The Algorithm of Our Undoing

How our craving for connection is quietly unraveling the soul of our species

If you were to paint it generously, social media might look like one of humanity’s great inventions. A unifier of friends, a bridge across cultures, a tool for sharing knowledge, passions, and purpose. That’s the story we sold ourselves. It even feels true at times. But there’s a deeper story humming beneath the scroll.

And it’s not just a darker chapter. It might be the final one.

What if the thing we built to connect us is slowly eroding the very fabric of connection? What if the harm is not a glitch but the design? Not just in what it shows us, but in what it takes away.

If I had to choose one word to describe an ideal human society, it would be joy. Not comfort. Not success. Not even peace. Joy—the kind that bubbles from a meaningful life, from presence, from deep relationships, from awe, from laughter that feels like truth.

But does social media bring you joy?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Sit with it. Listen carefully to your body as you answer. The fleeting dopamine rush from a like, the small high of being seen, might mimic joy. But joy is patient. Joy does not spike and crash. Joy doesn’t leave you empty and reaching again for another fix.

We’ve become addicts with glowing screens, and we’ve normalized it because everyone else is doing it too. We barely notice how it’s rewiring our minds, reshaping our nervous systems, shortening our attention spans. And more dangerously—it’s dulling our consciousness.

The unconscious time-killer. That’s what it is.

We scroll to numb. We scroll to avoid. We scroll to exist in a world that feels controllable when the real one is messy and raw. But what do we miss in all this numbing? Nature, for one. The ability to be with ourselves. The rare gift of boredom that used to spark creativity. The stillness that used to lead to insight. We’re losing it all—and we don’t even feel the grief of its absence. Because we replaced it with noise.

Every forest path is now a photo-op. Every sunset, a performance. We no longer just stare into the distance and feel the wind touch our skin—we pose, we filter, we upload. We pretend to do what humans once did without thinking. And we’ve convinced ourselves it’s the same.

It isn’t.

And beyond the personal cost, there’s the collective tragedy. Entire movements of hate, violence, and misinformation grow inside these platforms like mold in the dark. Terrorists organize. Bots stir up division. Algorithms prioritize outrage over truth. And behind it all, a few companies rake in billions while they shape the minds and moods of billions more.

What does it mean for a species to design its own extinction and then call it progress?

We never talk about that. Not really. Because the ones who could legislate or lead are entangled too. Because to question the system is to threaten an economy built on clicks and addiction. The narrative is controlled. The harm is hidden behind pretty UX and promises of “connection.”

But we feel it, don’t we?

The low-grade anxiety. The comparison hangover. The way we check our phones reflexively the moment we’re alone, as if we’ve forgotten how to be a whole person without a digital witness.

The arguing over trivial things. The confusion about what’s real. The constant stimulation that leaves us too fried to care about what actually matters.

And the worst part? We still want it. We want the very thing that is undoing us. That is the mark of true addiction.

This is not a call to delete your accounts or move to the woods—though some days, that sounds like salvation. It’s a call to remember who we are. Who we were before the feed.

Humans, not users. Beings who once looked at trees and saw gods. Who sat by rivers for hours without telling anyone. Who loved not to post, but to feel. Who created art and wonder and meaning without an audience.

We are still those beings. Buried beneath the algorithms, beneath the curated avatars, beneath the shame and the numbness—we are still capable of joy. Real joy. The kind that cannot be tracked or monetized or turned into a “moment.”

But we must reclaim it. And that starts with awareness.

What does joy look like for you? Not the marketed version. The real thing. What would it mean to live a life that isn’t performative? To resist the pull of the endless scroll and instead turn inward, or outward—toward the sky, a friend, your own breath?

We are not too far gone. But we are far. And every day we pretend we’re not, we drift further.

So maybe the question isn’t whether we can fix social media. Maybe it’s whether we’re willing to feel again. To grieve what we’ve lost. And to remember the world that waits for us beyond the screen.

Because what we once imagined as a unifier of friends, a builder of relationships, a bridge to joy—it still could be those things. But not like this.

Not when it costs us the very joy we were seeking.

Connection, after all, was never meant to be measured in likes or followers. It was meant to be felt—in laughter, in silence, in shared moments no one else sees. The kind of moments you don’t post because they’re too sacred to reduce.

Maybe what we need now isn’t more ways to stay in touch—but more ways to stay in touch with ourselves. To stand again in awe of the world, unfiltered. To stare off into the distance not for a photo, but because something in us is still alive enough to wonder.

That’s not just how we evolve. That’s how we survive.