The Engagement Trap
Digital spaces inevitably consume the very connections they were built to nurture when engagement becomes the metric that matters. What begins as a tool for human connection transforms into its opposite—an algorithm-driven consumption machine that mimics sociality while methodically dismantling it. The platforms don't simply change; they invert their purpose, replacing genuine interaction with optimised addiction.
This is not evolution but transmutation. The social fabric that once bound users together becomes merely the substrate upon which attention is harvested. Friends become incidental, their posts buried beneath an avalanche of content designed not to connect but to capture. The spaces we created to share our lives paradoxically push us towards private messaging—the digital equivalent of whispering in a room designed for conversation.
Perhaps most revealing is that those who built these systems now disavow their original purpose, claiming "social media is over" after they themselves systematically dismantled it. The tragedy lies not in technology's limitations but in its deliberate reconstruction around metrics that value time spent over connections made.