associated with poorer indicators of physical activity, sleep, mental health, and perceived social support; the study is observational, so it does not prove direct causality, but it reinforces that screens, sleep, movement, and belonging need to be seen together. (CDC)

The problem is not only the screen: it is what the screen replaces

The question is not only: “how many hours of screen time?”

The deeper question is:

what is the screen replacing?

Is it replacing sleep?
Walking?
Conversation?
Creative boredom?
Dancing?
Calm study?
Shared meals?
Looking at the sky?
Silence?
Presence with friends?
Time to feel the body?

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA Pediatrics found a positive association between social media use and internalizing symptoms in adolescent clinical and community samples, while also showing why the topic needs careful interpretation rather than simplistic blame. (JAMA Network)

So the proposal is not “leave the internet and everything is solved.”

The proposal is to return one question to the body:

is my attention still mine?

Captured attention narrows APUS

When attention gets stuck in infinite scrolling, APUS may become smaller.

The body walks less.
Looks far less.
Breathes less deeply.
Feels the ground less.
Perceives the territory less.
Talks with less presence.
Compares more.
Desires more.
Rests less.

Life becomes narrow.

The world seems to fit inside the screen, but the body does not fit there.

We do need screens. We use them to study, create, work, research, sell, publish science, meet people, make politics, and build communities. But the body also needs ground, rhythm, sunlight, faces, pauses, food, gestures, language, and real belonging.

In BrainLatam2026 language:

a narrow APUS generates a pressured Tekoha.

When APUS loses space, Tekoha becomes more vulnerable to Zone 3.

Fruition and Metacognition: recovering attention without war

The way out does not need to be war against the phone.

War can also become Zone 3.

The way out can begin with Fruition and Metacognition.

Fruition is returning to the body without turning everything into performance.
Metacognition is noticing what is happening with attention without being completely swallowed by it.

We can begin with simple questions:

Am I opening this app by choice or by impulse?
What do I feel in my body after 20 minutes here?
Does this content expand my internal space or shrink it?
Do I leave more alive or more compared?
Am I seeking information, connection, or anesthesia?
Does my body need a screen now, or does it need ground?

These questions do not accuse.
They return attention.

Small practices of territory

We can recover attention through small gestures:

turning off non-essential notifications,
keeping the phone away from the bed,
walking without headphones for a few minutes,
looking through a window before opening the feed,
eating one meal without scrolling,
sending a message to a real person instead of only consuming content,
listening to one full song without changing it,
moving the body without performance,
breathing before replying,
creating more conscious screen-time windows,
asking: “what is my body feeling now?”

This is not about perfection.

It is about elasticity.

Attention also needs to enter tension and return.

EEG/NIRS/fNIRS window: how could we study attention, social media, and Tekoha?

A BrainLatam study on attention is territory could investigate how adolescents or young adults respond to social media stimuli, social comparison, social reward, and body-based pauses.

With EEG/ERP, we could observe markers of attention, emotional salience, and reward processing, such as P300, N2, LPP, and RewP, depending on the task. A 2024 study examined Reward Positivity — RewP to social and monetary rewards and how neural reactivity to social reward moderated the association between social media use and momentary positive affect in adolescents. (PubMed)

With NIRS/fNIRS, we could observe prefrontal hemodynamic activity during feed exposure, decision-making, risk processing, pause, social comparison, or self-control tasks. A 2024 fNIRS study with 80 college students aged 18 to 25 used the Iowa Gambling Task to investigate smartphone addiction and decision-making, recording prefrontal cortex activity during the task. (Frontiers)

A 2025 naturalistic fNIRS study in college students investigated the immediate impact of social media consumption on executive function and emotion using a wearable fNIRS system, helping bring neuroimaging closer to everyday digital behavior. (Nature)

With HRV/RMSSD, respiration, GSR, EMG, and eye-tracking, we could measure the whole body: visual attention, muscular tension, autonomic activation, breathing, recovery, and elasticity.

The experimental question would be:

what happens to the body when attention is captured — and what helps attention return to territory?

Walking?
Music?
Breathing?
Safe conversation?
Less screen pressure?
A collective activity?
A moment of Jiwasa?

This is where neuroscience, behavior, body, and territory meet.

Closing

Attention is territory.

Whoever captures our attention begins to organize our Tekoha.

But this does not mean we have lost freedom. It means we need to recover body awareness, Fruition, and Metacognition in front of the platforms.

The screen can be a tool.
The screen can be a bridge.
The screen can be study, creation, friendship, and public science.

But when it becomes the whole territory, the body loses APUS.

In Jiwasa — we together, the proposal is not to blame anyone. It is to protect the body’s elasticity.

Because our body needs world.
It needs ground.
It needs rhythm.
It needs pause.
It needs belonging.

Whoever returns attention to the body returns territory to Tekoha.

Post-2021 References

World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. (2024). Teens, screens and mental health. (World Health Organization)

Zablotsky, B., Ng, A. E., Black, L. I., Haile, G., Bose, J., & Jones, J. R. (2025). Associations Between Screen Time Use and Health Outcomes Among US Teenagers. Preventing Chronic Disease, 22, 240537. (CDC)

Fassi, L., Thomas, K., Parry, D. A., Leyland-Craggs, A., Ford, T. J., & Orben, A. (2024). Social Media Use and Internalizing Symptoms in Clinical and Community Adolescent Samples: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics, 178(8), 814–822. (JAMA Network)

Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. (2023). Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory. (Time)

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2024). Social Media and Adolescent Health. (HBSC)

Deng, Y., Wang, Z., & Chen, X. (2023). Reward prediction error in learning-related behaviors. Frontiers in Neuroscience. (Frontiers)

Politte-Corn, M., Pegg, S., Kujawa, A., et al. (2024). Neural Reactivity to Social Reward Moderates the Association Between Social Media Use and Momentary Positive Affect in Adolescents. Affective Science. (PubMed)

Liu, X., Tian, R., Bai, X., Liu, H., Li, T., Zhou, X., & Lei, Y. (2024). Exploring the Impact of Smartphone Addiction on Risk Decision-Making Behavior among College Students: An fNIRS Study Based on the Iowa Gambling Task. Frontiers in Psychiatry. (Frontiers)

Aitken, A., et al. (2025). Naturalistic fNIRS assessment reveals decline in executive function and altered prefrontal activation following social media use in college students. Scientific Reports. (Nature)