Should human enshittification worry us?

First published on Substack November 2026

By Mervin Straughan

The latest word to hit my radar is enshittification. Wow! If ever a word conjured up decline, that’s the one. The term, coined by technology writer Cory Doctorow, describes the way online platforms often decline over time.

But can it also be used to describe a human downward spiral?

Are we surrendering what we once cherished?

It got me thinking. From what I see, there’s an unholy trinity taking hold that makes my conclusion a resounding ‘yes.’

Doctorow was explaining how online platforms start with the best intentions of serving their users. That is, until they turn their attention to prioritising advertising, business users, and shareholder returns. The service focuses on extracting maximum value and goes into sharp decline for normal users like you and me.

It seems humans are also prone to this trajectory. Just as online platforms no longer serve us in the way they promised, we flirt with choices and habits that divert us from being who we intended to become.

I see three examples where human enshittification is under way:

1. Our purpose is eroded.
2. We allow technology to distort our view of reality.
3. We sleepwalk into handing over our cognitive abilities.

The erosion of purpose

I recall talking to a senior lawyer at a business event in 2005. They were lamenting the exodus of solicitors who had joined the profession to champion the rights of others. These aspirational legal eagles had become snarled in a machine of productivity and targets and were leaving bewildered and burned out.

We often hear about the person who enters politics to make a difference only to evolve into a career politician, the teacher set on nurturing minds but ending up working to meet league tables; the manager known for supporting their people before becoming preoccupied with targets.

I don’t imagine that coaches and counsellors such as me are exempt from wanting to help before becoming caught up in income, status, and visibility (and writing on Substack).

To be fair, these people didn’t abandon their original purpose. It was crowded out by competing incentives.

The distortion of identity

As already suggested, social media can affect our identity by distorting the reality of other people’s lives. It encourages us to compare ourselves to them and respond with our own carefully-curated moments.

We measure ourselves and create an ideal self at odds with our true self. We conclude from reading other people’s posts that we are falling short and have failed to establish the lifestyle we believe they are enjoying.

It’s important for us to know that other people are facing their own challenges and competing pressures.

The outsourcing of thought

The great jobs cull is cited as AI’s major threat. I fear it’s something worse; the loss of cognitive skills, connection, and the failure to meet other basic psychological needs.

AI has its role in automating tasks, but not at the expense of our analytical reasoning, critical evaluation, creativity, and communication. If we outsource these, then Doctorow’s term applies lock, stock, and megabyte. This is true enshittification.

If that term doesn’t resonate, how about decline, degrade, diminish, erode, weaken, wither? These are often used to describe the last days of empires. They might apply to the last days of the empires of our cognitive functioning.

I’m not debating the good and the bad of AI but asking if it’s wise to allow convenience to erode our own agency.

The Google Effect

A 2011 study by Sparrow, Liu and Wegner found we’re less likely to store and recall information if we can access it later. They called this the Google Effect. It showed that we tend to remember where to find information but not necessarily the information itself. I’m aware of the need to rein in my TV viewing habit of looking up actors’ biographies to find out other dramas in which they’ve appeared. I wonder how much of that information I can safely recall.

In previous articles, I’ve referenced Deci and Ryan’s (1985) Self-Determination Theory. They suggest we flourish when three psychological needs are met, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In simple terms, having the freedom to make choices, confidence in our abilities to handle challenges, and feeling a sense of belonging and connection.

Does our obsession with AI mean we’re surrendering our autonomy, curbing our capabilities, and losing human connection because we want convenience?

Embracing technology is logical. The humble pen and paper were revolutionary at a point in history, allowing us to note down information instead of relying on memory. The calculator sped up our ability to work out mathematical problems, and the arrival of the internet and search engines provided us with concepts, facts, figures, and perspectives at lightning speed.

But when do we say enough is enough and our brains come first?

If we lose even basic abilities, then, perhaps, the balance of power has tipped too far.

Losing our purpose is problematic. Doubting our identity is troublesome. Surrendering our ability to think might be the worst of all.

November 2026