Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.

AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of consciousness make me suspect that less stressful alternatives are equally plausible.

The most successful facts about the world are the ones that subvert our weakly held beliefs. They look like they’re about improvement, but they’re more often simply entertainment dressed up like education.

Nudging doesn’t work because people aren’t thinking hard enough. Everything is choice architecture, so look to the way you build things in the first place or turn to our deepest motivations—our communities.

Since the invention of the telegraph, information has become increasingly atomized, incoherent, and irrelevant. Our media technology encourages entertainment, not discourse. Information ‘from nowhere’, ‘to no one’ about which we can do nothing. We don’t have to lean in.