It’s the phones: loneliness, conspiracy theories, less empathy, and - argh! - less sex

College students who can’t read, plummeting test scores, and - double argh! - less sex

The list of ways smart phones make us sadder, sicker, and more stupid is growing and I’ve gathered them here, with links, for your reading pleasure. There is a hard-to-see (and maybe not showing on every device) Table of Contents at the left. If you scroll over the short horizontal lines and click one, you will see the sections and publications reviewed here.

What if these sites are a passing fad — and we one day have to explain to our children that we spent hours scrolling through angry messages and comic videos, just like previous generations drunk-drove and smoked on aeroplanes? — "My Week with Elon", Financial Times, 2022-11-12/13

I know, I know. There’s no pleasure in reading about all the things going wrong. But it is worthwhile to step back and see the forest, not just the trees. It’s the forest that’s on fire and we need to do something about it.

Most urgent is the way extremist politics have boomed because of our addiction to small shiny screens. David Hogg became a political activist in the wake of a mass shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida.

At one point, musing about a potential solution, Hogg said that it might be “interesting for the Democratic Party to look into” efforts to encourage young people “to get off our phones more,” in order to combat the loneliness epidemic which he says has helped drive Gen Z in a Trumpward direction.

“Not to sound like a Boomer, but it’s true,” he said, even citing “modern Luddite movements in Brooklyn and other places” that are encouraging young people to power off their smartphones. Read the rest.

Conspiracy theories thrive and metastasize online. This goes back to the earliest day of the web, when one would hear, “I read it on the internet” as validation of whatever lame idea the person had come up with. We may be skeptical about the cover stories at the checkout counter, but information from a screen seems to short circuit something in the human brain.

Think how hard it is to disbelieve someone who is looking into your eyes, even if you know she is an inveterate liar. We want to trust, especially within our own group, and we need to believe what our comrades believe and disbelieve everyone else—that’s how community works. And gangs. And cults.

Russell Moore, editor of Christianity Today, always seems to have something interesting to say. In today’s newsletter he writes about how extremism can begin as irony or trolling, but turn into the real thing. I’m delighted that he will be one of the speakers at the Principles First Summit in Washington DC. I’m heading south tomorrow, by train. Speakers list here.

College students can’t read a whole book, or sonnet

Teachers at many schools shifted from books to short informational passages, followed by questions about the author’s main idea—mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests. Read the rest.

Young people have trouble talking face to face

Alexandria, Egypt: Architect Mohamed Gohar comments, “We have lost this art of interacting with others. I can see it with the younger generation who has lost the ability to communicate. New York: Joaquin Simo, a renowned mixologist said: People don't talk anymore—specifically young people. "It's generational," he says. "Twenty-something kids will sit down, order something, and then retreat back to the safety of their phones. They're lost. And it's weird because I used to go to bars to meet people." [from Joe Keohane’s The Power of Strangers]

Phones are making trouble in the workplace

Her bosses grew increasingly frustrated with what they perceived as Emily’s inability to communicate effectively. . . . Accustomed to clear and direct communication, they found Emily’s approach unengaged. Emily vented her frustrations in online chats and apps, like Snapchat, and even made a TikTok video about it, rather than approach her boss for a one-on-one conversation. This only widened the divide between her and her employer. Read the rest.

Kids aren’t learning and they’re lonely

Canada: Schools vs. Screens: This fall, provinces from coast to coast confidently announced that they were banning phones in the classroom. It’s not going well.

Australia: A Berkshire author, Andrew Leigh MP was an academic when he contributed an article on trends in social capital to the Encyclopedia of Community. That article, updated, will appear in a new Berkshire book, A Very Very Short Introduction to Social Capital, this spring.

Here’s what Andrew, now a politician, says about the youth social media ban in Australia:

Our government’s goal is to ensure that young Australians are not being exploited by harmful and deceptive business practices, and ensure that young people can spend more time enjoying real-world experiences and hanging out with friends without the addictive pull of social media.

In an article for Jonathan Haidt’s newsletter, I’ve explained why Australia has decided to be the first country to set a minimum age of 16 for opening a social media account. Like limits on smartphones in schools, our goal is to allow young Australians to enjoy a real childhood with real friends. The new law will take effect at the end of 2025, allowing time for platforms to develop age assurance technologies. Enforcement won’t be perfect (some under-18s still drink alcohol), but our new law sets a clear norm across society. The law will apply to platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X, but not to messaging apps, online games, or services that primarily function to support the health and education of users, such as Headspace and Google Classroom.

Phones are a passion killer

Even the most steadfast sexual enthusiast can feel themselves coming a cropper in the online age. A writer friend from my years as an editor of Erotic Review, renowned for her all-round raunchiness, admitted her enthusiasm for “a good straightforward shag” has been torpedoed by working long hours, mothering a small child, the “terrifying addictiveness of Orange Is the New Black and stalking your frenemies on Facebook”. Read the rest.

Poor people are suffering most

“Human Interaction Is Now a Luxury Good”

We’re increasingly becoming a society in which very wealthy people get obsequious, leisurely human care, like concierge medicine paid out of pocket, apothecaries with personal shoppers and private schools with tiny class sizes and dead-tree books. Everybody else might receive long waits for 15-minute appointments with harried doctors, a public school system with overworked teachers who are supplemented by unproven apps to “personalize” learning and a pharmacy with self-checkout.

“Can’t afford a smartphone? That’s going to cost you”

Too often now, in matters meaningful and meaningless, the good stuff is reserved for people who have smartphones or other digital tools. From parking garages to airplane movie offerings, it pays to be digitally equipped. More to the point, it hurts to be in the technological slow lane.

Quality has declined, by a lot

We’re all suffering from qualitynesia now (Financial Times)

On my 13th birthday, my parents gave me a portable CD player and the masterpiece that was Fresh Hits 1997. Like more than 600mn other people, I have long since swapped my box of CDs for the Spotify app on my phone. But I found my old birthday present recently and discovered it still worked. Even using headphones from the 1990s, I was staggered by the richness of the sound. My ears didn’t deceive me. CDs have a bit-rate of 1,411 kilobits per second, which is a measure of how much data is used to represent sound. Spotify Premium ranges from 24 kbps to 320 kbps, while free Spotify listeners are limited to 160 kbps at best. I realise this is hardly news to music aficionados. Neil Young, who grudgingly returned his music to Spotify this year after a spat involving Joe Rogan, complained that “there is so much tone missing that you can hardly feel the sensitivity”. If hundreds of millions of normal music listeners (like me) have decided to trade audio quality for convenience and variety, then fair enough. But what disconcerted me is that I didn’t know that’s what I’d done. I had simply forgotten how much better music used to sound.

“Sharing” apps cause a doom loop

There’s a bidirectional relationship underway here; the growth of online goods and services is both the symptom and cause of a disappointing physical world. Consider the cab: Over the past two decades Uber and Lyft have all but entirely replaced free-flowing taxis in most cities. Taxis were imperfect, but now the option to reserve one without a phone has been nearly eliminated—and with it the option to move through the physical world without digital mediation.” No serendipity, no memories.

The pattern is clear: The more we go online, the less we show up in person. And the less we show up, the less likely our physical realm will offer experiences that can compete.” Read the rest.

Enshittification is the order of the day

As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders

Video games have become less social

Even though some of the biggest franchises in the world—Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends—pit a server’s worth of players against one another in lethal combat, the softer interactions those places once fomented are on the decline. We are all in front of our computers, paradoxically together and separate, like ships passing in the night.

The ‘Wicked’ Practice of Taking Pictures of the Movie Screen

Social media has conditioned people to think that they can only claim to have had an experience if they put evidence of it online. In an age of oversharing, you have to have receipts that demonstrate you were present at an event — just embracing the fact that you witnessed it is not enough.

So what should we do?

Here’s the thing. We made the tech titans rich by falling in line. Phones (and other tech) are a dripline, feeding our lives, our time, into their pockets. For many people, it’s as consuming as any addictive drug, and that’s what the tech companies design it to be. Using technology in moderation wouldn’t create companies with the highest market caps (valuation) in the world.

Even if you ignore the unique characteristics of social media and AI, this is not a normal economic pattern, I read the other day in the Financial Times. It results, wrote business columnist Ruchir Sharma, from “excessive US stimulus, the gamification of investing and the rise of algorithmic trading and passive money managers. Creative destruction has been a defining and indeed necessary feature of capitalism since its roots in the 18th century; either it’s dead, or dormant and posed for a comeback … starting with a shift away from the US and its top tech companies.”

There are parallels with cigarettes, though it’s not a perfect analogy. The dependence (or addiction) is the same. The denial by the companies is the same. And some of our behavior is the same: denial, for a start.

We don’t dare tell people to put away their phones entirely. This is exactly like cigarettes. The polite thing, according to an old etiquette manual was to “smoke only between courses and after meal is over.” I remember a restaurant dinner in London where half the party were puffing away (and not only between courses) while I, nearly 9 months pregnant, leaned as far away from the table as possible. If something like that happened today I would simply leave, but what’s the etiquette with phones? I’ve seen people whining at their adult children, but that’s not a workable tactic.

My hope is that better conversation in lively third places can convince us that there really is life to be lived, not watched or recorded. And that we can find new tools, from new companies, and use them in moderation. Tools that do and provide things that actually make life better, healthier, more social and more satisfying—and sustainable for everyone on earth.

Meanwhile, I’m off to Washington and will report from Principles First.

What I’m reading

• Techno Feudalism by Yanis Varoufakis

• The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

  by Raghuram Rajan

The Cruelty Isn’t the Point. It’s the Pleasure.

Something to consider

What do we want from social media?

• Staying in touch with old/distant friends and family

• Finding new friends and feel popular

• Promoting self/work

• Dating and mating

• Sharing photos and our own artwork

• Sharing personal news, with only positive feedback

• Ditto opinions and political news, sometimes wanting agreement and sometimes wanting a fight

• Creating an archive of our lives (but only the good bits)