That seems like a reasonable distinction, but I’m less sure about how unique social media architectures are in this regard.
In particular, I think that bars and taverns in the past had a similar destructive incentive as social media today. I don’t have good sources on hand, but I remember hearing that one of the reasons that the Prohibition amendment passed was that many saw bartenders are fundamentally extractive. (Americans over 15 drank 4 times as much alcohol a year in 1830 than they do today, per JSTOR). Tavern owners have an incentive to make habitual drunks (better revenue).
And alcoholism can be a terrible disease, which points to people being nearsighted (“where’s my next drink”).
I agree that social media probably hurts people’s ability to instinctively plan for the future, but I’m unsure of the size of the effect or whether it’s worse than historical antecedents. (There have always been nearsighted people).
I think you are right about the bad effect of bars and taverns, but at least the bad parts were clearly separated from the rest. If someone spent 5 hours every day in a bar, they were clearly a low-status alcoholic. You won’t get the same social feedback for spending 5 hours a day scrolling on smartphone, especially if you do a large part of that in private. (With alcohol, drinking in private gave you even lower status than drinking in the bar.)
That seems like a reasonable distinction, but I’m less sure about how unique social media architectures are in this regard.
In particular, I think that bars and taverns in the past had a similar destructive incentive as social media today. I don’t have good sources on hand, but I remember hearing that one of the reasons that the Prohibition amendment passed was that many saw bartenders are fundamentally extractive. (Americans over 15 drank 4 times as much alcohol a year in 1830 than they do today, per JSTOR). Tavern owners have an incentive to make habitual drunks (better revenue).
And alcoholism can be a terrible disease, which points to people being nearsighted (“where’s my next drink”).
I agree that social media probably hurts people’s ability to instinctively plan for the future, but I’m unsure of the size of the effect or whether it’s worse than historical antecedents. (There have always been nearsighted people).
I think you are right about the bad effect of bars and taverns, but at least the bad parts were clearly separated from the rest. If someone spent 5 hours every day in a bar, they were clearly a low-status alcoholic. You won’t get the same social feedback for spending 5 hours a day scrolling on smartphone, especially if you do a large part of that in private. (With alcohol, drinking in private gave you even lower status than drinking in the bar.)