The Information World War And What To Do About All Of This
It's now evident that we live in a structurally flawed society that emerged from the unfolding of various social media dynamics playing out for over a decade. This structure amplifies the voices of political extremists, incentivizes mob dynamics and undermines democratic institutions that are critical for a large, diverse and secular democracy to hold together.
Foreign, malicious actors will not pass on the golden opportunity of exploiting this structurally flawed society America now finds itself in. In fact, China has already been accessing US-based TikTok user data.
The state of technology today is such that the ability to generate extremely realistic text, images or video can be done at very low costs of production. Game the algorithms - or own them - and you get the mass distribution of the content too (which is also cheap).
This sets the stage for a different type of war - the Information World War - between the most powerful nations in the world today. The US, Russia and China are the main contenders. The prize is not land. They're fighting for minds.
What to do about all of this? Three avenues:
Harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust. Example: Replace closed party primaries with a single, non-partisan, open primary subject to ranked-choice voting.
Reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive. Modify the mechanisms of virality such that the spread of content is slowed down. Enforce better user-verification in social media platforms to disincentivize bots or fake accounts. Open-source the platforms recommendation algorithms for public scrutiny.
Better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age. Raise the age of legal social media use from 13 to 16. Let kids have more unsupervised and unstructured free play in preference of time spent online. They'll learn real-world social skills like conflict-dispute and self-governance this way.
Haidt has done extensive work to prove that depression and anxiety in teens, especially girls, point to social media as a substantial contributor. Depression makes people less likely to want to engage with new people, ideas and experiences. Anxiety makes new things seem more threatening. Younger generations then tend to lack tolerance for diverse viewpoints or have trouble working out disputes as they grow older. Exhibit A: the emergence of idea Safe Spaces in US colleges.
How can you - the reader - do something about any of this? See clearly the post-Babel society we now live in so that you understand its structural flaws. Help others see it too. Be aware of your infinite scrolling. And if you're a parent, most importantly: insist your kids go outside and play.
Fin.