Blog

Donald Trump won the presidency by using the social network’s advertising machinery in exactly the way the company wanted. He’s poised to do it again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/how-facebooks-ad-technology-helps-trump-win/606403/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

The architecture of the modern web poses grave threats to humanity. It’s not too late to save ourselves.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. A report on what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/facebook-authoritarian-hostile-foreign-power/620168/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

China has gotten closer to its holy grail: a system that can eliminate not just the words democracy and Tiananmen from the internet, but the thinking that leads people to become democracy activists or attend public protests in real life.

Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/campus-left-university-columbia-1968/678176/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

Why the Protests Help Trump

The excesses of social protest movements can play into the hands of candidates who promise to restore order.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/opinion/student-protests-trump.html?smid=em-share

The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism

Our biggest mistake would be to believe that Trumpism is a historical exception.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/opinion/trump-second-term-illiberalism.html?smid=em-share

Are Smartphones Driving Our Teens to Depression?

The evidence reveals a more complicated reality than the conventional wisdom would have you believe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html?smid=em-share