<!-- wp:html --><p>Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty</p>
<p>If you only read <em>The Atlantic</em> to get your <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-school-tech-treats-students-with-disabilities-like-criminals?ref=wrap">tech news</a>, you’d probably be under the impression that <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/all-the-big-ideas-for-fixing-social-media-are-bad?ref=topic">social media</a> is a Leviathan on an inexorable path to <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-visible-deterioration-in-american-democracy-is-just-the-start-of-what-the-gop-has-in-for-us">devour democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Headlines scream that Facebook is a “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/">Doomsday Machine</a>” and an autocratic “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/facebook-authoritarian-hostile-foreign-power/620168/">hostile foreign power</a>” that has made American life “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/">uniquely stupid</a>.” A recent <em>Atlantic</em> headline to a Jonathan Haidt article said it plainly: “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/social-media-harm-facebook-meta-response/670975/">Yes, Social Media Really Is Undermining Democracy</a>.”</p>
<p>Whatever the magazine’s editorial stance, these claims are not empirically grounded, and it’s unlikely they’ll stop being used any time soon. <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-and-republicans-unite-to-bash-big-tech-but-luddite-populism-is-not-helping-anyone?ref=author">Scary narratives have a way of spreading</a> and taking hold in ways that “we don’t know yet” wouldn’t.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/dont-be-so-certain-that-social-media-is-undermining-democracy?source=articles&via=rss">Read more at The Daily Beast.</a></p><!-- /wp:html -->
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
If you only read The Atlantic to get your tech news, you’d probably be under the impression that social media is a Leviathan on an inexorable path to devour democracy.
Whatever the magazine’s editorial stance, these claims are not empirically grounded, and it’s unlikely they’ll stop being used any time soon. Scary narratives have a way of spreading and taking hold in ways that “we don’t know yet” wouldn’t.
