Protocol Zero: A Military-Grade Dopamine Detox Guide.

Why Protocol Zero is the only viable survival strategy for the 2026 Attention Recession.

The war for your attention is no longer a metaphor. As of February 2026, it is a quantifiable economic reality with a casualty count measured in trillions of dollars. The data is unequivocal: we have entered a period of radical cognitive contraction. While the average global screen time has stabilized at a staggering 6 hours and 54 minutes per day, the quality of that attention has collapsed. We are witnessing the death of “Deep Work” at the hands of algorithmic super-stimuli.

The era of “digital wellness” and soft moderation is over. The apps on your phone are not tools; they are weaponized psychological operations designed by the world’s most sophisticated behavioral engineers. You are not fighting a bad habit; you are fighting a thousand engineers whose only job is to reduce your willpower to zero. To survive this, you need a counter-insurgency manual. You need Protocol Zero.

The chart above reveals the inverse correlation that defines our current era. As screen time inches upward, our ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks—the “Cognitive Throughput Index”—has plummeted by 45% since 2015. We are spending more time processing low-value data and less time synthesizing high-value intelligence.