Privacy. Does it really exist anymore, or has it become just another myth. I once mentioned how devastated and empty I felt when my grandpa passed away in a private chat, and just a few hours later my Instagram feed was filled with all the grieving posts. That’s when it really hit me that privacy isn’t as private as I thought. Technology listens, tracks and remembers beyond any person ever could. Every online search, every link I click, every message I send, even the calls I think are personal end up somewhere stored and analyzed, ready to be used to shape what I see next. For a while I didn’t pay much heed to it, shrugging it off as a coincidence, but the more it happened, the more obvious it became. What’s more eerie is how normal it felt, as if being monitored is part of my daily life.

Sometimes I think to myself if we unknowingly chose comfort over our privacy with time. Personalized feeds that know and show us exactly what we are thinking of, and yet they come at a price we rarely stop to think about. The more we interact online, the more we get entangled into the algorithms and systems that learn our habits faster than any friend or family member ever could. It’s not just about the algorithm anymore, it’s about the slow and subtle shaping of our thoughts, interests and even our beliefs. Over time these tiny influences can completely change how we see the world, what we value, and how we make decisions without us even realizing it. What feels like my own choice might actually be something technology has been steering me toward all along.

It’s almost dystopian to think that my phone might know me better than I know myself. When everything I like gets filtered and carefully curated for me, am I truly discovering new things, or am I just following paths already laid down for me? Are we all in reality living ‘The Truman Show’ in our own ways? The real question isn’t whether we are being watched, it’s how much of ourselves we are giving away piece by piece, all gone unnoticed. This affects more than just our online experience, it shapes who we are and what we believe. Privacy isn’t a choice, it’s a right from which we have been stripped off of without even realizing it, and yet unknowingly we are still making that choice every single day.