Stop Looking At Each Other

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are engines of distraction and cultural rot. They stand in front of the more difficult but more rewarding aspects of life: deep work, intimate connections with friends and loved ones, focused attention for hobbies with intrinsic rewards. By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of an... See more

The illusionary perception that social media has brought us closer has faded. Living a performative life for the Internet is a recipe for emptiness. What has been revealed is that we are alone. We crave connection. Wherever we end up going, we want it to be more real. This means we should probably stop supporting centralized platforms, even if they... See more

I’ve been writing for years about social media fueling the loneliness crisis and the way capitalism and big tech have innovated away human connection and trapped us in ecosystems that encourage and profit from a meaner, angrier user base. These platforms too often funnel young men into toxic spaces that answer their loneliness by pointing the finge... See more

We have turned competition into connection because it’s the only way we’ve learned that we can get attention — and when you see a continuous decline in relationships outside of your phone because spaces continue to disappear, you’ll cling to whatever you can to feel like you belong to a larger world. That’s without taking into account how the platf... See more

While an audience is a group of unique individuals, a significant issue arises when our individual needs are overshadowed by the appeal of aggregated data, a metric tethered to one’s social status.

In this scenario, we become mere data points on millions of AI-driven newsfeeds, puppets in an entertainment game where we are both actors and audience —... See more

By portraying our opponents as beyond persuasion, social media sorts us into ever more hostile tribes, then rewards us, with likes and shares, for the most hyperbolic denunciations of the other side, fuelling a vicious cycle that makes sane debate impossible. We mustn’t let Silicon Valley off the hook, but we should be honest: much of the time... See more

This misuse of one of the most precious aspects of being alive is ubiquitous. Our children are growing into a severely fragmented world, our bodies are showing the illnesses of disconnection, and our communities are divided. Politics and technology are merging into an alarming communication horror story with AI to categorize us all into our algorit... See more