Moral Panics Aren’t Necessarily Wrong

Don’t dismiss the downsides of change

Photo by Alex Bracken on Unsplash

You can’t get too far into the current cultural battle over smartphones, social media, attention, and mental health before you hear the term “moral panic.” First coined by the sociologist Stanley Cohen, the term describes a process by which:

• Something new poses a threat to established values.
• The media amplifies concerns about the threat, often identifying “folk devils” (aka bad guys) to blame the problem on. Sometimes, “moral entrepreneurs” see an opportunity and make some money by publishing books or otherwise capitalizing on the panic.
• The public becomes very worried about the negative impacts of the new development.
• Elites (journalists, academics, politicians, etc.) adopt the concerns of the public and act through regulation or the establishment of social norms to stifle change.

The idea of moral panics is compelling, and once you start looking at history through this lens, you can see moral panics everywhere — from the Salem Witch Trials to freakouts about jazz music in the 1920s to the Red Scare of the 1950s. I’m not sure when I first heard the term, but it seems to have become a more and more popular framework in the last few years, popularized by, among other things, the “You’re…