Young people try out AI-assisted resume review at a job fair for 2026 college graduates in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, on Sept. 10. Photo: CFP

The expanding reach of digital and intelligent technologies is reshaping the everyday lives of young people. In particular, as algorithms evolve from tools of production into a diffuse force of control, their influence has moved beyond the workplace and penetrated deep into private life, bringing young people’s labor practices, emotional experiences, and even life choices within technical frameworks that render them calculable, assessable, and controllable. Technology thus no longer simply serves human needs. Through quantitative metrics, it increasingly shapes how people act and think, extending its reach across both the working and emotional worlds of contemporary youth.

Algorithmic dilemma in labor scenarios

A growing body of research has highlighted the algorithmic dilemmas facing young workers. The gig economy encompasses many forms of employment popular among young people, including food delivery and ride-hailing, with platforms using algorithms to manage the entire labor process through automated data systems. Platforms promote “free order acceptance and autonomous scheduling” as hallmarks of flexible employment, yet behind this narrative are continuous data tracking and comprehensive quantitative assessment. Workers’ every action—including order response speed, delivery completion time, and customer star ratings—is captured in real time, converted into a standardized labor score, and used to determine priority in the allocation of orders. These differentiated allocation rules create an invisible coercion mechanism, pushing young workers to cut back on rest and overextend themselves to meet algorithmic standards. The rhythm, pace, and behavioral boundaries of work are increasingly dictated by data metrics, eroding workers’ control over their own labor.

Algorithms also legitimize themselves under the guise of “technical neutrality.” Core operational parameters such as order or traffic allocation weights, thresholds for rewards and penalties, and score calculation rules remain hidden within the algorithmic black box. This information asymmetry forces workers to rely on repeated trial and error to discern the system’s preferences and adapt themselves accordingly to its data-driven standards.

Consequently, power in the digital age has shifted from traditional spatial sovereignty to data sovereignty, with algorithms serving as its concrete instrument. On one hand, platforms promote a narrative in which data empowers individual growth, claiming that algorithms can improve work efficiency and help workers realize personal value. On the other hand, they continuously collect and break down every aspect of workers’ activity, refining algorithmic models to reduce workers’ buffer time as much as possible and raise expectations for labor output.

This algorithmic dilemma does not end when work does; it extends into everyday life. Genuine intimate relationships require substantial investments of time, emotion, and energy that cannot be standardized or readily quantified, nor do they provide immediate positive feedback. Young people accustomed to the instant feedback of algorithmic systems may therefore be more inclined to turn to standardized forms of emotional support mediated by technology, opening the way for algorithms to penetrate their emotional lives.

Erosion of emotional value by technological rationality

If the labor field reduces individual work behavior to calculable measures of efficiency, the emotional field similarly breaks down emotional experiences, intimate interactions, and life choices into standardized data labels, measuring the diversity and complexity of human experience against a single technological yardstick.

This infiltration is particularly evident in the impact of digital and intelligent technologies on intimate relationships. Matchmaking and social recommendation platforms increasingly rely on algorithms to construct a model of “quantitative mate selection,” reducing appearance, education, income, personality, and even hobbies to matchable labels and scores and replacing the tentative process of interaction and mutual adjustment with calculations of algorithmic compatibility. Algorithms screen potential partners by score, reducing intimate relationships—ordinarily shaped by uncertainty and personal growth—to supposedly precise, data-driven matches.

Prolonged exposure to such algorithmic control can deplete young people’s emotional resources. Faced with conflict, the need for mutual adjustment, and the uncertainties of real intimate relationships, they may become more inclined to withdraw and turn instead to the low-cost, highly controllable emotional solace offered by algorithms.

The rapid spread of AI companionship products reflects this demand. Language models and socially interactive robots seek to reproduce the functions of intimate companionship and emotional support through simulated dialogue and emotional responses. Yet human emotions are rooted in individual life experiences, embodied perception, and real interpersonal bonds, giving them a depth and uniqueness that cannot be replicated. Artificial intelligence can reproduce only surface-level patterns of conversation and emotional expression, detached from the memories, physical interactions, and ethical responsibilities that give genuine emotions. At its core, AI companionship offers a simplified, decontextualized simulation of emotion. Long-term reliance on AI for emotional comfort may gradually erode young people’s ability to navigate conflict in real intimate relationships and accept the uncertainties of life, weakening their psychological resilience and leaving them more vulnerable to loneliness, anxiety, and social withdrawal.

The reach of algorithms into the emotional sphere also extends to life decisions, as reflected in the growing popularity of algorithmic divination. Platforms use algorithms to reduce complex and changing life circumstances to standardized predictions, offering young people seemingly personalized but highly formulaic guidance for decision-making. When uncertain about major life choices, they may be more inclined to turn to technology for a sense of certainty and stability. Algorithmic divination plays directly on anxieties about the future, while also weakening young people’s capacity for independent judgment and willingness to accept risk. When individuals cede control over their lives to algorithms, technological rationality can gradually erode their agency, fostering dependence on algorithmic guidance.

Algorithmic regulation and agency awakening

For young people in the digital age, overcoming these challenges requires both external institutional constraints and an internal awakening of agency, creating a balance between institutional regulation and individual self-determination.

At the institutional level, policy intervention is needed to open the algorithmic black box and strengthen platform transparency and accountability. Regular algorithmic audits should require platforms to disclose their core recommendation logic, scoring weights, and penalty mechanisms and submit to public and regulatory oversight, stripping away the false guise of “technical neutrality” and exposing the underlying logic of capital control. At the same time, legal protections for digital labor should be strengthened by clarifying the rights and obligations of platforms and workers and establishing minimum wage protections, limits on working hours, and mechanisms for complaints and redress. These measures can help correct the power imbalance between platforms and individual workers, curb data-driven exploitation and the erosion of worker agency, and provide young workers with basic protections.

If institutional regulation constrains the expansion of algorithms from the outside, rebuilding agency at the cultural level must address young people’s psychological dependence on them from within. Reconstructing youth agency requires cultivating a culture of critical reflection on technology and integrating technological literacy more closely with humanities education. Digital education today often remains focused on the use of tools, leaving young people susceptible to technological worship—the belief that algorithms and big data can provide solutions to every problem in life—while overlooking the power relations and value boundaries embedded in technology. The education system therefore needs to move beyond a narrow focus on technical knowledge and incorporate critical digital-media literacy throughout humanities education, helping young people recognize that algorithms are not objective or neutral and that every set of data rules embodies particular commercial interests and forms of control. This can challenge the assumption that technology is all-powerful and foster a habit of critical reflection on technological tools. Developing this awareness is the cognitive starting point for young people to reclaim their agency.

In addition, breaking this habit of thought requires young people to develop a more diverse framework of values. The value of labor cannot be measured solely by platform scores and income; individual growth and professional dignity are equally important. Neither emotional well-being nor the choices that shape one’s life require standardized answers from AI or algorithms. By accepting life’s uncertainties, making choices on the basis of personal experience and independent judgment, and refusing to cede decision-making power to technological tools, young people can reclaim the authority to define their own self-worth and reaffirm the primacy of people over data.

Ultimately, rebuilding this agency must be grounded in a renewed humanistic spirit, with humanistic values serving as a counterweight to the unchecked expansion of technological rationality. At its core, the humanistic spirit affirms human value, emotion, and dignity. When this spirit becomes a guiding principle of digital life, young people can truly reclaim their agency and pursue fuller, freer lives beyond the coercive pull of data.

Ren Tianxiang is from the School of Journalism and Communication at Hubei University.