Two Sides of the Same Signal
A tale of two clicks, and why your digital instincts matter more than ever.
The internet is a paradox. One moment, it delivers magic. The next, it pulls a fast one that leaves you or someone you love feeling gut-punched.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, especially after two recent experiences: one involving my son, and the other involving my mom. Same internet. Very different outcomes.
Let’s start with the good.
My son just celebrated his birthday. When I asked what he wanted, he didn’t hesitate: a British Shorthair kitten. That’s a very specific kind of cat, and not something you pick up at the local shelter. So I started researching. The first few sites I found were sketchy, but eventually I landed on a legitimate breeder in his area. I did my due diligence: cross-referenced listings, checked reviews, verified the business. It all checked out.
I reached out. The breeder responded quickly with the names of the available kittens, and I passed those along to my son. He picked one. I filled out a simple Google form. Within hours, I received photos and a short video of the kitten tumbling around with its siblings. That alone made my son’s day.
The next morning, the breeder sent over the invoice, background info on the kitten’s parents, and instructions for sending the deposit. I paid via PayPal. No fuss. No friction. Everything transparent, warm, and easy. In other words: how the internet should work. Two people on opposite sides of the screen, doing legitimate business with mutual trust and clarity.
And then… the flip side.
My mom loves puzzle apps. Word searches and jigsaws, mostly. The other night she mentioned she’d bought a few things online from LL Bean.
“Store closing, 90% off,” she said. “They featured the exact items I’ve been looking at.”
I froze.
LL Bean doesn’t run 90% off sales. Especially not through pop-ups inside free gaming apps. I asked her to show me the link. Sure enough, it was a classic scam: a lookalike site, full of broken English and red flags. She’d clicked through from an ad inside one of her puzzle games and entered everything: name, address, credit card number, CID code.
There was no confirmation email. No real receipt. The transaction had gone straight to spam.
We caught it in time. She canceled her card. But now she has to update every autopay account tied to that number, which, as you know, is no small task. And the emotional toll of realizing she’d been tricked had her in knots for hours.
These aren’t just two isolated stories. They illustrate the widening gap between what the internet can be and what it often is.
It’s especially hard on people who didn’t grow up with the internet baked into their lives. For many in older generations, the lines between real and fake online are hard to spot, and the consequences of clicking the wrong link can be costly.
And yet, most of us still don’t really know what we’re doing. The digital world was handed to us without an instruction manual. No roadmap. No warning signs. Just: Here you go. Good luck out there.
Some of us are fumbling our way through it. Others have stopped trying.
This brings up a different point: discernment is a muscle. It gets stronger when we use it. It gets weaker when we don’t. The more we scroll on autopilot, the more vulnerable we become to scams, to misinformation, to wasting hours of our lives on things that don’t matter.
And yeah, paying for things like ad-free apps or verified services often gives you a better experience and better protection. The irony, of course, is the people most at risk of being scammed are often those who can least afford the paywall.
The only real way forward is awareness. That means:
Questioning what shows up in your feed
Double-checking before clicking “Buy Now”
Investing time (and sometimes money) into tools and platforms that have earned your trust
Talking to the people in your life—especially older loved ones—about what’s real and what’s risky online
I write more about this in my upcoming book It’s Not You, It’s the Algorithm. Because even though we didn’t ask for this always-online reality, it’s ours to navigate. And personal agency—real, daily decision-making—is still our best defense.
As Jim Rohn said (roughly): Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune. That fortune might be money. It might be peace of mind. It might be not falling for the same trick twice.
The stakes are higher than we think. Every day, we’re just one careless click away from chaos. And one clear-headed pause away from keeping our lives and our dignity intact.