Social media kills as surely as sugar

Many civilizations have disappeared for not having seen that a major innovation could become fatal for those who could not protect themselves from its catastrophic consequences. This is the case today with social networks: they can destroy humanity. Not only because they contribute, in an unforeseen and soon major way, to greenhouse gas emissions, which aggravate the climate crisis, but also because they accelerate the process, started long before them, of shortening the lifespan of objects, efforts, feelings, relationships, projects. And because, under cover of multiplication of connections between individuals, they too often only aggravate the loneliness of all. It is not a new phenomenon: most men have been thinking more about the present moment than their long ambition for a long time. For a long time now, many have lost a sense of the hierarchy of events and priorities. Many lose interest in others, right next to them, as in the world they will leave behind. Social networks give a paroxysmal version. And we can only be sorry to see so many people who have spent years preparing for their future through studies start to become obsessively interested in the immediate image of themselves that social networks send them, to the point of spending between three and six hours a day looking at it. Hours during which they are solicited by increasingly summary, aggressive, extremist information and information, aimed at retaining more and more evanescent attention. Hours they can no longer spend learning, creating, loving, discovering, sharing, living. In the realm of social networks, any subject cannot hold attention for more than a few minutes, even a few seconds. Everything that is planned does not make sense. Anything that is not scandalous is worth nothing. Politics itself are reduced to a juxtaposition of short sentences, without really worrying about the reality on the ground and people's lives. Art is reduced to what causes scandal, forgotten as quickly as it was carried to the pinnacle. It is time to react: To no longer allow yourself to be dominated by the permanent spectacle of invective and false scandals. Not to be contaminated by information bulimia; so as not to succumb to virtual obesity. Social networks kill as surely as sugar. Jacques Attali - Le journal des arts