We’ve all been there. You open your favorite app intending to check one quick thing, and suddenly it’s an hour later. You’ve scrolled through dozens of videos you didn’t plan to watch, read articles you didn’t mean to read, and somehow ended up looking at products you definitely don’t need. Then you wonder: how did this happen?The answer is simple but uncomfortable. The algorithm doesn’t care about your goals, your time, or your wellbeing. It has its own agenda, and that agenda is to keep you engaged for as long as possible.
This might sound paranoid, but it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s just business. The platforms we use every day are designed by some of the smartest engineers in the world, armed with vast amounts of data about human behavior and psychology. Their job is to optimize for engagement, which usually means maximizing the time you spend on the platform and the number of times you return to it. More engagement means more ads seen, more data collected, and ultimately more revenue.
The trick is that what keeps us engaged isn’t necessarily what’s good for us. The algorithm has learned that outrage keeps us scrolling, that anxiety keeps us checking, that comparison keeps us coming back. It knows that the video of a puppy doing something cute will make you smile, but the heated argument in the comments section will make you stay. It understands that you’re more likely to watch five short, mindless videos than one longer piece of thoughtful content, even if the latter would be more satisfying in the long run.
Think about how these systems learn what to show you. They don’t analyze whether content makes you happier, more informed, or more fulfilled. They simply track what you click on, how long you watch, and whether you come back for more. It’s the digital equivalent of judging food quality solely by whether people keep eating it, which would make potato chips healthier than salad.
The recommendations you receive are optimized for the version of you that emerges in your least disciplined moments. When you’re tired after a long day and just want to zone out, the algorithm learns from that state. It doesn’t distinguish between the you who has clear intentions and the you who’s mindlessly scrolling at midnight. Both versions feed the same training data, but only one of them aligns with your actual values and goals.
This creates a strange tension in our digital lives. We often use these platforms with specific purposes in mind: to learn something new, to stay connected with friends, to find inspiration for a project. But the algorithm isn’t designed to help us achieve those goals efficiently. It’s designed to keep us there as long as possible, goal be damned. If helping us accomplish what we came to do means we’ll leave the platform sooner, that’s actually a failure from the algorithm’s perspective.
The consequences of this misalignment are everywhere. People open social media to share one specific update and emerge forty minutes later having accomplished nothing except feeling worse about themselves. Students sit down to research a topic for homework and get pulled into a rabbit hole of tangentially related content. Someone trying to develop healthier habits finds their feed flooded with content that triggers old patterns, because that’s what they engaged with in the past.
None of this means the platforms are evil or that the engineers building them have malicious intent. Most people working on these systems genuinely believe they’re creating value and improving lives. The problem is structural. When success is measured primarily by engagement metrics, and when those metrics can be gamed by exploiting psychological vulnerabilities, the outcomes become predictable regardless of anyone’s intentions.
So what do we do about it? The first step is simply awareness. Recognizing that the algorithm has different priorities than you do makes it easier to maintain your own sense of agency. When you notice yourself getting pulled into content you didn’t choose, you can pause and ask whether this is actually how you want to spend your time.It also helps to be more intentional about how you use these platforms. Decide what you want to do before you open the app, and notice when you’ve strayed from that intention. Use features like time limits, notification controls, and website blockers to create friction between you and your most problematic patterns. Seek out alternative platforms or ways of consuming content that better align with your actual goals.
Most importantly, remember that the algorithm’s assessment of what you want is based on limited information and perverse incentives. It might be very good at predicting what you’ll click on next, but that doesn’t mean it understands what you actually care about or what will make your life better. Only you can make those judgments, and making them requires staying conscious enough to notice when you’re being led somewhere you didn’t choose to go.
The algorithms that shape our digital experiences are powerful tools, but they’re tools designed for someone else’s purposes. Treating them as neutral guides or trusted advisors is a mistake. They’re more like really persuasive salespeople who’ve studied your every move and learned exactly what buttons to push. You can still benefit from what they offer, but only if you remember that their interests and yours aren’t the same.