Have you ever opened TikTok, Instagram or X, and before you know it, you've spent an hour sucked into scrolling?

It's not just you, Social media algorithms are designed to entice and enthrall you.

Whenever I have free time, or am sitting at home, I, I used to watch TV, used to read, now it's just constant scrolling.

I can just scroll on YouTube for hours, scroll on TikTok for hours, I stay up way too late.

If I have down time at work, I just pull out my phone, I'll start scrolling...

So how do these algorithms work?

And why are they so addicting?

Algorithms are basically used to make decisions, automated decisions, so they try to estimate in any given time how a particular user would react, something that they put out like next photo or next video or next piece of content, and they use, they estimate of the probabilities of you reacting positive like you like it or you click it or enjoy it.

The algorithm is basically collecting data about your preferences, what you like or engage with, all the time.

That's part of what makes social media so addicting, it's personalized, and the algorithms get better at serving you up content you'll like over time.

But there's more...

They have an endless supply of novel information and novel, like, stimulation on social media, not just content, but also networking aspect.

And the second is they have algorithms and doing better and better in terms of pushing or filtering the information down to the ones that you're most likely to pay attention to or or kind of relevance.

Some of these apps may also be designed to keep you on platforms not just by what they serve up, but how they deliver it to you.

Some apps are engineered to giving you kind of make it so easy for you to move from one content, piece of content to the next.

So make it stopping harder because, you know, the next one is already ready on the screen.

I just look at the next one, right?

But most of these social media platforms aren't purely interested in learning about you for the sake of serving you better content... they also get something valuable by learning about how you interact with online content...your personal data.

How much they, of their data is being collected that could be really shocking for anyone who are not working in the industry to really shock and discover that.

So it's always kind of a tradeoff to see how much how much you're giving, you're giving up versus how much you're getting.

Your personal data is not only good for improving social media algorithms, but it's super valuable to online marketers and advertisers.

Take the ads you see online for example.

Before a webpage loads, there is a quiet and incredibly high-speed auction that takes place between companies called data brokers that buy and sell your personal data and advertisers that bid on showing you an ad.

The winner of the auction gets to show you an ad.

By the time you open the website, the ad that you see on the website went through the whole process that it went to the market and there was a bidding process and they decided who is going to show you the best ad for that specific target audience.

The more you stay, the better it is going to be for them.

So, do we have a false sense of privacy online?

I believe there's little to none security for me, 'cause at this point the moment I bought a phone, I signed away all my online security.

So I feel like I'm kinda secure, but when I start getting things like I talked about yesterday at lunch, and now I'm getting ads for it, that's really creepy.

There has been a few times where I go on like a website, and I see a product or an ad, advertised to me from something that I, uh, talk about or even think about which is, obviously no relation, but it's just kinda weird.

Since you already know that's what it's doing, if you are aware of it, you don't really...care.