Most people’s reaction to Jonathan Haidt’s correct take on smartphones and social media is the cope of the heroin addict: “I could quit anytime I like.” Because in reality, it’s not just the kids we’ve hooked on liquid crystal crack; no, it’s everyone. And that’s what causes all the pushback and the lies.

They know their tale of being able to quit is not true, we know it’s not true, but it’s the only way they can continue living the vitiated and pitiful existence that their lives have become, as they spend their diminished days staring at a tiny screen, reduced from full humanity to a data-spewing serf in thrall to some faceless technology company.

Yeah, who would want to admit that, and that even worse they’ve allowed their own children to become that? So it’s much easier instead to attack Haidt, misprise and mischaracterize what Haidt is claiming, and then to find refuge in the belief that they could break out of this dull purgatory of doomscrooling and diminished expectations if they really, really wanted to.

But because they can’t and they won’t, neither will their children. And that’s why all the disapprobation towards Haidt.