Many technologies can be used in both healthy and unhealthy ways. You can indulge in food to the point of obesity, or even make it the subject of anxiety. Media can keep us informed, but it can also steal our focus and drain our energy, especially social media. AI can help students learn, or it can help them avoid learning. Technology itself has no agency to choose between these paths; we do.
This responsibility exists at all levels: from society as a whole, to institutions, to families, down to each individual. Companies should strive to design healthier products—snack foods that aren’t calorie-dense, smartphones with screen time controls built in to the operating system. There is a role for law and regulation as well, but that is a blunt instrument: there is no way to force people to eat a healthy diet, or to ensure that students don’t cheat on their homework, without instituting a draconian regime that prevents many legitimate uses as well. Ultimately part of the responsibility will always rest with individuals and families. The reality, although it makes some people uncomfortable, is that individual choices matter, and some choices are better than others.
I am reminded of a study on whether higher incomes make people happier. You might have heard that more money does not make people happier past an annual income of about $75k. Later research found that that was only true for the unhappiest people: among moderately happy people, the log-linear relationship of income to happiness continued well past $75k, and in the happiest people, it actually accelerated. So there was a divergence in happiness at higher income levels, a sort of inverse Anna Karenina pattern: poor people are all alike in unhappiness, but wealthy people are each happy or unhappy in their own way. This matches my intuitions: if you are deeply unhappy, you likely have a problem that money can’t solve, such as low self-esteem or bad relationships; if you are very happy, then you probably also know how to spend your money wisely and well on things you will truly enjoy. It would be interesting to test those intuitions with further research and to determine what exactly people are doing differently that causes the happiness divergence.
Similarly, instead of simply asking whether social media makes us anxious or depressed, we should also ask how much divergence there is in these outcomes, and what makes for the difference. Some people, I assume, turn off notifications, limit their screen time, put away their phones at dinner, mute annoying people and topics, and seek out voices and channels that teach them something or bring them cheer. Others, I imagine, passively submit to the algorithm, or worse, let media feed their addictions and anxieties. A comparative study could explore the differences and give guidance to media consumers.
In short, we should take an active or agentic perspective on the effects of technology and our relationship to it, rather than a passive or fatalistic one. Instead of viewing technology as an external force that acts on us, we should view it as opening up a new landscape of choices and possibilities, which we must navigate.
’s book Indistractable is an example, as is ’s call for a media temperance movement.We should also take a dynamic rather than static perspective on the question. New technology often demands adjustments in behavior and institutions: it changes our environment, and we must adapt. For thousands of years manual labor was routine, and the greatest risk of food was famine—so no one had to be counseled to diet or exercise, and mothers would always encourage their children to eat up. Times have changed.
These changes create problems, as we discover that old habits and patterns no longer serve us well. But they are better thought of as growing pains to be gotten through, rather than as an invasion to be repelled.
When we shift from a static, passive framing to a dynamic, agentic one, we can have a more productive conversation. Instead of debating whether any given technology is inherently good or bad—the answer is almost always neither—we can instead discuss how best to adapt to new environments and navigate new landscapes. And we can recognize the responsibility we all have, at every level, to do so.
Would you say that making something that is destructive in large quantities addictive is bad?
If you were allowed free and easy access to coccaine as a child and got addicted, would it really be your fault?