“The algorithm knows me better than I know myself.”
I’ve been clean from TikTok for almost five years now, but I still remember the uncanny way that the platform’s algorithm was able to read me. My #ForYou page was flooded with content that seemed tailored for me personally, sometimes even reflecting what I thought were my original thoughts and feelings back at me before I had ever expressed them to anyone else. It was like the app had been reading my diary.
Despite its appearance, though, the algorithm isn’t a mystical mind reader — and I’m decently confident it wasn’t wiretapping my phone calls. But what it could do, and what it did very well, was track my actions and extrapolate data from my behavior.
The app made note of all the small signals I unwittingly gave it: whether I scrolled on quickly, let my eyes linger for a moment, watched an entire video or allowed it to replay; whether I paused to read comments or left a comment myself — every small action became a data point in an elaborate mathematical formula known as “the algorithm” which determined, via complex calculations, the videos that populated my feed.
When I was lonely, I saw videos made to comfort me. When I was bored, I saw content that made me laugh or gasp. When I was unmotivated, I saw videos either to inspire me or affirm my need for rest. My feed could look completely different depending on the time of day I opened it, but despite its variety, all the content had one thing in common: It was meant to keep me on the app.
The Purpose Shaping Our Algorithms
What gives a piece of content value in the eyes of an algorithm is not how edifying it may be to the viewer, but how it hooks them. The greater the engagement — comments, likes, views, shares — the greater the paycheck for creators, advertisers and the platform. As long as our eyes are on our feeds, corporations and content creators are getting fed.
With the oversaturated market of digital content, it makes sense for platforms to use algorithms which prioritize engaging content — the kind of content most likely to keep consumers coming back for more.
Unfortunately, what keeps us coming back is often not the good stuff.
What We Fix Our Eyes On
No matter how much we may say we want to see peace and positivity in our feeds, when given the choice, studies show that we tend to pick “high-arousal, negative-valence” content[1] — content that provokes anger, anxiety, fear and disgust. Rather than being repelled by the content that raises our blood pressure, this is the very content that ends up drawing us in.
Our trackable actions — watch time, comments, likes — signal to our algorithms that we want more of what makes us mad. Cute animal videos only satisfy for so long. We demand more extreme content to hold our attention in the long term.
“Rage bait” — Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year in 2025 — is a great example of how our bias toward the anger-inducing plays out online. Content creators have recently found that a winning strategy is not to produce the most quality content, but to create content that purposefully pushes the viewer’s buttons. When pushed the right way, viewers push back — pausing to read comments; typing long replies; sharing with friends and followers in disgust.
Provoking a deluge of outraged comments used to be something influencers would want to avoid. But now, many have learned that outrage leads to engaged views, which in turn generates attention and revenue. Making someone mad is one of the best ways to hold attention online, and it’s making the digital world angrier.
Empathy, understanding, putting the best construction on things, stories of hope or even simple facts often don’t break through the algorithm the same way salacious, negative or controversial content does. Check almost any YouTube channel, and you’ll find a disparity in view count between positive and negative stories strongly in favor of the negative. But the algorithm can’t be blamed for spoon-feeding us this content — we are the ones at fault.
The Algorithm Within: Our Sinful Nature
Algorithms feed us what they think we want to consume. They extrapolate from the breadcrumbs we leave for them — Where have our eyes been lingering? What have we been interacting with? What are we inadvertently telling these apps that we are hungry for?
Too often, our log-jammed eyes will be glued to our screens in order to call out or relish in the splinters in others’. We jump at the opportunity to skewer people — whether that’s content creators themselves or those whom they direct our anger toward. While hiding our own sinfulness behind beauty filters and the anonymity of our screens, we can almost find a kind of comfort in calling out or soaking in the perceived wrongdoing of others. Rage and frustration — at others, at the world — gives us a kind of satisfaction and separation from all the wrong “out there” while ignoring all the wrong “in here.”
Like Jonah, we relish a good downfall and would rather scroll past the redemption arc. But when Jonah vents his anger to the LORD, the LORD stops Jonah in his tracks with a question: “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4).
The LORD is the one with the most reason to be angry — all sin, after all, is sin against Him and His perfect creation. Yet the LORD remains ever “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:2).
God didn’t look on us in anger, but in love, even sending His Son to suffer and die for our sins. He didn’t relish looking on us in our sinful state but instead covered us in robes of white, washed in the blood of the Lamb.
Every person we encounter, in person or online — though they may be like the people of Ninevah “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11) — is beloved by God and blood-bought by Christ’s sacrifice.
Rather than seeing red as we scroll online, we must endeavor to see the humans we meet (for, despite the growing prevalence of bots, there are still more than six billion human beings accessing the internet — most of them, every single day) with the eyes of Christ, who looked on us in love, even when we hated Him.
Breaking Free from the Algorithm
Recognizing that a post or video may be attempting to lure us into anger — not to mention other sin-soaked vices like lust, greed, vanity and self-loathing — in order to profit from our engagement is a good step toward Christian online engagement. Surely we must be intentional about our engagement so that our algorithms do not lead us to the sinful depths of anger and salacity. The things we see do have an impact on our souls, for “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt. 6:22–23).
We cannot stare endlessly into a portal of darkness without expecting it to impact us. Focusing our eyes on darkness allows darkness into our souls. Let us, then, direct our eyes to the light, to the good: “O, come, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Founder and Perfector of our faith” (Heb. 12:2 alt.).
Fixing our eyes on Jesus requires us to tear our eyes away from our screens. We are not called to simply view, “like” or subscribe to Jesus digitally. Life in the Word and life in the ways of Christ is not a life mindlessly scrolling through whatever the algorithm serves up. Life in Christ calls us to open our Bibles, to meditate on His Word, to sing and pray, and attend Divine Service, receiving the gifts He promises to give in His Sacraments. Life in Christ calls us to serve our neighbors — not only (or even primarily) online, but in person, face-to-face and heart-to-heart.
For Jesus did not simply “share” some good news with humanity from behind a screen or from a comfortable seat on high — He became the Good News. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He experienced what is to hunger, to thirst, to bleed — to die, all out of His love for us.
Our service, our engagement with our neighbors, happens most meaningfully off-screen, in person. It could be as simple as inviting someone to join us for a meal. Perhaps that meal could lead them to someday join us for the most important meal we partake in: The Lord’s Supper, where Christ shows us that God’s love is not theoretical, not digital. It is embodied.
Finding Content
As our screens seek to enchant and entice us away from each other, we must remember that the satisfaction they promise is a fleeting feeling, a false reprieve. Our algorithms do not know us, do not care for us and cannot love us — but they can prevent us from knowing, caring for and loving others.
Although I may be off of TikTok, I still struggle with spending too much time online, often reaching for social media as a distraction from the struggles, pains and stresses of my real life. Yet, the content chosen for my consumption by the algorithm can never fill up my emptiness or heal my brokenness. “Content consumption” can’t fill me up — only Christ, the Bread of Life, can give satisfaction — content — eternally.
[1] Xuanjun Gong et al. “Computationally modeling mood management theory: a drift diffusion model of people’s preferential choice for valence and arousal in media.” Journal of Communication, Volume 73, Issue 5 (Oct. 2023): pp. 476–493. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad020
Cover image: “Selective Focus of Blue-Eyed Person,” Amanda Dalbjörn/Unsplash
