Response: Media Junk Food

This post is a summary of "Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good" by Mary Harington. Here is the link: to the original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/opinion/smartphones-literacy-inequality-democracy.html

The rise of smartphone-driven digital media is creating a new, profound form of class-based inequality, threatening not only individual cognition but the foundations of liberal democracy.

The author of a recent NYTimes article, Mary Harrington, frames this through an analogy to junk food: just as cheap, addictive, ultra-processed foods have led to a class-inflected health crisis where obesity is correlated with poverty, so too will addictive, short-form digital media create a "post-literate" class concentrated among the less affluent.

The core of the issue lies in how different forms of media shape the brain. Long-form, "expert reading" is a learned skill that rewires the brain for concentration, linear reasoning, and deep thought. In contrast, the current digital environment, with its torrent of short-form videos, notifications, and "slop content," is optimized for distraction. It neurologically conditions users for skimming and pattern recognition rather than sustained focus.

This is creating a sharp social divide. The wealthy and elite are actively shielding themselves and their children from this cognitive environment. They send their children to expensive tech-restricting schools (like Waldorf or classical schools), hire "no phone" nannies, and practice "dopamine fasting." Meanwhile, data shows that children from lower-income families spend significantly more time on screens, which research correlates with worse working memory, processing speed, and attention.

The societal consequences are grim. A population that loses the capacity for deep thought becomes a post-literate electorate which means it becomes more tribal, less rational, and easily moved by "vibes" and conspiracy theories over cogent arguments. This creates fertile ground for demagogues and oligarchs to manipulate a citizenry that lacks the attention span to engage with complex policy, ultimately eroding the substance of democracy itself.