The Invisible Editor
Every time you open TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, you aren't seeing "the world". You are seeing a tiny slice of it, curated by a mathematical formula (an Algorithm).
🎯 The Goal of the Algorithm
The algorithm has one job: To keep you on the app for as long as possible.
It doesn't care if the content is true, helpful, or kind. It only cares if it is engaging.
The Engagement Trap
(It makes you angry/scared)
(Comment, Share, or just Watch longer)
"Show them more of this!"
Result: high-arousal content can be amplified because it drives attention. Treat that as a claim to test, not a universal law.
Key Concepts
🫧 The Filter Bubble
When the algorithm only shows you opinions you already agree with. You start to think everyone thinks like you.
🕳️ The Rabbit Hole
When you click one video on a topic (e.g., "Earth is flat?") and the app keeps serving you more increasingly extreme videos.
Protecting Attention and Wellbeing
🛡️ Cultural integrity and digital care
Kaitiakitanga is a relational responsibility grounded in whakapapa, people, and place; this lesson does not redefine it as a slogan for individual screen habits. Ākonga can still examine the responsibility platforms and users carry for the information spaces they shape.
If a feed repeatedly serves hate, fear, or misinformation, users can protect their attention and seek support. The burden is not only individual: platform design, moderation, and ownership also matter.
- Curate: Mute or unfollow accounts that repeatedly cause harm.
- Diversify: Deliberately follow people who disagree with you (respectfully).
- Disconnect: Put the phone down to reconnect with the physical world (Taiao).
Mahi: Audit Your Feed
Compare two teacher-provided, de-identified search-result sets or two school-approved logged-out searches. Personal accounts, feeds, and phones are optional and never required. Record the first five results from each set.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will explain that a feed is curated rather than neutral, compare two result sets for patterns of amplification and absence, and adapt a campaign strategy to platform power.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ I can explain an engagement loop using evidence from the lesson model.
- ✅ I can compare two result sets and name an amplified voice, a missing voice, and a possible design cause.
- ✅ I can add one platform-risk and one counter-strategy to my campaign notes.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide printed result sets with five rows already numbered. Extension learners change one variable and explain why that makes their comparison stronger or weaker.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach algorithm, curate, amplify, suppress, moderation, filter bubble, and evidence. Use arrows and annotated screenshots before prose.
Inclusion: Personal devices and accounts are never required. Avoid searches likely to surface graphic or hateful material; pre-screen all examples and provide an offline route.
Mātauranga Māori and tikanga boundary: Do not redefine kaitiakitanga as individual digital self-care. If local mātauranga informs discussion of collective responsibility, the source and authority remain named.
Prior knowledge: Best used after foundational social studies and civics concepts. Benefits from prior exposure to media literacy.
Curriculum alignment
This lesson supplies the platform-power analysis used in the campaign assessment and supports responsible persuasive production. See the curriculum companion for the two exact audited Phase 4 statements anchoring the unit.