I sent out a short note last week on Jonathan Haidt’s brilliant analysis of the dis-integration of American society that has been fostered by social media, published in the May edition of Atlantic, entitled “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” (OnPoint interview with Haidt here.)
In the interim, the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion on Roe v Wade has completely overshadowed all else in media, and other important issues have been sidelined. I want to try to keep this important article lively in public awareness.
It’s quite a long article – 8,000 words, which is 8-10x the average op-ed. Given that, and the fact that the tone and impact are decidedly downbeat for the first 6,000 words, I suspect few will read the entire piece.
With that in mind, I would like to highlight the much more positive last section of the piece. Haidt finishes on the upbeat by identifying a range of encouraging developments and opportunities to reign in the negative impact of social media – including organizations, policy prescriptions, and developments already in progress – all of which can have a big impact very quickly.
The Atlantic piece really should have been published in 2 parts – Part 1: The Problem(s) and Part 2: Solutions.
Here is a guide to Part 2 - Democracy After Babel.
Haidt highlights three broad categories of reform to meet the challenge, and a number of specific proposals in each category:
1. Harden our democratic institutions so they can withstand (and diminish) chronic anger and mistrust.
· Implement ranked choice voting. Will reduce the outsized influence of angry extremists and incentivize politicians to address the concerns of the average citizen. (See “The Politics Industry” by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter.)
· Eliminate total control of legislative rules and committee chairs by party leadership, which has contributed mightily to extremism and hyper-partisanship in Congress. (Also in “The Politics Industry.”)
· Eliminate gerrymandering. Require non-partisan district maps, and let voters pick their representatives.
· Supreme Court reform – 18 year term limits, retirement age, ethical standards for Supremes.
2. Reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive.
· Simple changes to the architecture of social media platforms can limit the amplification of extremist fringes, reducing the power of social media to dissolve trust and foment structural stupidity. (See proposals by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.)
· Require platforms to “know your customer” as banks are required to do. Would eliminate hundreds of millions of bots and fake accounts that pollute the social media ecosystem.
· Greater regulatory oversight. There is effectively none now.
· Compel platforms to share their data and algorithms with academic researchers.
3. Prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.
· Parents (and grandparents) will want to read this section in its entirety!
· Promote unsupervised play – nature’s way of teaching young mammals the skills they’ll need as adults. (See article by Steven Horowitz.)
· Block access to social media until past puberty…even to age 16.
· Update the Children’s Online Protection Act.
· National Free-Range Parenting Law to ensure that parents will not be prosecuted for allowing their children unsupervised play.
· My add – promote more sleep for teens, including no social media/electronics at night. (See “Generation Sleepless” by Heather Turgeon.)
For those wishing to engage on these issues, Haidt identifies a number of volunteer organizations – BridgeUSA, Braver Angels and others (see BridgeAlliance.us) that are already at work on this matter. In addition, I would like to encourage everyone to promote these measures to your representatives in State and Federal government.
There is a tendency in humans to exaggerate the negative, especially when an issue is poorly understood. Once a clear understanding of the problem is obtained, solutions also become clearer, and appear more achievable. Haidt has provided a clear framework and roadmap for resolving the problems generated by social media.
Here is a good commentary on the Haidt article from Paul Matzco, who notes that we’ve been here before. With every advance in communications – the Gutenberg press, the telephone – there has been a wave of craziness, and then society adapts.
Even now, here is an unexpected example of political adversaries working together to address a structural problem.
I agree with Matzco. As Winston Churchill put it, “The Americans always do the right thing…after they have tried everything else.”
Let’s focus on solutions. We can get this right.