Cognitive abuse
A deliberate practice which, through deception, opacity or the exploitation of vulnerabilities, steers mental processes towards ends that the person cannot freely examine, understand or reject.
Read it in the Declaration →
Cognitive Rights Observatory · Independent organization
The freedom of the mind is the frontier of our time.
We study, document and defend the integrity, the autonomy and the conditions for the development of human mental life, against those digital architectures that capture and exploit attention, emotion and identity.
This is not a cause against technology, but against that use of technology. Many architectures do no such thing, and the invitation is to be among them.
The foundation
What cognitive rights are
Cognitive rights are the set of guarantees intended to protect the integrity, the autonomy and the conditions for the development of human mental life: the processes by which a person forms beliefs, perceives reality, sustains relationships, deliberates, decides and develops their personality.
They do not regulate what a person ought to think. They protect the conditions that allow someone to think, feel, believe, decide, remember, desire and form bonds without being instrumentalised by opaque, abusive or disproportionate systems of influence.
This Observatory's field of work is the digital environment: the platforms and networks, the recommender systems, persuasive design, algorithmic advertising and the artificial intelligence that now mediate much of mental life, and that run through consumption, work, education and politics wherever it is these architectures that organise experience. Not because cognitive harm can occur only there, but because there it occurs at a scale, a precision and a continuity that no earlier age has known.
Because there is no free citizen where there is no free mind.
The harm that calls us together
When influence stops serving freedom
Not all influence is abusive, and not all persuasion is manipulation. The violation begins where influence stops being directed at a person's freedom and starts to operate against it. We distinguish three forms:
Cognitive harassment
The repetition or persistence of those practices when they produce attentional capture, erosion of the will, dependence, confusion or fragmentation of identity.
Read it in the Declaration →Induced cognitive stress
Psychological, emotional and attentional wear produced by digital environments designed to subject a person to continuous pressure, overload, hyperstimulation and systematic interruption.
Read it in the Declaration →The Observatory
What this Observatory does
It is born not as one more voice in the noise, but as a place of evidence, of meeting and of action. Its work is organised in five tasks:
01
Observes and documents
Records and analyses the practices of cognitive abuse, harassment and stress where they occur at scale today: platforms and social networks, recommender systems, persuasive design, digital advertising and commerce, video games, conversational assistants and artificial intelligence.
02
Produces independent knowledge
Develops rigorous knowledge under a scientific and ethical council bringing together psychology, psychiatry, law, neuroscience, philosophy, sociology, education, communication and technology.
03
Develops standards and indicators
Builds conceptual standards, indicators, reports and recommendations capable of distinguishing between legitimate influence, intensive persuasion, manipulation, abuse, harassment and induced cognitive stress.
04
Convenes and articulates
Brings together legislators, professionals, institutions, universities, civil organisations and citizens, so that protecting mental life from these architectures becomes public culture, democratic policy and legal guarantee.
05
Proposes instruments
Formulates the legal, educational, clinical, social and technological instruments needed to protect the integrity of mental life as a condition of human dignity and democratic coexistence.
Founding document
Founding Declaration
The text that gives the freedom of the mind a name, a defence and a home. Eight sections that define cognitive abuse, the rights that confront it and the task of the Observatory.
We affirm that the human mind is not a market, nor a resource, nor a territory to be conquered.
Founding Declaration · V. What we affirm
Theoretical foundation
The essay behind this declaration
Matías Teushen, “Derechos cognitivos: la vida mental como morada inviolable. Manipulación, autonomía y derechos de la mente en la era de la dirección algorítmica” [Cognitive Rights: Mental Life as an Inviolable Dwelling], Zenodo, 4 June 2026.
Fourteen chapters that reconstruct the genealogy of the thresholds of freedom, describe the digital architectures of cognitive capture, distinguish legitimate influence from manipulation and examine the legal recognition of these rights. Published in open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. Available in Spanish only.
DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20544510
Under construction
What you will find here
The Observatory is a knowledge infrastructure that grows in phases. These are the areas under development:
Understand
Knowledge about mind and technology, at three levels of reading: the essentials, the explanation and the sources.
In developmentLibrary
A searchable repository of press, essays, papers, books, a video library and an international directory.
In developmentLaboratory
Original and collaborative research, methodologies, indicators and prospective studies.
In developmentConsultative board
A standing space for consultation where professionals, institutions and public representatives bring their judgement to the work of the Observatory.
In developmentChildren and adolescents
A safe, age-appropriate space, with resources for families and teachers on screens, networks and artificial intelligence.
In developmentPublications
Essays, reports, technical notes and legal proposals from the Observatory.
In developmentSelf-care
Resources to recognise and reduce the cognitive saturation associated with the use of technology.
In development
Reinforced protection
The first who must be protected
We affirm that childhood, adolescence and those in situations of vulnerability deserve the highest protection, because upon them cognitive abuse is easier to exercise and graver in its consequences.
Founding Declaration · V. What we affirm
To grow up today is to learn to attend, to desire and to recognise oneself inside environments designed by adults who answer to no one for their effects on a mind still forming. Childhood and adolescence are therefore not one more heading in the Observatory's work: they are its most demanding criterion.
Distinction
The Care Seal
A distinction for websites, applications, video games and artificial intelligence systems that adopt verifiable measures to protect mental life, with reinforced protection for children and adolescents.
The seal will not reward intentions. It will require compliance with a public protocol of cognitive care: verifiable, reviewable and revocable criteria, drawn up by the Observatory together with its scientific council.
The protocol is being drafted. Once it is settled, the criteria, the awarding procedure and the register of distinguished organisations will be published here.
Sustaining the work
Support us
The Observatory is born without depending on the industries it observes. That independence has a cost, and it can only be sustained by support that does not condition judgement.
One-off donation
A single contribution, by bank transfer or payment gateway.
Institutional collaboration
Agreements with universities, foundations, research centres and public bodies.
Patronage and sponsorship
Support from private entities, subject to public criteria of independence: no support may condition what is observed or what is published.
These channels are being prepared. As soon as the association is formally constituted, the bank details, the online contribution system and the use of funds will be published here.
Community
Friends of the Observatory
People and institutions who lend their name to this cause: researchers, professionals, teachers, families, civil organisations and public representatives who accompany the work of the Observatory and say so out loud.
It is not a governing body and confers no vote. It is a way of holding publicly that the freedom of the mind matters.
The register will open once the association is formally constituted.
A call
This cause, before it belongs to anyone, is yours
We call on those who legislate and decide public policy; on the professionals of mental health and of psychological, cognitive and neurological development —psychology, psychiatry, paediatrics, neuroscience, speech therapy, occupational therapy—; on the professionals of law; on those who research, teach, design technology or care for others, whatever their discipline; on universities, institutions and civil organisations; on families; and on every person who has ever felt that their attention, their time, their identity or their convictions were being taken from them without their permission.
Write to us: [contact address to be confirmed]
This website looks after your attention.
No infinite scroll, no autoplay, no notifications chasing you and no invasive tracking.
Read what you need and leave when you want. Ending a visit is also a form of care.