Every few months, someone very important testifies before Congress that social media is bad for society.

Everyone nods.
There are some tense exchanges.
A few sound bites go viral.

Nothing changes.

We keep scrolling.

I want to suggest something uncomfortable:

The reason nothing changes is not corruption, not lobbying, not corporate greed — though those are all real.

The reason nothing changes is this:

We underestimate what the algorithm actually is.

They think it’s broken.

It isn’t.

It is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

And that’s what makes it so hard to stop.

We accept the algorithm because it feels like a service.

It shows you things you like.
It learns your preferences.
It filters out the noise.

Without it, the internet is an undifferentiated wall of content —
and nobody has time for that.

So we made a deal.

We gave platforms:

In exchange, they gave us a personalized feed.

Seemed fair.

We didn’t read the fine print.

The fine print:

The algorithm’s job is not to show you what you like.

Its job is to maximize the time you spend on the platform.

Those sound like the same thing.

They are not.

Here is what the algorithm is actually optimizing for:

Engagement.

Specifically, the kind of engagement that keeps you from putting your phone down.

And the content that best achieves that is not content you love.

It’s content that provokes a reaction:

The mild, warm pleasure of seeing a friend’s kid’s birthday photos?

That doesn’t keep you scrolling.

The thing that makes your blood pressure spike a little?

That does.

The algorithm didn’t make us more connected.

It made our nervous systems more profitable.

Facebook’s internal research — leaked in 2021 — showed their algorithm was amplifying content that made people feel worse because it drove engagement.

They knew.

They shipped it anyway.

And here’s what we lost in the trade:

Serendipity.

The algorithm curates your world so efficiently that it becomes a mirror.

You see:

You almost never see:

The person three miles away who would change your life if you met them.

That person exists.

The algorithm just doesn’t have a business reason to show them to you.

We outsourced the discovery of other humans to a system that profits from:

And we called it…

Connection.

You’d need a different optimization target.

Instead of:

“Maximize time on platform”

What if the goal was:

“Maximize the quality of connections formed”

What if success wasn’t:

But instead:

Did two people who needed each other actually find each other?

eHarmony did this, but it was swept away by competitors. Why? What are we really after here?

That’s a completely different product.

It doesn’t need you to stay on it.

It needs you to leave.

To go do something in the real world —
and come back having actually lived.

The business model changes too.

It can’t be advertising.

Advertising needs your attention.

This would need something else:

A system where the platform wins when you win.

Not when you can’t put it down.

That product doesn’t profit from your loneliness.

It profits from your connection.

Those are not the same thing.

And right now…

Almost nothing in your pocket is built on the second one.

Here’s the one that stings a little:

When was the last time a social media platform introduced you to someone who became genuinely important in your life?

Now ask yourself:

Is that a you problem…

or a design problem?

Turn Around. Look Up.

Connection is Currency.

→ Forward this to someone who needs to read it, who wants to talk about it, who wants to help do something about it.