As part of your New Year preparations, it’s worth taking a moment to reassess your key elements of focus, and which aspects of digital marketing will have the biggest impact on your results in 2026.
But with so much changing so constantly, it can be hard to know what you should be focused on, and what skills you’ll need to maximize your opportunities. With this in mind, we’ve put together an overview of three key elements of focus.
Those key elements are:
These are the three elements that are going to sway the social media and digital marketing landscape the most in 2026, and if you can get them right, you’ll be best placed to get the most out of your efforts.
The first post in the series looked at AI, and whether you need to have AI within your digital marketing toolkit.
This second post looks at algorithms, and how changes in approach to algorithmic amplification could spark major strategic shifts.
Algorithmic Polarization
Here’s the truth of it: Algorithms amplify people who are willing to make divisive statements, who are willing to say whatever they think should be said, regardless of who might be offended by such.
On one hand, taking a stand is to be applauded, as a means to get to the core of an issue, and address underlying truths. But on the other, this means that algorithms also, inadvertently in most cases, turn people into a-holes, by helping to amplify ill-informed, anger-inspiring takes, often with little grounding in facts or reality.
The reason the media is so angry, the reason society feels so divided, can largely be traced back to the various online algorithms that define our media experience.
This is reflected in all the research and all the reports that analyze social media amplification:
- In 2016, a study found that “high arousal emotions,” such as joy and fear, generally drive the biggest social media response, particularly in terms of viral sharing.
- Another study published in 2016 found that anger, fear and joy drive the most engagement on social media, though of the three, anger has the most viral potential.
- Back in 2012, a study published by Wharton Business School found that content that evokes anger is likely to be shared more, with the amount of anger inspired by a post proportionately driving the virality of that comment.
The data shows that, based on measured human response, if you want to maximize reach and response, you should look to inspire anger in your audience, or in some group, which will then “trigger” these people enough to comment on your updates and share your takes, thus indicating to the algorithm that this is something that more people might want to take a look at.
Anger and fear are the key drivers, along with joy, though the latter is likely more difficult to create on a consistent basis. And as social media has become a bigger part of our day-to-day existence, and people have come to rely on social platform engagement as a means of measuring their relevance and self-worth, the dopamine rush of notifications that they get from posting such has pushed more and more people to become more and more aggressive in their takes.
You can see the indicators of this in the trend data stemming from the implementation of engagement-based algorithms, which started on Facebook back in 2013. As algorithmic sorting became more refined, and more understood, terms like “woke” began to gain traction, references to “fake news” and the “mainstream media,” and even anger-inducing conspiracy theories, like “flat earth” gained traction due to the engagement that they drive in social apps.
Some of this, of course, may be correlation, but the causation argument also can’t be ruled out, and I would argue that algorithms have played a significant role in the division we’re now seeing in modern society, and have empowered the new wave of self-righteous media personalities who’ve gained huge traction by saying whatever they like, under the guise of “free speech” or “just asking questions,” whether the evidence supports their view or not.
In essence, the incentives of algorithm-defined media, be it in News Feed display or Google Search ranking, have pushed creators and publishers towards taking more divisive, angst-inducing stances. On everything. Again, winning in the modern media landscape means “triggering” large enough groups of people that you’ll get attention, and that often means re-angling, or straight ignoring established facts, in order to keep hammering home your preferred points.
So, what does this mean for 2026?
Well, in 2026, people are now more aware of this, and are seeking more ways to control their feeds, and the content that’s shown to them by their algorithmic leanings. Platforms are trying out new controls that will enable people to have more of a say over what they’re shown in-stream, while AI-based systems are also getting better at understanding personal relevance, down to specific topics, and even communication styles, so that these systems can show people more of what they prefer, and ideally, less of what increases their blood pressure.
These new approaches won’t stop the anger completely, as the platforms themselves benefit the most from keeping people commenting, and thus, by keeping people angry, even if in more subtle ways. But the next generation of consumers is far more aware of such manipulation, and are better at tuning out the b.s., in favor of more trusted, less polarizing, creators.
In all honesty, I don’t expect that many people are going to use the new algorithm control options being offered by Instagram, YouTube, X and Threads, because the stats show that even when such controls are available, most people simply don’t bother to update anything.
Most users just want to log on and let the system show them the most relevant posts each time. TikTok has worsened this, with its all-powerful “For You” feed not even requiring any explicit indicators from you, it simply infers interest based on the content that you watch, and/or skip.
Yet, even so, the fact that general awareness of such is rising is, overall, a positive.
Regulators are also exploring new ways to pressure platforms to enable such control (following the lead of China), and I think that this year, we’re going to see more regulatory groups wise up to the fact that it’s algorithms that cause the most damage to society, not social platforms in themselves, nor access to such among young users.
That could help to drive the push for algorithm opt-outs, as we’re already seeing in Europe. If people can opt out of algorithmic sorting, that would go a long way towards alleviating this manipulated pressure, and while the platforms, again, won’t offer such willingly, because they can keep people using their apps for longer through the use of engagement-driving systems, I do feel that the general public is now aware enough of such that they can manage their social media feeds without algorithmic sorting.
Because the original justification for such no longer holds, no matter how you look at it.
Back in 2013, Facebook’s original explainer on the need for a feed algorithm outlined that:
“Every time someone visits News Feed there are, on average 1,500, potential stories from friends, people they follow and Pages for them to see, and most people don’t have enough time to see them all. These stories include everything from wedding photos posted by a best friend, to an acquaintance checking in to a restaurant. With so many stories, there is a good chance people would miss something they wanted to see if we displayed a continuous, unranked stream of information.”
Essentially, because people were following so many other people and Pages in the app, Facebook had to introduce a ranking system to ensure that people don’t miss out on the most relevant stories.
Which makes sense, however, more recently, Meta has actually been adding in more content from Pages that you don’t follow (mostly in the form of Reels) in order to keep driving engagement.
That would suggest that the same content overload issue is no longer a problem that Meta needs to solve, and that users could get a chronological feed of posts from Pages they follow, and see all the relevant updates each day in the app.
People are also now more discerning about which profiles they follow, and in combination, I do think that the platforms could viably provide algorithm-free options (by default) that would be workable.
Expect more regulatory groups to push for this in 2026, while the refinement of AI-based algorithms should also help more people and pages get more reach to people with related interests over time.
I mean, that should happen, unless Meta restricts such in order to drive more ad spend. Or maybe to drive more investment in Meta Verified, with Meta pushing creators to sign-up to the program to get more reach, while also reducing the impact of improved algorithmic reach on Meta’s bottom line.
Decentralized options will also be floated as another alternative, in that they give users more control over their algorithm and experience. But the problem with decentralized tools is the same as the issue in the main apps, that adding more complex controls turns most users away, and people would prefer the simplicity of just letting the algorithm show them what it thinks they’ll like, as opposed to selecting a relevant server and customizing their settings.
They also want to be where their friends are, and an algorithm opt-out, that you can set as the default, is the best option for this.
The platforms will push back, as it will likely impact usage time, but they do also have the option of building more complex algorithmic systems, using AI, that will better optimize for personal relevance, or help to reduce the incentives of rage bait.
Expect to see more discussion on this to come.
