I opened my news app this morning and felt strangely affirmed.
Every headline mirrored my values. Every video tugged on a feeling I already had. Every comment underneath felt familiar, like a nod from someone in the same room.
For a second, it felt good. Reassuring. 
But then i realize nothing on my feed surprised me. Not one story challenged the way I see the world. Not one perspective asked more of me than to scroll and agree.
Out of curiosity, I switched to incognito mode.
Within minutes, I was staring at a completely different internet.
Stories I never see.
Narratives I never hear.
Issues that don’t exist in my curated corner of reality.
It was like walking into someone else’s house and realizing they’ve been living with a fire I never smelled.
And I began to wonder, how many of us are living in houses just like that, built by algorithms, isolated by design?
Before algorithmic feeds, we had newspapers.
They weren’t perfect, but they were built with a different intent to show us the world, not just our reflection.
One page brought international conflict. Another, local corruption. Then a labor strike, a book review, an obituary, and maybe even a crossword.
You didn’t have to agree with it all but you couldn’t avoid it.
That tension, the daily encounter with the unfamiliar, helped anchor a shared reality.
It gave us something to talk about over breakfast, on sidewalks, in waiting rooms.
Not because we all saw the same thing, but because we were at least reading from the same book.
That’s no longer true.
What you see now depends on who you follow, what you click, where you linger.
Your feed learns you and then begins to narrow you. You’re shown more of what you like, more of what you fear, more of what keeps you scrolling.
Eventually, that becomes your world.
And the real danger is not that it’s false. It’s that it feels complete.
In relationships, this is starting to show.
Two people sitting on the same couch, living in completely different realities.
You try to talk about something you thought “everyone” saw but they didn’t. You reference an issue that feels urgent and they’re unmoved. You ask, “How can you not know this?” and they ask you the same.
The conversation breaks. Not because of disagreement, but because of disconnection.
What’s eroding isn’t just trust in facts, it’s the foundation of empathy.
Because empathy begins with context. And when we don’t share context, even love feels harder to sustain.
It’s difficult to support someone when their version of the world doesn’t match yours. It’s hard to hold space for grief when you’ve been shown something else entirely.
Not knowing what others are exposed to fractures the ways we care for one another. And it makes isolation feel like the only option when understanding fails.
There is no easy fix for this.
But we can start by refusing to outsource our curiosity.
We can treat our feeds like fast food, easy, engineered, and not meant to nourish.
And we can reach, deliberately, for what doesn’t show up naturally. That means following people who write outside our perspective.
It means reading things that don’t flatter us. It means sitting with the discomfort of difference, not to convert, but to comprehend.
You don’t have to go back to the newspaper. But you do have to go back to looking around.
Otherwise, the only people you’ll be able to talk to are the ones already talking to themselves.
Your world is being shaped without your permission. Awareness is the first resistance. Curiosity is the second.
Go incognito more often — not just in your browser, but in your mind. Step into someone else’s world. Let it challenge yours.
That’s not betrayal.
That’s how connection begins.
