Utility and the Attention Commodity

While scholarship on information and communication technologies for development (commonly referred to as ICT4D) emphasizes the technological utility of information and communication technology (ICT) expansion for fostering global development and solving global poverty, critical approaches highlight the technologies’ adverse effects. Although these perspectives have been historically placed in opposition to each other, in this paper, we use a novel data set on mobile phone use patterns in 27 Global South countries to evaluate both perspectives simultaneously. We draw from data produced by the GSMA, an organization of mobile phone network providers with access to granular data on Global South mobile phone use, ranging from social networking to agricultural support. Descriptive usage patterns and multivariate regression analyses reveal an intriguing contradiction: while people with greater access to ICTs are more likely to enjoy previously inaccessible utilities like healthcare information and government services, they are also more likely to contribute their attention as a commodity for the profit of tech companies. This suggests that reaping the development benefits of ICTs is not possible without accepting the political-economic risks—unless ICT companies and organizations are more thoroughly regulated to prevent extractive practices.