Janelle E. Wells, Ph.D., and Doreen MacAulay, Ph.D.
Our (In)visible Work
Behind the endless social media scrolls sits a silent, unpaid workforce toiling around the clock. Managing the relentless onslaught of misinformation, the emotional exhaustion from weighing polarizing content, and the outright digital violence has become a burden of hidden work. Add the unregulated algorithms designed to amplify engagement, often serving as echo chambers, content moderators, and false credibility, and the work compounds.
The unseen cost of our interconnected world is thankless and emotionally draining labor. This can be especially exhausting when you feel responsible not only for your own digital experience but also for that of others, such as children, grandchildren, parents, students, or even direct reports. For some, it is a painstaking effort to maintain civility and accuracy in spaces designed to reward the opposite. As we try to understand our role, it is important to know that according to a 2025 meta-analysis in Educational Research Review, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to ensuring a positive digital experience. Behind the screen, each one has a story that motivates, influences, and manages their experience.
The Faces of Digital Janitors
The Misinformation First Responders: Their first instinct is to jump in and correct the record, playing fact-checker. Driven by the need to help educate people and provide informational integrity, they slap down one falsehood only for two more to pop up. The flood of information is too fast, too personal, and too emotionally compelling.
The Emotional Anchors: People can feel a great deal of anxiety from the constant stream of negative and polarizing information. From first-day notifications to mid-day trending alerts about a terrifying headline, these individuals reassure us that the world is not as damaged as it appears online and validate that it is OK to feel overwhelmed by it all. A recent article in Frontiers in Psychology cautions us that information overload has been positively connected to feelings of strain and burnout and negatively associated with job satisfaction.
The Strategic Silencers: Deciding not to engage with misinformation or collective illusion, as author Todd Rose termed it, is critical. And it is an invisible judgment call. Publicly debunking can accidentally amplify misinformation, giving it a legitimacy it never had. The strategic calculation of when to ignore a narrative versus when to confront it is a key piece of unseen work.
The Parental Shield: Beyond homework help and carpool duty, modern parents have been drafted into a new, relentless, and often invisible role: the 24/7 digital manager for their children. The quiet, relentless work of shielding children from the noise of a polarized world.
According to the Educational Research Review, scholars note that the task of digital parenting is fraught with challenges of keeping up with new technologies, all while trying to interpret online behavior and their child’s behavior. Teaching them to be critical thinkers rather than passive consumers of misinformation isn’t about sheltering them from reality; it’s about responsibly equipping them with the tools to navigate it.
