Tuesday 19 May 2026 4:58 am  |  Updated:  Monday 18 May 2026 2:44 pm

Big Tech’s big problem? Consumers are paying to opt out

By: Paul Armstrong

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Many executives approving AI copilots are also privately paying for products to shield their own children from technology, writes Paul Armstrong

Your consumers are starting to pay for escape from your Big Tech choices

The next major consumer battle isn’t going to be over who captures the most attention, builds the smartest AI assistant or creates the most immersive hardware ecosystem. A far more commercially dangerous shift is starting to emerge underneath consumer behaviour, one that threatens the incentives many technology and media businesses have spent the last 20 years optimising around: consumers are increasingly willing to pay for relief from the systems designed to keep them permanently engaged.

For nearly two decades, the biggest firms in technology built trillion-dollar businesses by maximising engagement. More scrolling meant more advertising inventory. More notifications meant more opportunities to pull users back into platforms. More screen time meant richer behavioural data, stronger retention metrics and better narratives for investors. Every layer of modern consumer technology became engineered around removing friction, shortening pauses and eliminating moments where people might drift away from the system.

Infinite scroll was not an accident, just as autoplay videos, streaks, algorithmic recommendation feeds and push notifications weren’t. These are all carefully tuned to provoke emotional reactions strong enough to keep users returning throughout the day. Consumer technology became extraordinarily good at occupying attention because occupying attention became one of the most valuable economic activities on earth. The trouble is they suck attention, keep consumers........

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