Are Our Devices Getting Inside Our Heads?
September 1, 2026
“When convenience feels like surveillance.”
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Have you ever had your wife show you a nice shirt on her phone that she thought you might want to buy—and the next thing you know, that same shirt, or something remarkably similar, pops up on your Facebook feed? Well, it happened to me today.
My first reaction was the one most of us probably have: Are these things listening to us? There is no evidence that we should assume Facebook heard that particular conversation, and targeted advertising can result from browsing activity, shared networks, previous searches and other data signals. But psychologically, that may not be the most interesting part. What struck me was how quickly I simply accepted it. Something that would have seemed almost Orwellian 20 years ago has become little more than another moment in an ordinary day.
Researchers have been studying this uneasy bargain between convenience and privacy for years. A 2021 study published in Computers in Human Behavior examining voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant found that people weigh perceived privacy risks against the benefits these devices provide, with trust playing an important role in whether they accept the technology. Personalized advertising creates a similar psychological tug-of-war. Research published in the International Journal of Information Management found that privacy concerns can contribute to what psychologists call reactance—our tendency to resist when we feel that our freedom or control is being threatened. And research on Facebook advertising has found that perceived intrusiveness can increase that reactance and encourage people to mentally or behaviorally avoid advertising. In other words, even when technology is making our lives easier, part of our brain may still be asking, How much do they know about me?
For business, that creates an interesting dilemma. AI allows companies to understand customers and personalize their marketing with extraordinary precision, but there may be a point where relevance begins to feel like surveillance. Research by MIT professor Catherine Tucker found that personalized advertising became considerably more effective when users were given greater perceived control over their personal information—suggesting that trust and control matter almost as much as targeting itself. Perhaps the larger psychological question, however, is what happens when we stop noticing any of this. We may simply shrug, scroll past the shirt and move along with our day. That doesn’t necessarily mean our mental health is being harmed; current research doesn’t justify making that broad claim. But it does suggest something worth considering: when being watched—or at least feeling watched—becomes normal, our expectations of privacy, trust and even our relationship with businesses may quietly change along with it
The Takeaway: Technology knowing what we might want can be incredibly convenient. But when convenience starts to feel like surveillance, trust can quickly become part of the equation. For businesses, the lesson may be simple: just because technology allows us to know more about our customers doesn’t necessarily mean we should use everything we know. Sometimes a little distance—and a little privacy—is still good business.
