A Digital Mental Health Tax: Forcing Accountability in the Attention Economy
If this system continues to profit from engineered intimacy and emotional dependency, then it cannot remain insulated from the consequences it helps create.
A Digital Mental Health Tax should be implemented on platforms and revenue streams that monetize parasocial interaction and simulated intimacy at scale. This is not about punishment—it is about alignment of incentives. Industries that generate measurable social harm, from gambling to tobacco, are already subject to similar frameworks. The same logic applies here.
The tax should be proportionate to revenue derived from high-engagement, intimacy-driven content models, with contributions from both platforms and large-scale management agencies. Independent creators operating at small scales could fall below a reasonable threshold, ensuring the burden does not fall disproportionately on individuals with limited power.
Funds generated must be transparently allocated to:
Mental health services, particularly for populations vulnerable to isolation and compulsive digital consumption
Addiction and behavioral dependency research focused on digital environments
Community-building initiatives that foster real-world social connection
Support systems for creators experiencing burnout, coercion, or exploitation within these industries
Without such reinvestment, the system effectively privatizes profit while socializing psychological cost.
Critics will argue that such a tax is difficult to define or enforce’ and they are right. But complexity is not an excuse for inaction. If anything, it reflects how deeply embedded and normalized these practices have become.
The goal is not to eliminate digital platforms or consensual content creation. It is to ensure that when human vulnerability becomes a revenue stream, responsibility follows the money.