Think about the online media you consume in your day-to-day life: Netflix greets you with curated rows of shows labeled “Top Picks for You” and “Because You Watched,” Spotify offers you dozens of custom playlists, TikTok extends endlessly and Instagram floods your feed with a continuous stream of Reels. Together, these platforms create an illusion of boundless choice — personalization packaged as freedom.
But those choices aren’t actually yours. An expansive body of research shows that recommendation algorithms don’t simply offer options. They nudge, narrow and funnel them in a way that shapes, and sometimes limits, our autonomy.
For instance, a 2024 qualitative study from Psychological Studies by Laura Romero Meza and Giulio D’Urso conducted 12 interviews with Netflix users, revealing a paradox: While people trusted recommendation lists, they also reported prolonged searches, higher effort to find content, moderate satisfaction and limited content diversity. One participant even described frustration stemming from lack of appealing suggestions despite abundant recommendations.
At the same time, having so many options to choose from can be overwhelming. Psychological research shows that “choice overload” plays a part in narrowing our perspectives. When decision paralysis hits, people immediately revert back to the comfort of the familiar, preventing them from actually expanding their perspective. Interface designs add to the issue. Even layout shifts meant to personalize experience — like repositioning rows — can confuse users trying to find familiar shows, increasing cognitive strain.
Then, there’s autoplay, which queues the next media selection almost instantly. A 2024 University of Chicago study found that disabling autoplay shaved 21 minutes off daily watch time and made sessions 17 minutes shorter on average. This is a prime example of how seemingly benign features — also called dark or deceptive patterns — steer us away from our natural media consumption.
While autoplay can have its benefits, such as potentially discovering content that whets your appetite, the pros are inevitably outweighed by the cons. Just like having too many options, it drives us towards specific viewpoints, albeit for a different reason. Autoplay’s algorithm wants to keep you engaged, meaning that it will queue up content similar to what you’ve previously consumed. This naturally leads the homogenization of online experiences.
Beyond entertainment, personalization can trap us in filter bubbles — a state of intellectual isolation caused by personalized searches and past clicks. Caught under these algorithm-driven silos, we feel an innate sense of comfort that prevents exploration.
So, is infinite choice online really freedom? Superficially, yes. The options exist. But algorithms curate the surface, influencing what we notice and ultimately choose. We trade the burden and gravitas of making decisions for the comfort of guided selection.
At the end of the day, it’s our decision to “doomscroll” through Instagram or watch YouTube on autoplay. It’s our choice — if we dare call it that — to be apathetic and ignorant to the “choices” made for us. I choose to keep choice. Do you?
