The Rise of the Smartphone and the Fall of Western Democracy

At a recent conference in Spain on polarization, Avila Kilmurray, a key player in the Northern Ireland peace process, reminded the gathering that the Good Friday Agreement received more than 71 percent support in a 1998 referendum. But, she said, “if the vote were held today, with the presence of social media, I don’t think it would pass.”

Kilmurray’s comment goes to the heart of the political, cultural and educational problems prompted not just by social media but also by the growing presence of all kinds of new technologies in our lives, especially artificial intelligence.

Is it even possible to weigh the costs of social media against its benefits?

Was the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 and 2024 one of the costs of social media? Is the rise in right-wing populism in the United States and Europe — accompanied by democratic backsliding in country after country — another cost?

On another front of equal importance, has a generation of young men and women, especially young liberal women, suffered heightened levels of depression and anxiety because of social media?

Are new technologies, especially artificial intelligence, weakening the ability of students to think and reason at length and in depth? Do they help explain declining reading scores?

The reality is that an accurate accounting of the first question — can the costs of social media be weighed against the benefits? — is an impossible task and may have little relevance, since there is no going back from a world with A.I., TikTok, Facebook, the internet, smartphones and Instagram, not to mention the technologies we don’t yet know.