Is this article bookended by an ad for a VR meditation app?
In the last fifteen years I've seen the reigning take on the internet go from impossibly naive optimism to full-throated cynicism, and I think the switch more reflects the underlying material conditions shifting and people's general anxiety about the state and direction of the world than it does anything about the social effect of the technology itself.
Unlike anthropogenic climate change, which remains the real nightmare of our age, these are sociological theses that are not as easily defined or tested. Is our era really more hive-minded than that of the cable news generation, or the first people to be glued to their radios for centralized information? What is the casual role of the actual connective infrastructure as compared to how capital has invaded the space with digital tools that aim to hook your eyeballs for as long as possible? When new communicative technology develops, is the resulting increased access to information and perspectives worth the tradeoff when everyone's reading the same Martin Luther pamphlet?
These articles are all just following the same cynical trend, and much like the naivety of two decades ago, they put technology in the driver's seat instead of human relations, or capital. None of them are asking or attempting to answer any of the interesting questions imo. The only concrete point in the article is on having some tech-free spaces, which I agree would be a good thing. The younger generation that is coming into their twenties now may already be better at setting limits on their own than I was, and in my experience they have been quicker to recognize that their phone makes them feel anxious and disconnected.