I've met someone I like and my algorithm knows it.

Navigating a new relationship is scary enough without the aggressive relationship advice of social media.

It’s 11.52pm, I’m lying in bed propped up on 3 pillows in lieu of a head board waiting for sleep to come. I’ve just finished the New York Times Wordle before moving onto Strands. Usually, If I haven’t already passed out due to the strenuous brain activity required for Wordle, then Strands will do the job. But not tonight, I find the Spanagram with alarming speed then take on Connections before resorting to the monotony of Tiles, willing my eyelids to get heavy.

Sleep is so elusive I even complete the Letter Boxed; my final straw in the New York Times brain game roster. Once I’ve exhausted all the cerebral sports my phone has to offer, I’m left with no other option but to wait until the stroke of midnight, at which point the NYT games page will refresh and I will be gifted a whole new set of puzzles. That gives me 8 minutes to kill.

I could grab the book I optimistically placed on my bedside table, as I do every night, willing myself to become the kind of person I see in films. Someone who reads before she goes to sleep. Someone who wears matching silk pyjamas and slumbers off to the dulcet tone of her brain gently digesting carefully curated thoughts through the neurone friendly medium of words on paper. But I don’t pick up the paperback with all it’s nourishing promise. I never do. Instead I lie there in my dirty t-shirt and period stained cotton knickers with my phone firmly in my hand. I scroll through my apps until I find the delicacy I’m looking for: Instagram.

8 minutes to binge on GRWMs and baby pandas cosying up to their mothers. It hasn’t got the neurological benefits of carefully crafted chapters but it makes me laugh and in doing so, feeds my soul. Or it used to. Now the algorithm has decided that fashion and animal videos are no longer of interest to me. Despite them being the content I interact with the most. Despite them being the little scrap of instagram that makes me want to bury myself in my duvet with a satiated smile on my face. The internet isn’t letting me escape to these microcosms of gentleness because the meta-sphere knows I’ve met someone. It knows I’m navigating the perilous waters of early relationship.