Social media is designed to keep us scrolling. Time on the platform is their entire business model. These feeds harm our mental health, waste our time and destroy our brains reward circuitry. I do however also believe in a free market economy and like the sale of cigarettes I believe this should be allowed. In their current sate these platforms are unavoidable. These platforms are ingrained into our society in how we interact, message friends and family and quite often have essential features required for everyday life, baked in with hyper addictive features such as short form content, infinite scroll and algorithmic tailoring.
Where the current model breaks
- Users can’t easily audit or change the algorithms shaping their attention.
- Default feeds prioritise engagement spikes even if they are the result for negative or shocking content.
- Opting out cuts access to communities, messaging, or events locked behind the platform.
What “control” could look like
- Transparency: feeds must show why a piece of content ranks highly.
- Modularity: users can plug in third-party recommendation systems aligned with their goals.
- Portability: social graphs should export cleanly so leaving isn’t social suicide.