More effects of smartphones and media

Tom Johnson’s recent epiphany about smartphones has a lot of material to process.

Two related points keep coming back to me:

If enough people are spending enough of their time being angered, that starts to change the culture. As Tristan [Harris] told me, it “turns hate into a habit.” You can see this seeping into the bones of our society

This isn’t new to the smartphone era. The modern version of constant rage media probably began with talk radio, but there are older precedents such as the notorious Fr. Coughlin. The difference, though, is that earlier forms of hate media weren’t as ubiquitous as smartphones and social media.

Another point is that the media continually runs apocalyptic stories that no individual can hope to influence. Climate change is a fait accompli. Pandemics are going to kill us all. We’re a step away from nuclear war.

This is instilling learned helplessness and passivity in us.

I don’t have some grand solution to this, but I do see the current media climate constantly being piped into our lives via smartphones as both a serious threat and something easy to fix, at least on a personal level.