Are users making choices… or are systems nudging behavior at scale?

There’s a moment many of us know, but rarely pause to think about.

You pick up your phone to check one thing. A message. The time. Something small. And then, without planning to, you find yourself still there… scrolling, watching, moving from one thing to another. At some point you stop, almost surprised, and ask yourself, “How did I even get here?”

That question has been sitting a little heavier lately, especially with a recent case that made global headlines. A young woman sued companies like Meta Platforms and Google, saying their platforms contributed to addictive use that affected her mental health.

And for a second… I simply smiled. Because Ugandans? We love our peace 😄

We are not really in the vibes of taking people to court like that. We will complain, we will discuss, we will even forward the story to five WhatsApp groups… but to stand up and say “I am suing you for making me addicted”? Ehh. That one feels like another country’s storyline.

But anyway… back to today’s story.

Because whether or not we ever step into a courtroom, the experience itself is not foreign. That feeling of being pulled in, of staying longer than planned, of returning again and again even when you didn’t intend to — that part? That part is very familiar.

It would be easy to take this and point fingers. To say the problem is “the apps” or to turn inward and say it’s simply a lack of discipline. But the truth sits somewhere in between. Because yes, we are making choices — but we are making them inside systems that are designed to keep us engaged. The scroll doesn’t end, the next video plays automatically, and the content seems to get better the longer you stay. Nothing is forcing you to remain there, but everything is making it easier to continue.

And that’s where we need to come back to ourselves.

Not in panic. Not in blame. But in awareness.

Because before policies and regulations, there are small decisions that still belong to us — especially in our homes. The moment we introduce a child to a device often feels harmless, even helpful. But we are not just giving them a gadget. We are opening a door into a space that does not naturally pause. And once that door is open, it becomes difficult to close it in the same way.

So if we introduce it, we must walk alongside it. That means conversations — real ones. Asking what they are watching, how it makes them feel, what they are noticing. Not as a lecture, but as a relationship. Because awareness is not something we install. It is something we build.

And then there is us.

Because as much as we guide children, they are watching how we live. They see how often we reach for our phones, how present we are, how easily we drift away mid-conversation. In those moments, we are showing them what normal looks like.

The truth is, the digital world will not tell us when to stop. So we have to create those stopping points ourselves. Small boundaries. Moments of presence. Not as punishment, but as protection.

Maybe we won’t completely escape these systems. But we can become more aware inside them. We can notice when we are being pulled, pause for a moment, and choose — even if that choice is harder than it looks.

So the next time you find yourself deep in a scroll you didn’t plan, don’t rush to judge yourself. Just ask:

“Am I choosing this… or is something choosing for me?”

And in that pause, even if it’s brief, something shifts.

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