Social Media Has Ruined American Politics [View all]

Normal debates and disagreements have been replaced by personal attacks, anger, and cynicism.

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/social-media-has-ruined-american



There’s an interesting movement afoot in education circles to ban smart phone and social media use in schools. As of late 2024, eight states including a mix of blue and red, big and small ones (CA, FL, IN, LA, MN, OH, SC, and VA) have passed statewide bans or restrictions on cell phone use during class time in K-12 schools. The rationale for these policies is straightforward: cell phone and social media use in school is a massive distraction that negatively impacts teaching and subject matter concentration while adversely affecting young people’s mental health and contributing to bullying and other forms of antisocial behavior.

Parents, students, teachers, and administrators may disagree about the negative effects of phones in schools, or question specific implementation policies, but most seem to understand that some boundaries are needed to curtail phone use during classroom time. More than a decade of widespread phone and social media use has led different groups of Americans across the country toward a similar conclusion that excessive use of these devices and platforms is not good for us—especially for impressionable young people. We should therefore expect more states to investigate this approach and pass school bans or restrictions in the future.

The bigger question is why Americans don’t apply this same logic and personal experience about phone and social media use to adults who are just as distracted and negatively impacted by social media platforms as their kids, even if few will admit it. How much time does the average person waste on their phone (or other device) scrolling through asinine or anger-inducing stuff on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, or YouTube? A lot if we are honest with ourselves.

Although these tools do provide easy-to-use mechanisms for information gathering and idea sharing, they have quickly developed into funhouse mirrors that amplify the absolute worst traits of human beings. People on social media are often rash, vain, mean, deceptive, or full of malicious intent. For every good social media feed presenting valuable and reliable information there are ten others pushing out-of-context clips and quotes, inflammatory opinions, fabrications, and outright lies. The more we encounter other people who embody these traits on social media the worse it gets for everyone. Our instincts, along with the platform algorithms themselves, encourage us to either fight or flee from these interactions. But we also passively absorb a ton of social media nonsense every day—through morbid fascination and screen addiction—and it’s wearing us down and making us dumber.

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