Ask Lemmy

Eh people have been making the complaint that (insert new technology here) is ruining thenyout and making them less intelligent for milennia. Socrates complained that writing things down made people dumber because they don't memorize their studies, people complained about the evils of printed books causing reading hysteria after the Guttenberg press was invented and seeing wider adoption, the radio was hogging kids attention away from their studies, television was interrupting family conversation time, the telephone was distracting teenagers from some other bs excuse, it's complaints about new technology all the way down.

All these new technologies did in the past was change how we interact and required new kinds of skills and intelligence to use. It takes a different kind of knowhow to make a good tiktok than it does to write a good book.

Now if we want to talk about misuse of algorithmic suggestion and how that shapes thought, then absolutely, but that's not an evil inherent to the technology, that's people with power uing the tools they have at their disposal to harm others. People use books to spread bad messages, people use radio to spread bad ideology, people use television to harm and divide others.