Interestingly, fear on social media isn’t just employed by marketers, pundits, and politicians. Friends, family, and colleagues increasingly use fear to get attention because it works. My work focuses on teen culture so I see a lot of this through that lens. I watch as parents use fear in an effort to get their kids to pay attention to them. I watch as teens use fear in order to get attention from their peers. Teens and parents both develop an acute sense of what will grab their interlocutors’ attention. Attention is indeed the currency of contemporary society. Hysteria is one element of this, whether it plays out as fearmongering or simply drama. Many of the teen practices that adults deplore stem from the desire to capture attention in an attention economy. Yet, adults are by no means innocent of this. They too use fear to get attention. Consider the various anti-drug and online safety campaigns. Thus, can we really blame teens for trying to master this adult-defined landscape?