I find Jonathan Haidt more useful and more concise for the recent decline of mental health in youth. In a nutshell he provides evidence that interaction with social media feeds (TikTok, Insta, FB, you name them) is at the heart of it because they by construction hinge on how the brain reacts to content and they play this to maximize online time and advertisement revenue, not mental health or societal well being or any of the things we might hope for.
IMO, I think blaming social media is an easy-out to explain things. The reality is that we live in a brainwashed no-trust society full of greedy monopolistic corporations and an utterly dysfunctional government who has zero desire to address actual issues combined with extreme wealth inequality...really makes things pretty bleak and hopeless.
oh social media are just the _means_ by which a most profitable atmosphere is created.
it's a bit akin to Santa Clause and Christmas shopping. shopping areas flood synapses with visual auditive and olfactory impressions because that lowers internal barriers to spending. the whole purpose of the western style pre Christmas frenzy is more sales.
if it was for inner transformation spiritual something, Christmas would look like pre Santa Clause (a guy in a highly carnevalistic red suit but I digress). pre coca cola Santa Clause, Christmas was a time of fasting, one candle, then two, then three, then four, and the family sitting together and _creating_ gifts for each other.
in the very same vein, social media are the pipe dream of 24/7 advertisement flooding. to increase sales. and fun it works for influencing elections, too!
even if social media (not: social networks!) were innocent, those placing targeted content for political or financial profit or both are not. and social media is the means they use.
We always have been. The difference is that we’re getting a constant firehose of refuse spewed at us 24x7.
As we lowered the cost of publishing, we created a vicious cycle. Segmented audiences mean more targeting is required. More targeting requires appeals to more and more specific, and weird segments, fueled by YouTube and podcasts.
Look at the growth of conspiracy theories. That stuff was the province of truckers and other listeners of overnight AM radio. Now, people have a heartfelt belief in flat earth and chemtrails.
I think that there are a lot of things to be elated or miserable for in the modern world, but widespread social media disproportionately amplifies negativity.
Here is a recent presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVq4ARIlNVg
and a podcast with Simon Sinek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2hERv5l3H4