Personal tech, social media, and the “decline of humanity”

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt delivered a lecture at MIT arguing that smartphones and social media are causing widespread cognitive decline, eroding attention spans, reversing decades of educational progress, and damaging democracy. He contends the problem extends beyond anxiety and depression to a fundamental destruction of human attentional capacity, affecting most adults and children alike. Haidt warns that AI will accelerate these trends and calls for concrete reforms: no smartphones for children before high school, no social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more unsupervised play. He advocates for a culturally skeptical view of social media and AI as a prerequisite for reclaiming human agency over technology.