What To Do About Destructive Social Media?
Social media consists largely of "free" services that charge by taking time-slices of one's life. Is that fact outweighing the positive effects?(This article by Karl D. Stephan originally appeared at Engineering Ethics Blog (January 23, 2023) under the title “Conservative Futurism and the Internet,” and is reprinted with permission.) In the Winter 2023 issue of The New Atlantis, lawyer and author John Ehrett points out that the bloom of enthusiasm that greeted the advent of the Internet has now faded from that particular rose. There is now a consensus that the negative effects of social media in particular, and also the whole economic basis of “free” services that charge by taking time-slices of one’s life, may have begun to outweigh the positive effects. The question is, what to do about it? Rather than simply parrot various policy ideas that are floating around—as he puts Read More ›