[songzme]

You comment was downvoted but I upvoted it because you bring up a valid point. I've noticed first hand the free-rider problem and I have mixed feelings.

I thought it was interesting that all students with the free-rider symptoms did not feel good about free-riding. They tried to help out and feel bad when we meet for 1-1 and they haven't done much.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm actually fighting against FAANG because these companies are spending billions trying to capture as much of my students' attention as possible and I have to spend more time helping manage my students out of these distractions.

I'm actually starting to wonder if the free-rider problem exists because of FAANG creating addictive content and the media glorifying a certain lifestyle. If students were not exposed to these distractions, would they still be free-riding? I honestly don't think so and my next year's plan is to try and simulate this.

[kome]

The economy of distraction is indeed a fucked up economy... there are just 24h in a day. And we have billionaires competing for our attention. Creating opium-like content and experiences (tv, social media, videogames).

I wonder myself how deal with that in a systemic level. A society of consumers is bad... but a society that is a audience is worse.