Even though a fixation with how much “engagement” our posts receives on digital platforms is fairly commonplace, it’s far from benign. An appetite for likes, views, clicks, and subs is voracious, and satiated only when our devices are buzzing with notifications telling us just how well our posts are performing. This feedback-loop quickly causes our hunger for engagement to grow. And without much consideration, we silence our rumbling stomachs by making the most engaging content we can.

This process would be easy to ignore if making content to garner more engagement didn’t work. But it does – shocking well. If you follow the guidelines of the algorithm, lace your content with enough dopaminergic queues, alter your thumbnail, cover shocking topics, or follow “growth hacks”, your numbers will go up, you will (eventually) get more views and your engagement metrics will see a meaningful bump.

But everything comes at a cost, even engagement. In doing whatever it takes to “make number go up” we rob ourselves of the opportunity to make things that feel authentic to our personal sense of wander and creativity. We feed an algorithm that exists to monetize addiction and distraction. And we abandon our concern for the digital-wellbeing of ourselves and those who might consume our content.

For far too long we’ve allowed the desire to garner engagement to be a noble cause, but in reality, it’s a crusade that burns down everything in its path to achieve a flimsy reward propped up as some sort of “holy land.” Each time we create digital media with the goal of driving as much engagement as we can, we should be aware of the costs both to ourselves and to others.

Regardless of the pseudo-virtuistic-meritocratic package we choose to conceal our content, if we post only to juice the numbers, we are equally at fault for the brain-rot of the modern mind as the corporations who profit from the platforms themselves.