Jonathan Haidt Blamed Tech for Teen Anxiety. Managing the Blowback Has Become a Full-Time Job.

When you’re wrong there’s not massive blowback. No one cares about you when that happens. When you’re right, though, against powerful interests like big tech, there’s blowback and attempts to discredit you with flimsy but plausible propaganda. It’s startlingly obvious that smart phones and social media is an incredibly harmful combination, particularly for children and for women’s mental health and stability.

The hugely disingenuous attempt by many to conflate Haidt’s previous advocacy of allowing children freedom to roam with the “freedom” to be manipulated algorithmically by ruthless and unaccountable tech companies via smartphone — dang, I’ve heard stupider things in my life, but not very fucking many.

Of course Haidt’s main thesis is correct. People just don’t want to believe how much of a massive mistake we’ve all made, and how much we’ve harmed ourselves and younger generations. It’s a terrible destruction we’ve wreaked with no apparent end. That’s why no one wants it brought into the light and why anyone who discusses it is accused of “moral panic” and told to get with the times.