Comment by BirAdam
10 days ago
I question this narrative. While social media is certainly having a negative impact, most democratic societies have relatively short life spans historically speaking. There’s also a tendency for economies to falter, for irrationality to increase, for birth rates to drop, and so on. It would seem that the same trends (roughly) occur in every democracy as it starts to fail.
Yes. The meta problem is the trend toward “I dont’t like X, and I don’t like Y, therefore X is causing Y” thinking.
It’s always been the reactionary’s argument: immigrants cause crime, inter-racial marriage causes poverty, etc, etc.
The real collapse we’re seeing is the liberal / progressive adoption of these fallacies. Social media causes fascism (nevermind the absence of social media in previous collapses into fascism), etc.
Many of the people rightfully dismayed by trends are unwittingly contributing to the changes they dislike.
The correct answer to “I think social media leads to fascism” is not “let’s ban social media”. The correct answer is “let’s study the problem and see what science says”. Abandoning that is giving up.