6/9/2018Opinion | How Evil Is Tech? – The New York Times
https://www .nytimes.com/2017/1 1/20/opinion/how-evil-is-tech.html1/3
How E vil I s T ech ?
By David BrooksNov . 20, 2017N ot long ago, tech w as the coolest industry . Everybody w anted to work at Google, Facebook and
Apple. But o ver the past y ear the mood has shifted.
Some now believe tech is lik e the tobacco industry — corpor ations that make billions of dol lars
peddling a destructi ve addiction. Some believ e it is like the N.F.L . — something mil lions of people
love, but which ev erybody knows leaves a tr ail of human wr eckage in its w ake.
Sur ely the people in tech — who gener ally w ant to mak e the world a bet ter place — don ‘t w ant to
go do wn this r oad. It wil l be interesting to see if they c an take the actions neces sary to prevent
their companies fr om becoming social pariahs.
Ther e ar e thr ee main critiques of big tech.The ?r st is that it is destr oying the y oung. Social media pr omises an end to lonelines s but actually
produces an incr ease in solitude and an intense a war enes s of social exclusion. T exting and other
technologies give y ou mor e control over y our social inter actions but also lead to thinner
interactions and les s real eng agement with the w orld.
As Jean T wenge has demonstr ated in book and es say, since the spr ead of the smartphone, teens
are much les s likely to hang out with friends, they ar e less likely to date, they ar e less likely to
work.
Eighth gr aders who spend 10 or mor e hours a week on social media ar e 56 percent mor e likely to
say they ar e unhapp y than those who spend les s time. Eighth graders who ar e heavy user s of
social media incr ease their risk of depr ession b y 27 per cent. Teens who spend thr ee or more hours
a day on electr onic devices ar e 35 percent mor e likely to ha ve a risk factor for suicide, lik e making
a plan for how to do it. Girls, especial ly hard hit, ha ve experienced a 50 per cent rise in depressive
symptoms.
S ubsc rib e t o The T im es
T his i s y our la st f r e e a rtic le .
6/9/2018Opinion | How Evil Is Tech? – The New York Times
https://www .nytimes.com/2017/1 1/20/opinion/how-evil-is-tech.html2/3
The second critique of the tech industry is that it is c ausing this addiction on purpose, to make
money. Tech companies under stand what c auses dopamine sur ges in the brain and they lace their
products with ” hijacking techniques ” that lure us in and cr eate “compulsion loops.”
Snapchat has Snapstr eak, which rewards friends who snap each other ev ery single day, thus
encour aging addicti ve beha vior. News feeds ar e structured as “bottomles s bowls” so that one
page view leads do wn to another and another and so on for ever. M ost social media sites cr eate
irregularly timed r ewards; y ou ha ve to check y our device compulsi vely bec ause you nev er know
when a bur st of social af ?rmation from a Facebook lik e may come.
The thir d critique is that Apple, Amazon, G oogle and Facebook are near monopolies that use their
market power to in vade the pri vate li ves of their user s and impose unfair conditions on content
creator s and smal ler competitor s. The politic al assault on this fr ont is gaining steam. T he left is
attacking tech companies bec ause they are mammoth corpor ations; the right is at tacking them
bec ause they ar e culturally pr ogressive. T ech wil l have few defender s on the national scene.
Obviously , the smart pla y would be for the tech industry to get out in fr ont and clean up its own
pollution. T here ar e acti vists lik e Trist an H arris of T ime Well Spent, who is trying to mo ve the
tech w orld in the right dir ections. There ar e ev en some good engineering r esponses. I use an app
cal led M oment to tr ack and contr ol my phone usage.
The big br eakthrough wil l come when tech executi ves clearly ackno wledge the centr al truth:
Their technologies ar e extremely useful for the t asks and pleasur es that require shal lower forms
of consciousnes s, but they often cr ow d out and destr oy the deeper forms of consciousnes s people
need to thrive.
Online is a place for human cont act but not intimacy. Online is a place for information but not
re?ection. It gi ves y ou the ?r st stereotypic al thought about a per son or a situation, but it’ s hard to
carv e out time and space for the thir d, 15th and 43 rd thought.
Online is a place for explor ation but discourages cohesion. It gr abs control of your attention and
scatter s it acr oss a v ast range of di verting things. But w e are happiest when w e have br ought our
liv es to a point, when w e have focused at tention and wil l on one thing, wholeheartedly with al l our
might.
Rabbi Abr aham Joshua H eschel wr ote that w e take a br eak fr om the distr actions of the w orld not
as a rest to gi ve us mor e strength to di ve back in, but as the climax of li ving. “The sev enth da y is a
palace in time which w e build. It is made of soul, jo y and reticence, ” he said. B y cutting of f work
and technolog y we enter a dif ferent st ate of consciousnes s, a different dimension of time and a
differ ent atmospher e, a “mine wher e the spirit’s precious met al can be found. ”
6/9/2018Opinion | How Evil Is Tech? – The New York Times
https://www .nytimes.com/2017/1 1/20/opinion/how-evil-is-tech.html3/3
Imagine if instead of claiming to of fer us the best things in life, tech mer ely saw itself as pr oviding
ef ?cienc y devices. Its inno vations c an save us time on lo wer?lev el task s so w e can get of ?ine and
there experience the best things in life.
Imagine if tech pitched itself that w ay. T hat w ould be an amazing sho w of realism and, especial ly,
humilit y, which these da ys is the ultimate and most disrupti ve technolog y.
Fo llo w T h e N ew Y o rk T im es O pin ion s e ctio n o n Fa ce b ook a n d Tw itte r ( @ NYTo p in ion), a n d s ig n u p f o r t h e O pin ion T o d ay
n ew sle tt e r.
A v e rs ion o f t h is a rtic le a p pears in p rin t on Nov . 2 1, 2 017, on P ag e A2 7 o f t h e N ew Y or k e d it ion w it h t h e h ead lin e: H ow E vil I s T e ch ?
