With adolescent suicides having risen by around 50% since 2008, the U.S. Surgeon General has warned about the threat to young people’s mental wellbeing from exposure to online bullying and other forms of toxic behavior. Meanwhile, with just about any contentious issue now locked in volleys of abuse between warring interest groups, we are finding it hard to ascertain facts and, by extension, to resolve urgent issues such as climate change and the Gaza conflict. More broadly, as Frank McCourt and I argue in our forthcoming book, Our Biggest Fight, the internet economy as currently structured is responsible for the wholesale decline in the health of our democracy.
