The 2012-2013 timeframe matches my general timeline for things as well, though mine is a bit hazier as it's a transition timeframe, not an event. The 2012 era

The 2012-2013 timeframe matches my general timeline for things as well, though mine is a bit hazier as it's a transition timeframe, not an event. The 2012 era was when we really started to see the weaponization of attention take off. Smartphones weren't that terrible (Crackberry jokes aside) pre-2012, at least in terms of being attention vampires. In app purchases had become a thing a year or two before, and people were figuring out how to make it work - with 2012 being around the time they figured it out. The variable reward "drive your users crazy" stuff hit around then, and with it, the wave of "algorithmic feeds" - not just chronologically ordered stuff. Facebook moved to a more heavily algorithmic feed in 2011, mobile apps stared more actively driving their users crazy, etc. So that timeframe was when the internet went from "Everyone sees the same thing on the same site, and you easily hit the end of new content if you care" to "It's a slot machine, and it's in your pocket, and there's a notification to get you back into the slot machine." And it's just been downhill from there. :(