Many things in modernity are brain dead, but I can’t think of anything worse than the short form dystopias of TikTok and Instagram. They’re materially making people dumber, breeding addict behavior (particularly in the young) and ultimately ruining the lives of normies. It’s depressing to think about the countless kids who might have started garage bands or tinkered building electronics who instead grow up scrolling endlessly. The social internet wasn’t this way in the world we grew up in when desktop-based, it was a place of connection, of intellectual curiosity and niche-interest destinations to connect and grow. The Substack community is closer to this and Twitter/X is still this way for those willing to do a little work (always has been).

But these two apps in particular are insidiously poisoning many minds. It’s so bad I really think all you need to do is not use them, particularly on mobile, and you’ll immediately possess a level of attention/focus (and likely values) higher than a non-trivial percentage of the population. Free alpha to simply delete. If the challenge of contemporary existence is learning how to wield attention meaningfully, then TikTok and Instagram are weapons-grade distractions, optimized by some of the smartest people given incredible monetary incentives (generational wealth in many cases) to control the human mind. They’re emblematic of how this attention can be commodified, manipulated and ultimately, destroyed.

The future of content addiction

Adam Singer • TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison