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Every swipe feels like choice. Yet, with every swipe, the chains grow tighter, though we cannot see them.
Our devices whisper freedom, but what they offer is dependence— dopamine drip disguised as agency. I have lived this contradiction: hours lost to an endless scroll that promised relief, only to leave me hollow.
These chains are not forged of iron, but of information. Algorithms study us, predict us, and then present a reality tailored not to what we seek, but to what keeps us seeking. We think we are choosing, yet our choices are chosen for us. Your distraction is their currency.
But chains can only enslave when we mistake them for freedom. The first solution is deceptively simple: to pause. A moment of silence disrupts the machine’s rhythm. Digital hygiene—screen-time limits, intentional scrolling, scrolling, discipline to let a notification wait—becomes an act of rebellion.
Yet the problem is larger than the individual. Just as literacy once shattered the monopoly of priests over scripture, digital literacy can loosen the monopoly of corporations over attention. The point is not to beg for change , but to cultivate resilience: cultivating awareness, teaching critical engagement, designing with conscience are not luxuries—they are necessities of survival in this digital age.
And then, the deeper question: if we only see what we are shown, are we free? The antidote is not only personal discipline, but philosophical defiance. To refuse the feed as reality. To seek voices beyond echo chambers. To remember that freedom begins not in escape, but in refusal.
We swipe to escape our chains, yet our swipes forge new ones. The first act of freedom is to see the chains.
The next step is to choose which chain to break—and to break it together.
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Sources and References:
● Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975) – on invisible systems of control and surveillance.
● Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981) – on how representations can replace reality.
● Nicholas Carr, The Shallows (2010) – on how the internet rewires human attention.
