Beware of Dancing Cats: Resisting the Algorithmic Harvest
This excerpt is part six of our summer series, How Shall We Live in the Digital Age?—a collection of short pieces and excerpts from the June 2025 Ex Fonte, exploring how Christians can and should navigate the ever-changing digital landscape.
Bradley Howell
Bradley HowellMeet Eric, a father in his mid-40s who considers himself relatively tech-savvy. He’s got a flexible work-from-home job, but managing a team of remote workers means his days are swallowed by meetings, leaving little time for his own tasks. One evening, intending to take a quick break on a favorite social media app, Eric scrolls to a video of a dog trying to catch its own floppy ear. He laughs out loud, watches it a couple more times, and then notices the “related videos” section. One clip leads to another—dancing cats, DIY home improvement hacks, late-night talk show bits. An hour later, his wife walks into his home office as he’s cracking up at a feline “narrating” day 1,113 of its captivity and plotting to overthrow its captors by lunging from the top of the stairs.
With eyebrows raised, she asks, “Weren’t you supposed to be working on a presentation for tomorrow?” Eric glances at the clock and sees how much time has slipped away. Still chuckling, he says, “Well, you know, a quick break, one funny video, then another . . . and boom, the night’s gone.” Social media worked its magic again, turning a short breather into a lost hour.
Many of us have been there. Social media is exploitative, built to grab and hold our attention in specific ways. These apps use endless scroll features— no natural stopping points to make you realize how long you’ve been swiping. You slip into a different timeline, one that runs alongside everyday life but doesn’t sync with it.
In addition, algorithms tailor a feed of engaging visuals based on your past swipes and clicks—your habits are being tracked. These videos and images hook you because they’re curated to your interests, making it tough to look away.
Finally, the “social” in social media plays on the human need for connection. It bridges people but then exploits that human desire for its own gain. Early Facebook research showed people hit “like” more to affirm relationships than to praise the content itself. Other studies found getting “likes” on posts feels rewarding, like being handed your favorite ice cream. Notifications about “likes,” comments, or new posts create a sense of urgency. It even has a name: FOMO, the “fear of missing out.” FOMO is a big reason teens lose sleep; they feel compelled to stay digitally connected no matter the hour. Ever experience that restless leg-tingle when your phone is missing? Even our bodies can be trained to nudge us back online.
If that sounds conspiratorial, consider this: How much have you paid for social media platforms? Probably nothing. Yet, thousands of these platforms exist, employing countless programmers, engineers, and staff. Silicon Valley is a real place with massive buildings, cafeterias, and buses shuttling workers around the Bay Area. I commuted through there for a decade, watching Facebook buy its first building, then more land, then take over a city block. It wrecked my traffic patterns in its first three years. I had been on Facebook for half a decade by then and never paid a cent. Have you?
Social media apps aren’t in the business of making apps—they’re in the business of gathering crowds and harvesting information. Access to those crowds and their data is what pays for their in-house baristas, buildings, and buses. These platforms are digital gardens, designed to capture the attentiveness of as many people as possible to cultivate a harvest of sellable information—about you. If it’s free, the crowd is the product. You are the product.
Paul told the early Christians not to conform to the world’s patterns (Romans 12:2a). His world was Roman—roads, cities, homes, everything pointed to Rome as the center. In Galatians 5, he urges a different path, one that avoids the world’s pitfalls—broken relationships chief among them. Social media often mirrors that outcome: fragmented connections. But Paul contrasts this with a life aligned with the Spirit, marked by love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)—it is the picture of a human thriving in community.
Our sense of self and even our humanness is defined by what we nurture, or what we allow to nurture us. What feeds us—algorithms or something deeper? We can’t pretend the digital world doesn’t exist any more than early Christians could ignore the depraved influences of Rome. Whether or not we use social media, it shapes our lives. Navigating it thoughtfully takes effort.