Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presented a forceful analysis of the damage smartphones and social media are doing to our cognition, our civic fabric, and our children's wellbeing, while calling for renewed action to ward off their effects, in the latest of MIT's Compton Lectures on Wednesday. 'Around the world, people are getting diminished,' Haidt said. 'Less intelligent, less happy, less competent. And it's happening very fast ' My argument is that if we continue with current trends as AI is coming in, it's going to accelerate. The decline of humanity is going to accelerate.' Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business and the author of the recent bestseller 'The Anxious Generation,' which suggests that the widespread adoption of social media in the 2010s has been especially damaging to young women, making them prone to anxiety and depression. But as Haidt has continued to examine the effects of social media on...
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