It is mostly exhausting when you realise that you’ve been acting more like a character than a real person for the last few hours, watching the notifications pile up. Every social platform asks us the same simple question every single day: “What’s on your mind today?” But before you even realise it, that innocent prompt triggers a dopamine rush, pushing us to compete with others across the globe over who can be the loudest. This isn’t a design flaw or an oversight; it is exactly what these platforms were built to do.
How attention works
At their core, social media algorithms are designed to maximise engagement. They do not distinguish whether content is humble, arrogant or performative; their sole metric is keeping users scrolling. Tech platforms operate on what former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris terms the “attention economy.” Because revenue relies on user watch time, algorithms actively favour high-arousal emotions like vanity and outrage over quiet reflection.
This mechanism relies heavily on what psychologist BF Skinner identified as “intermittent variable rewards.” Much like a slot machine, social feeds deliver unpredictable hits of validation through likes and comments, spiking dopamine far more than predictable rewards and conditioning users to compulsively check for feedback.
A 2021 study published in Science Advances confirmed this dynamic, demonstrating how social media feedback loops systematically train users to amplify moral outrage over time. What sociologist Erving Goffman described as “impression management” – performing a curated self for an audience – becomes codified into daily behaviour. We begin posting not merely to state a truth, but to signal status to our peers.
You do not need to be inherently vain to act vain online; the feedback loop conditions the behaviour. This structural reality shifts how we understand moral responsibility. Traditionally, warnings against kibr (arrogance) and riya’ (showing off) targeted internal spiritual states. Today, those warnings also apply to digital systems engineered to exploit human weaknesses at scale.
Islamic ethical teachings consider kibr among the most serious heart ailments. The Messenger (sa) of Allah said: “No one will enter Paradise who has even a mustard-seed’s weight of arrogance in his heart and no one will enter Hell who has even a mustard-seed’s weight of faith in his heart.” (Sunan Ibn Majah, Vol.1, Book 1, Hadith 59)
It is not that enjoying beauty is evil, but that arrogance distorts one’s relationship with truth. In a narration by Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud (ra), the Prophet Muhammad (sa) stated that anyone with even a speck of arrogance in their heart would not enter Paradise. When asked if enjoying fine clothes or footwear constituted arrogance, the Prophet explained that Allah is beautiful and loves beauty, defining arrogance specifically as rejecting the truth and looking down on others (Riyad as-Salihin, Introduction, Hadith 611). Kibr is not about visual presentation; it is about self-exaltation and immunity to correction.
This distinction is crucial for modern creators. Producing high-quality work, photography or writing does not inherently constitute kibr. Traditional ethics do not demand mediocrity or self-effacement. Instead, they demand internal accountability: evaluating whether a creator has begun feeling superior to others, refusing criticism or manufacturing outrage purely to drive metrics.
Riya’ represents a parallel spiritual hazard. It occurs when the intention behind an act shifts toward a desire for public recognition. The Prophet (sa) expressed fear over “minor shirk”, defining it explicitly as riya’, which means performing good deeds to seek human praise. He warned that on Judgment Day, such individuals would be instructed to seek their reward from the audiences they performed for, as no reward remains with God. Hazrat Mahmud bin Labid (ra) narrated that the Messenger (sa) of Allah said: “The thing I fear most for you is the lesser shirk (polytheism), showing off (of good deeds).” (Bulugh-ul-Maram, Book 16, Hadith 1527)
Digital feeds operate on this exact dynamic. Sharing reflections or grief is not inherently riya’. It becomes riya’ when visibility becomes the primary motivation. The algorithm acts as a continuous observer, measuring and rewarding performances optimised for public consumption.
Living publicly without living for the public
None of this is an argument for just disappearing. The scholars who warned most strongly against riya’ were often teachers, preachers and public figures themselves, people whose work required them to be visible. The danger was never about being seen. The danger was needing to be seen, structuring the act itself around the audience’s gaze rather than genuine sincerity, until that gaze became the foundation everything rested on. A few honest questions can act like a spiritual check-up for anyone who creates, teaches or writes publicly, whether they have thousands of followers or just a small group of readers: Would this post still feel worth making if it got zero engagement? When your work gets criticised, does it feel like useful information or like a personal attack? These are not questions an algorithm can answer, because algorithms don’t have access to intentions, only outcomes. And it’s in that gap that a believer’s private accountability to God has to do the work that public metrics can’t.
Performative outrage, in particular, has a way of disguising itself as righteous concern, but structurally, it works a lot like riya‘: it’s the appearance of moral seriousness, put on for an audience and adjusted based on what will get praised, not necessarily on what’s true or important to say. Genuine concern doesn’t need a spectacle to be real. And a tradition that saw private charity, given so quietly that, as the Prophet (sa) said, the left hand wouldn’t know what the right hand gave as a spiritual pinnacle (Bulugh-ul-Maram, Book 4, Hadith 652), has very little patience for outrage that exists mainly to be witnessed. Algorithms reward loudness because loudness is something a machine can easily understand; sincerity isn’t understandable by the machine. That imbalance isn’t going away and these platforms aren’t suddenly going to start prioritising humility. What’s still available to a believer is the older practice the tradition has always encouraged: to build, to write, to teach, to create visibly, even beautifully, while keeping the real transaction private, between yourself and God, no matter who else happens to be watching.