The New Opiate of the Masses

Digital technology — social media, porn, online TV shows and movies, dating apps, clickbait, and video games — are seductive, offering free, immediate methods of escaping reality, transporting us into the world of the new, the exciting, the arousing.

Psychological remedies didn’t start with digital media. To counter the stress of eighteenth-century industrialization and rapid material, cultural, and social change, new diversions were created. Zoos, public parks, and the domestication of animals as pets. Our outlets have just taken a new, digital form.

Rather than drugs, sex, and rock and roll, our generation’s opiate of the masses — our tool for banishing mental pain rather than confronting it — is new digital media, and its streamlined, instantly accessible novel information and stimulation.

I wrote a book about digital addiction. Purchase now from Barnes and Noble or Indiebound.