How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

by Catherine Price

Or consider this: 4.76 billion people around the world use social media for an average of about two and a half hours per day. Do the math (which I did, repeatedly, because I couldn’t believe the result), and this suggests that, collectively, humanity is spending more than 1.3 million years’ worth of attention on social media platforms every single day. How could we possibly believe that this is not having an effect on how we behave and think? Indeed, we’ve already seen these changes happening, from riots stirred up by algorithmically selected content to elections that have been swayed by misinformation. Any person or company with enough money can pay to change people’s opinions and behaviors, simply by manipulating what type of content shows up in their feeds. Governments can, too.