Moral panic has always sold newspapers.
I'm not saying you're wrong but I think this perspective has helped me see things a bit differently.
But I've always been uncomfortable with the opposite extreme position, the implicit reaction to the moral panic. The argument where TV, movies, games, social media, it's not possible for them to have any real effect on their viewers psychologically, regardless of content, even when they're exposed to dozens of hours a week in some extreme cases.
That strains my credulity. There's been a lot of research done which suggests it is true; it has an impact. For example, exposure to violent media doesn't appear to cause violence by inducing insensitivity to horror and the disgust, as once hypothesized. But it does seem to cause anxiety about being the victim of violence. The more violent TV news and violent movies you watch, the more you overestimate your chances of being horribly murdered one day. But you know, maybe it does just make us violent. The mass shooter phenomenon is, arguably, a media-propagated thing. Copycats upon copycats, inspired solely through media exposure.
Similarly, sexualized material does not turn people sex-crazed, it makes them sex-negative and apprehensive about their own body image. As a general rule, the more porn you watch, the fewer sex partners you have. There has been a massive change in the sexual behaviour of young adults over the last couple decades -- they have literally half as much sex as we did in my generation. Could it possibly have something to do with the media boys watch?
Hard agree. The example that won't leave my mind is product placement: As a marketing concept it revolves around the idea that consumers seeing your product more than others means your product will come to their mind first and therefore purchase it more. It's why so many characters use brand name goods on TV. Companies spend good money on this - they wouldn't do that if they didn't think it worked. And if seeing our favorite character enjoy Coke makes us more likely to be Coke, why wouldn't be influenced by other things? Who says you have to 'sell' a physical product for this to work?
TV, for instance, has pretty clearly been a net negative due to its impact on the social fabric and people’s, especially children’s, minds. The fact social media is even worse doesn’t change that.
I don't think this is clear. What kind of effects do you think TV has had on the social fabric?
The average content on social media (at least if you let yourself be led by algorithms) is easily as bad as the worst content on cable TV. Some of it is worse than almost anything on TV in a very specific way: it’s utterly mindless. I’m continuously shocked by the mindlessness of what trends on YouTube for instance. It lacks even basic plot or structure, just endless repetitive spectacle or people faking excited reactions while doing the most banal things. It barely qualifies as filler yet people eat it up.
Then of course you have the political and cultural trash. Right, left, up, down, but no matter what it is it must be dumb and extreme and inflammatory. The most successful stuff in this category either serves to inflame hatred toward someone else or feed narcissism in the target audience.
Absolute trash, it seems, is what maximizes engagement. I don’t like what it says about humanity.
Great art works to break people out of that sleep—that includes pop music and TV and whatever else.
The kind of garbage that gets elevated by these algorithms does the opposite—it buries peoples minds and numbs their senses. There’s a lot of money to be made off of people who are continuously preoccupied rather than present and feeling.
Unfortunately even that has changed now that everyone uses streaming services and plays always-online games.