{"id":457803,"date":"2026-03-04T22:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/457803\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T22:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:17:07","slug":"want-to-reclaim-your-attention-establish-a-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/457803\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to Reclaim Your Attention? Establish a Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February, Meta\u2014the parent company of Facebook and Instagram\u2014unveiled \u201cDear Algo<\/a>,\u201d an AI<\/a>-based feature that lets users \u201ctalk\u201d to the algorithm that decides what appears in our personalized online worlds.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest of several high-profile efforts to \u201chumanize\u201d the algorithms that govern so much of our lives these days. With features like these, tech giants are responding to a widespread feeling: that we\u2019ve lost our sense of agency online. Market forces and opaque formulas decide what we notice, what we miss, and what we carry around in our thoughts and feelings throughout our days. These algorithms determine our news and information diets, our shopping and music preferences, dating<\/a> matches, and even the emotional tone and tenor of our political discourse.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good news that tech companies are beginning to recognize that there\u2019s a problem. Still, is it really possible to \u201chumanize\u201d an algorithm?<\/p>\n

The issue isn\u2019t just what social media<\/a> platforms are (or aren’t) showing us. The deeper question is what these systems do to our attention<\/a>\u2014and therefore to our lives.<\/p>\n

The Real Purpose Algorithms Serve<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to think of algorithms as impossibly complex, even mysterious. Yet, in essence, they\u2019re simple decision rules. They\u2019re sets of instructions that sort and rank what you see next based on what the system predicts will keep you watching, clicking, liking, or sharing.<\/p>\n

And they serve a purpose. These \u201cdecision rules\u201d filter information to offer the convenience of fewer choices, faster results, and less effort. The trouble is that we often relate to these systems as if they\u2019re objective and responsible. Sometimes we implicitly think they\u2019re looking out for our best interests. In reality, they\u2019re designed to serve financial incentives, and they\u2019re inherently incapable of anything approaching real human care.<\/p>\n

The true cost of algorithms isn\u2019t just to our agency in making online decisions. They exact a serious toll on our experience of belonging in a community and a society. That\u2019s because algorithms monopolize the basic currency of human connection: our attention. <\/p>\n

Attention is the exercise of our free will<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s where we allocate our mind, our time, our effort, our care. Yes, algorithms can amplify bias<\/a>, reward outrage, and distort what feels true or common. Yet the bigger challenge, I’d argue, is simpler and more intimate: Many systems are built to keep attention \u201calways on,\u201d using novelty loops, autoplay, infinite scroll, and constant notifications.<\/p>\n

You probably know the feeling. You open an app to check something quickly, maybe just to see a new notification. Within minutes, you\u2019ve absorbed a fear<\/a>-inducing headline, a perfect family photo, a political attack, a dreamy vacation ad\u2014all designed to provoke feelings that keep you scrolling. Half an hour disappears. Time feels like a blur. You feel overstimulated but somehow undernourished\u2014less interested in real life.<\/p>\n

Algorithms don\u2019t just personalize news and entertainment. They often divide our realities. Two people can live in the same neighbourhood, walk the same streets\u2014and still feel as if they\u2019re living in different countries, because they\u2019ve been fed different values, different villains, different ideas about the common fact base and the common good. Community becomes a form of content\u2014something we consume rather than something we build and maintain, or something to which we are accountable. Compare all of that to spending time in a real gathering: a neighbourhood walk, a choir rehearsal, a block party, a sweet dinner with friends.<\/p>\n

What we attend to becomes what we value. And what we attend to together becomes what we share\u2014our norms, our moral commitments, our sense of \u201cus.\u201d Belonging<\/a> requires shared attention over time, as well as real encounters that build trust, mutual responsibility, and care.<\/p>\n

How Rituals Can Help You Lessen the Pull of Algorithms<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the opposite of an algorithm? In a word: a ritual.<\/p>\n

Ritual doesn\u2019t have to mean burning incense or wearing ancient uniforms. A ritual is something that brings us together in shared attention for a set period of time. It\u2019s something meaningful that we do together. The walk, the choir practice, the block party\u2014those can all be rituals. <\/p>\n

Attention Essential Reads<\/p>\n

Think of a ritual as a structure for sharing our attention. The Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes<\/a> rituals as techniques that help us \u201cfeel at home in the world.\u201d He explains that they make time feel less like a blur and more like \u201ca place we can actually live inside.\u201d <\/p>\n

Algorithms, in contrast, lack \u201cstopping cues<\/a>.\u201d One short video transitions into the next, and our attention slides forward, often without making a conscious decision to be there.<\/p>\n

Algorithms are on-demand, individualized, frictionless, and open-ended. Rituals are scheduled, shared, embodied, repetitive. Algorithms individualize attention: each person is fed a different, computer-generated world. Rituals socialize attention. We turn toward the same thing, at the same time, in the same place\u2014so that a meaningful sense of \u201cus\u201d can emerge.<\/p>\n

That’s why I believe that the antidote to the algorithm problem isn\u2019t to smash our iPads or delete our Instagram accounts. It\u2019s to adopt rituals that defend shared attention.<\/p>\n

You might start small: taking part in a book club, cooking with a loved one, signing up for a monthly volunteer shift. You can make a tech boundary<\/a> a ritual, too\u2014for example, one hour each evening when the whole family\u2019s phones go into a designated drawer.<\/p>\n

New innovations from tech companies, like the one Meta recently rolled out, could potentially ease the attention crisis and make our social media feeds more sane and sensible. That\u2019s certainly welcome. Yet these kinds of tweaks can\u2019t rebuild our common fact base or restore the experience of being held in community. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s up to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In February, Meta\u2014the parent company of Facebook and Instagram\u2014unveiled \u201cDear Algo,\u201d an AI-based feature that lets users \u201ctalk\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-457803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}