How Platform Dominance Shapes Cultural Production

By Sophie Scandella

Can you remember the last time you watched something on streaming without looking at your phone or doing something else? If you can’t, no worries; the same is true for half of the American and British population. A 2023 YouGov survey demonstrated that 55% of US and UK viewers admitted to looking at their phones while watching television. While this trend might reflect our growing habit of multitasking, it may also be cultivated by the platforms themselves. What we see as an innocent habit could be a strategic editorial choice that streaming platforms make, possibly impeding the quality of the content we consume, leading us to question: How does a handful of platforms control today’s cultural production?

How to Engineer distraction and possible effects

Often associated with lack of attention and social media addiction, the phenomenon of “double screen” has been growing for several years now. Yet, some screenwriters’ testimonies and the writing quality of some shows suggest that streaming platforms, particularly Netflix, are not merely adapting to distracted viewing habits but are the architects of them.

From 2025 onwards, several sources revealed that Netflix has been giving its screenwriters guidelines in favor of producing content for distracted viewers. Journalistic and academic sources, including The Guardian and The Conversation, have analyzed this situation. The idea of simplified, easy-to-follow scripts manifests itself in redundant dialogue, voice-overs, and re-explanations of the plot. In an interview with Idiz, a producer who wished to remain anonymous even explained that Netflix executives instructed creative teams to ensure that “the points come through, even though kids are watching TikTok while they watch it.” As a result, it seems that Netflix producers appear committed to implementing the double-screen strategy, i.e., adapting their programs so that they are the ideal background noise for someone who wants to scroll through their phone from time to time while watching.

You might ask, why should we care about this kind of strategy, and how can it be considered problematic? At first glance, it might seem harmless. You might even think that doing something else while watching a program isn't a problem and is more convenient, perhaps even timesaving. But it's the overall impact on the industry and, in the long term, our becoming accustomed to lower-quality dialogue and plots that should make us question this. The problem, however, is that this might lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Netflix creates simplified content that viewers get used to, viewing statistics show that this content works, and Netflix produces even more of it. Thus, the platform is creating the demand for content that it claims to satisfy. Screenwriters are losing their creative freedom to streaming giants, and viewers are ultimately limited to consuming these same filtered and simplified programs. The central question, therefore, does not lie in the fact that watching Netflix while doing something else is a bad habit, but rather in questioning why a handful of platforms have an interest in perpetuating this habit. 

This article argues that Netflix's second-screen strategy is not a creative accident, but the product of three united forces: a structural shift in the attention economy, an asymmetric power dynamic between platforms and creative workers, and a regulatory framework unequipped to address editorial control at scale.

The economics of attention

To understand Netflix's logic and why producers would deliberately want to take a secondary role in the eyes of its viewers, we need to consider the overall economic context in which the company operates.

Since the beginning of the XXth century, economists have noticed an increase in information in our societies. Notably, economist Herbert Simon, when in 1971 he laid the foundations for a key concept of our digital age: the fact that in this surplus of information, the scarce resource is not content but rather the attention of consumers. This idea was later expanded upon by Tim Wu with the idea that the business model of our time lies in human attention, particularly through the capture, commodification, and resale of that attention. We can therefore see a clear difference with the Netflix strategy mentioned above. Indeed, it seems that the concept of dual screen allegedly orchestrated by the platform is contradicting the objective of catching the audience's attention. However, we could interpret it as the result of media overload. One could therefore argue that the goal of platforms might no longer be to capture our attention but only to occupy it, even if that means being a barely watched background noise. Due to the overload of information and media in our daily lives, Netflix is not only competing with HBO and Disney+, but also with short-form social media. Preparing to take a back seat may allow the platform to remain in the spotlight despite the challenges it faces. But this strategy has long-term effects that data would not be able to spot, limiting freedom of creativity and thus not letting risk-taking productions go when they do not follow the metric. In a market driven by data and analytics, artistic ambition does not have the same opportunity to take risks. 

Balance of power and devaluation of creative work 

The second screen directive did not emerge out of nowhere. In fact, in 2023, production guidelines were already being developed along these lines. Structural changes were imposed on Hollywood screenwriters, most likely in response to changes in streaming sites. Series seasons were shorter, resulting in shorter writing weeks, the shift to digital distribution had eroded residual payments, and minimum staffing in writers' rooms had been gutted. All these changes led to a 148-day strike, which became the longest writers' strike in WGA (Writers Guild of America) history. This strike highlighted a significant imbalance, whereby platforms hold far more power than creative workers. It is important to bear this in mind when discussing the phenomenon of second-screen directives, as platforms can impose restrictive guidelines to make more profit.  

This tension between creative freedom and commercial imperatives is not new; cultural production has historically restricted artistic creativity. However, what streaming has changed is the scale and precision of these constraints.

Furthermore, Netflix uses viewer data as a managerial tool. By observing metrics, drop-off rates, and engagement statistics, it is difficult for screenwriters to contradict objective data. According to some employees, the company monitors these figures very closely, which is very important because by following editorial decisions based on data rather than creative or economic considerations, Netflix is stripping executives of their creative and economic roles and letting the numbers guide the script. 

These decisions have led to a dual structure in the creative market. On one side, there is content deemed prestigious, productions that are critically acclaimed and recognised, legitimising Netflix as a cultural producer. On the other side, there is wallpaper production, high-volume content prepared using data to retain attention rather than engagement. This could be described as background noise, likely to appeal to audiences without requiring too much attention, which the platform itself describes as “casual viewing.” 

Shaping Taste: Platform Dominance and Cultural Production

One might defend this strategy arguing that, if the algorithm is showing these statistics to Netflix executives it means people are enjoying the content, so how could it be a problem? However, the argument conflates two different things, a preference revealed in a highly concentrated market, and a genuine formed cultural preference. 

Netflix represents 20% of global internet traffic during peak evening hours. At this scale, it cannot merely reflect cultural tastes, but rather shape them. When a single company controls access to audiences across 190 countries, its editorial decisions are not neutral market responses, they are exercises of market power.

Therefore, the choice to optimize for distraction, gradually normalizes a mode of cultural consumption at a large level, serving the platform’s metrics above all else.

 This is on this issue that existing regulatory frameworks fall short. While European content quotas and local investment obligations exist and were designed to protect cultural diversity in terms of volume, ensuring a minimum share of local content on platforms, they were not designed to verify the editorial logic behind that content. The result is a quiet cultural homogenization that is invisible in the data regulators rely on. It would be local in origin but globally standardized. 

Beyond Netflix: A Systemic Issue

Hence, what we see on our screens is the visible result of a chain of economic decisions: algorithmic pressure, asymmetrical power relations, and a retention logic that rewards presence rather than quality. The question, then, is not why Netflix produces content that does not demand our full attention. The deeper question is not what we chose to watch but whether that choice was ever truly ours. 

Sources: The Guardian, The Week UK, MIDia Research, Cambridge University Press, YouGov, The Conversation, Oxford Academic

Written by Sophie Scandella

Edited by Florence Cunnen