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Comment by taopai | Hacker News Reader

Could someone recommend me good and interesting books about how social media changed/s people. Socially and psychologically.

I just read Stolen Focus 2022, a book that talks about the downside of social media. But I got a little bit disenchanted with the second half.

Is Cognitive Surplus a good book? What else comes in your mind?

Thank you.

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While this doesn't directly match what you are looking for, you might be interested in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death from 1985.

From Wikipedia:

> In Amusing, Postman argued that by expressing ideas through visual imagery, television reduces politics, news, history and other serious topics to entertainment. He worried that culture would decline if the people became an audience and their public business a "vaudeville act". He also argued that television is destroying the "serious and rational public conversation" that was sustained for centuries by the printing press. Rather than the restricted information in George Orwell's 1984, he claimed the flow of distraction we experience is akin to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

This is the kind of book I was looking for! Thank you!

Books are really changing my life, and the best suggestions come from this website! Great books are amazing, it's sad now people focuses on pics and funny videos. I hope my friends read more.

I have not read Stolen Focus yet. But I enjoyed Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neal Postman and Bullshit jobs - David Graeber

Thank you! Other users recommended Amusing Ourselves to Death, this is what I was looking for. I'll add it to my list. I'll be enjoying it next week! :)

- The Shallows

- Amusing Ourselves to Death

- Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

Thank you. Wow, Reader, Come Home sounds very interesting! Now I am reading Reading in the Brain, a book that talks about how brain processes reading. Your suggestion it's a great match to follow it. I really like this topic!

Thank!

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