what is Social Media doing to us?

the internet is the greatest device for opening up the world ever devised. It is democratising and enabling. But that assumes its users draw on it to aid System 2 thinking. Plainly, there are times when we use it to inform key decisions – to find out about an illness, to research a holiday, to track a scientific breakthrough. But in the main the... See more

From 2002-2006, social media companies emerged with the explicit mission of "connecting the world," but the introduction of the feed and the like, plus the switch from friends to " followers " indicated a different pitch: "now, even you can a star."

This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona. The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers wish us to be. And with personal development so arduous and lonely, there is ease and comfort in crowdsourcing your identity. But amid such temptations, it's worth... See more

In all the clamour over ‘the virtual’ and ‘the digital’, we tend to forget that social media is more about the social than the media - it’s about people coming together and what people think about us and what we think of ourselves because of that.

I feel like there’s something so soulless about our culture—something deeply, deeply missing in people’s experience of life, a kind of superficiality. Life is so weird and awesome, and there’s so much depth to it, but people, particularly young people, but really everybody with technology and a phone, are sleepwalking through life. It disturbs me... See more