Today's Exercise: Learn The Arguments Against Social Media

On Tuesday, I shared the implicit formula of social media, how we compete for more followers and command more attention so we can influence social, political, and economic decisions. The systems—Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever—have trained us to pull people into their platforms. And once the people find themselves in the feeds, they’re sitting ducks, ready to be mind-hacked.

Trying to understand this sort of mind-hacking, I’ve turned to a variety of thinkers, social media skeptics...