I've been noticing for about two years now that Instagram and TikTok show me exactly what they know will hook me, and I end up spending hours there without realizing it. I wonder if this is deliberate manipulation or just how they work these days. Can we really blame the companies or is it on us for choosing to stay?
Algorithms are specifically designed to maximize the time you spend on the platform, so yeah, there's deliberate intent behind it. But here's where it gets complicated: it's as much their responsibility as it is yours, because they know exactly how our brains work and they exploit that on purpose, while we're making decisions based on that skewed information they're feeding us. It's not that you're weak for falling for it; it's that they're playing with the rules of the game in their favor from the start. What you can control is being aware of it and setting boundaries, like turning off notifications or using timers, though I'll admit that even that feels like swimming upstream.
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