Hijacked: How Algorithms Steal Attention, Shape Reality, and Decide What You Want (The Human Edge)

HIJACKED

Your feed is not the world. It is a selection—ranked, personalized, and optimized before you ever decide what to notice.

Recommendation systems now influence what captures your attention, which ideas feel familiar, what appears credible, and even what you begin to want. But the answer is not panic, total disconnection, or relying on willpower alone.

Hijacked reveals the commercial incentives, emotional triggers, feedback loops, and synthetic persuasion techniques that shape modern digital life. With a psychologically grounded and non-alarmist approach, Olan Deems helps readers understand how algorithms influence attention, belief, identity, and preference—while showing how deliberate human choice can be restored.

YOU WILL LEARN HOW TO:

• See what ranking systems reveal—and what they omit
• Understand who benefits from capturing your attention
• Recognize emotional and identity feedback loops
• Distinguish ethical persuasion from manipulation
• Audit and curate your information environment
• Add useful friction to automatic digital habits
• Build stronger personal, family, and team attention safeguards

At the heart of the book is the proprietary RECLAIM Protocol: Recognize incentives, Examine emotional triggers, Curate inputs, Limit automaticity, Add friction, Invest in depth, and Monitor agency.

Written for general readers, parents, educators, professionals, leaders, marketers, creators, and students, Hijacked offers a practical path toward greater focus, clearer judgment, and a healthier relationship with technology.

Your attention shapes your reality. Learn to protect it—and choose deliberately.