March 2, 2026
March 2, 2026
Since the 1950s, with the rise of alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food, society has been exposed to a series of new consumer-facing products engineered to exploit our physiology and addict people in the name of record profits. History has proven that businesses like these will stop at nothing to not only keep the status quo intact but also aggressively expand. As an example of this, look no further than Big Tobacco introducing, at one point in time, glass particles into their cigarettes to have the nicotine really kick in.
Fast forward to today, and technology companies have spent two decades engineering the next frontier: our psychology. Now, our relationships, identity, and volition are for the first time in human history being commercialized. Only a handful of tech companies monopolized the free and open web against its original promise of decentralization to become the trillion-dollar enterprises that they are today. These multinationals have become not just advertisement companies but what Shoshana Zuboff terms "surveillance capitalists." This new breed of capitalism made capturing human attention and reselling it at all costs the new economic imperative of the 21st Century. TikTok alone is commanding 1 billion hours of attention daily, which accumulates to 114.000 years every 24 hours.1
More and more people live life inside a digital phantom world, detached from the real one. In this new realm, 'these platforms hold a mirror to society,' Tristan Harris remarks, 'however, they are a funhouse mirror.' As such, all over the world, materially wealthy societies ow find themselves suddenly amid widespread erosion of trust, a cesspool of misinformation, contested negative partisanship, and debilitating meaninglessness, while individual citizens suffer from continuous partial attention and increased rates of suicidality, drug abuse, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Not only has well-being not kept up with wealth, which has tripled since the Second World War, but the reality is also far worse: it has actually been declining for almost three decades. Depression rates have increased tenfold over the same period. The average age of the first depressive episode has dropped from 29 to the teenage years, giving birth to the 'quarter-life crisis'. Trust in other people and institutions is eroding at roughly 2% per year — trust in the media has halved to 28%, and trust in government to do the right thing sits at just 17%. Do the math on how much runway that leaves us. I'm not sure what happens when we hit zero, but I think Hollywood already made a movie about it. It's called The Purge.2The canary in the coal mine is the heaviest users, screenagers, who are experiencing a global surge in social media fatigue and severe psychological distress. 40% of students report feeling 'too depressed to function.' +61% report feeling 'overwhelming anxiety.' 32% of teenage girls in the UK report Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves—according to Facebook's own internal research. There is a +78% increase in 'serious psychological distress' episodes by 20-year-olds. There is a +189% increase in 10-14-year-old girls being hospitalized for self-harm, as well as a +56% increase in teen suicides ages 10-24. The majority of these figures are compared to the pre-social media era and are growing double-digits annually. Those who proclaimed it was 'not a company but a social mission to make the world more open and connected' have yet to explain how, ironically, we ended up with the most disconnected generation in recorded history. As for the ambition to 'rewire the way people spread and consume information'—mission accomplished.3
As William James remarked in 1890, 'Our life experiences equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default.' As today's screenagers eventually reach the end of theirs, many will likely look back and realize — with painful clarity — that envying complete strangers and amusing themselves to death has inadvertently become the defining activity of most people alive in the 21st Century. If you do the math, over a lifetime, the average person will spend an estimated 44 years looking at a screen, which is roughly 54% — more time than they will spend sleeping, eating, and socializing combined. For the generation growing up today, discretionary time spent will live predominantly online rather than on-life. Congratulations to us: we made it out of the Stone Age only to enter the Screen Age. Of all that screen time, nothing is more reliably regretful than social media. As far as 'social' goes, the term is as absurd as selling cigarettes as 'lung refreshers.' The average adolescent now spends almost five hours a day on it — well beyond the three-hour threshold the U.S. Surgeon General found doubles the risk of depression and anxiety. Reaching for the screen every 6 minutes of their waking day — 2,600 taps, over and over, often preceded by a Pavlovian trigger they do not consciously register. As the age at which children are handed their first smartphone keeps dropping, doomscrolling life away will amount to a devastating total of approximately 11 years and 8 months — the single largest discretionary expenditure of their life. Why did we allow a technology to capture and resell an entire generation's attention from cradle to grave, as if it weren't the lifeblood of their very existence? They will inevitably ask, "What were all these junk connections for?" When it hits them that, despite years of frantic 'connecting,' all along, they in fact belonged to the generation with the highest self-reported levels of loneliness in recorded history. As a result, how many will conclude when it is too late that the story of their lives has been insidiously co-opted and shattered by addictive algorithms that were never on their side — but someone else's? If we continue down this path, we will have failed an entire generation by allowing them to be raised not just in a digital phantom world, but something akin to a digital abyss. We will be guilty of standing by and doing nothing while we watch as pre-adolescents — who lack the fully developed brain necessary for impulse control — inevitably become addicted to the technological narcotics of the 21st century. What was termed 'the social dilemma' in 2020 has escalated into a full-blown social catastrophe poised to wreck the lives of an entire generation.4
There is a narrow path forward, but misunderstandings about the nature of the problem remain a significant obstacle. In 1967, Marshall McLuhan warned of a dangerous tendency he termed ‘The Rearview Mirror’ effect, where people interpret the new through the lens of the old. The tendency to view technological, cultural, and innovative shifts through familiar frameworks prevents us from fully grasping the new. Extending the metaphor of driving, this flawed thinking would lead one, for example, to refer to a car as merely a ‘horseless carriage.’ In other words, to grasp our conundrum adequately and act decisively, we must not be deceived by the unrecognizability of the unprecedented. Within the realm of information technology, perceiving each new advancement as merely a linear continuation of its predecessor leads us astray. It suggests that radio is just an extension of writing and the telegraph; television, an extension of radio; and social media, merely a continuation of television. This Rearview Mirror conclusion blinds us to the radical transformations occurring; it is fundamentally flawed and impedes our ability to do what we must. The reality of the erosion before us is that we are confronting an entirely different beast. As Yuval Noah Harari points out, democracy is, at its core, a conversation. Today, we are in the midst of a post-truth epistemological crisis that renders large-scale conversation impossible, undermining people’s belief in meritocracy and the positive-sum nature of human cooperation. Let there be no doubt: much hangs in the balance. If this vicious spiral of distrust continues unchecked and permeates the level of nation-states, we might lose the unprecedented era of world peace we’ve come to take so much for granted. Humanity is a tiny candle surrounded by a vast darkness. I am often reminded of Earth’s veins of beautiful light shining so brilliantly they are visible even from outer space. From this vantage point, it becomes evident that if we prolong inaction, our unique flicker of light may soon be swiftly snuffed out. This future cannot be allowed to unfold. Thus, Telos was born to help accelerate the advent of a humane technology future.
The emerging field of responsible technology is to social media what clean tech is to the fossil fuel industry. Just as the environmental damage caused by burning hydrocarbons went unaddressed for years, the attention economy underlying social media has created significant negative externalities—both subjective and intersubjective—that we are only now beginning to understand. Polarization, fake news, junk values, information overload, addictive use, isolation, and influencer culture are just a few examples. However, as with climate change, these are merely symptoms of a larger system of perverse incentives and unaccounted-for costs. At the epicenter of it all lies a systemic imperative to increase time on device, unbothered by what it leaves behind. Given the unprecedented reach of social media today, anyone paying attention will realize that those who work at these companies are no longer merely designing products; they are designing people and society as a whole. The faster we collectively move away from the attention economy, the better.
Donella Meadows’ framework for changing complex systems teaches us that systemic change requires a paradigm shift—a fundamental change supported by a new mindset, new goals, and new structures sustained through realigned and reinforced incentives. Following this framework, the most effective lever to pull here is organized change through a market-based solution. A compelling alternative that is founded on a different economic model, rapidly spearheading innovation to continuously improve itself, ultimately moving the industry forward by applying competitive market pressure on incumbents. However, introducing a new product to the market and competing as a small entrant against entrenched, deep-pocketed incumbents is a daunting challenge—further compounded by reliance on network effects, entrenched consumer habits, and the need to find a new, disruptive, viable business model. Needless to say, it is hard to overstate the magnitude of these obstacles, let alone overcoming them all simultaneously. So a viable alternative must do more than eliminate surveillance capitalism, persuasive technology, and, ultimately, user regret in order to effectively transition away from the attention economy. As historian Rutger Bregman likes to say, the "I have a nightmare" line doesn't flow from the tongue as well as Dr. King's.
Consumers are unlikely to switch to an unproven "me-too" product that merely removes tracking and ads, enforces limits, or promises restrained self-regulation through, say, the digital-detox/diet software add-ons that have emerged recently. Applying bandages where surgery is required won't work. Instead, as Meadows' framework points out, a new paradigm needs something more. We need to go with the grain of humanity, not against it. Essentially, rendering doing the right thing not the noble choice, but more importantly, the self-interested superior choice. A new paradigm needs to pull, not push. Meaning, it needs to pull individuals with both a product that is better in every way and a vision that is new and exciting. The subtle distinction here comes down to this: the question isn't how do we spend less time on our phones. The right question to ask is: How do we spend more time on our life?
To better understand how something better could be offered in the future, it’s crucial to identify what we are being offered today. James Williams argues compellingly that we have entrusted our lives to something akin to a corrupted GPS. We were promised a companion, but rather than helping us define our destination and navigate toward it, this particular technology has proven to be adversarial in nature—guiding billions of people toward an awful destination they never intended to reach. The key difference, of course, is that we inexplicably continue to rely on this adversarial technology, whereas, after the third wrong turn, we would have thrown a faulty GPS out of the car. More generally, the ultimate purpose of today's sphinx-like adversarial technology can best be classified through the lens of an entertainment, information, and personal communication technology in one. As such, entertainment can be fun, but life is short, and amusing ourselves to death is tragic. As for the latter two, as technologies to inform or bond, social media has proven itself worse than useless—for the individual, it has proven counterproductive. Viewed through this lens, the status quo presents abundant opportunities for breakthrough innovations that could transform countless lives.At Telos, we are not playing by the rules of the attention economy, nor are we competing in the race to the bottom of the brainstem by exploiting human weaknesses in order to addict. We believe the future of this industry lies in technology that converts users into happy customers. Instead of propagating confusion and disinformation, it will provide trusted insight. Instead of fostering shallow junk connections, it will nurture lifelong companionships. Most importantly, instead of capturing and holding our attention, it will, for the first time, support our intention.1
Footnotes
1. "Surveillance capitalists": Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). "Funhouse mirror": Tristan Harris, testimony before U.S. Senate Commerce Committee (2019); Center for Humane Technology. TikTok commanding 1 billion hours daily: widely cited industry figure; 1B hrs ÷ 8,766 hrs/year ≈ 114,155 years per 24 hours. Big Tobacco & glass particles: verification pending — included as historical analogy.
2. Wealth tripled since WWII, life satisfaction flat: Diener & Seligman, "Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being," Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2004), Figure 1, p. 3. Depression rates increased tenfold: ibid., citing Robins et al., Epidemiological Catchment Area study (1984) and Cross-National Collaborative Group (1992). Average age of first depressive episode dropped from 29.5 to teens: ibid., citing Beck (1967) and Lewinsohn et al. (1993). Well-being declining since ~1990: Arthur C. Brooks & Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want (2023), p. xxiv — Americans reporting "not too happy" rose from 10% to 24%; Brooks, ARC 2025 keynote: "secular decline in happiness going back to about 1990" across OECD countries. Erosion of trust in people and institutions: Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001). Trust in media at 28%: Gallup, "Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S." (October 2025), n=1,000; down from 68% in 1972. Recent decline ~2.4%/year (40% in 2020 → 28% in 2025). Trust in government at 17%: Pew Research Center, "Public Trust in Government: 1958–2025" (December 2025) — 17% trust the federal government to do what is right "just about always" or "most of the time"; down from 73% in 1958.
3. 40% "too depressed to function" and +61% "overwhelming anxiety": American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment (2017). 32% of UK teenage girls say Instagram makes them feel worse: The Facebook Files, Wall Street Journal (2021) — Facebook's own internal research, leaked. +78% increase in "serious psychological distress" by 20-year-olds: Jean M. Twenge, "Age, Period, and Cohort Trends in Mood Disorder Indicators," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 128(3), 185–199 (2019). +189% increase in girls 10–14 hospitalized for self-harm: Center for Disease Control and Prevention, WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports (2009–2015). +56% increase in teen suicides ages 10–24: CDC Fatal Injury Reports (2007–2017). "Not a company but a social mission to make the world more open and connected": Mark Zuckerberg, S-1 IPO Shareholder Letter to prospective investors (February 1, 2012). "Rewire the way people spread and consume information": ibid.
Some of the subjective indicators cited above partially overlap with the COVID-19 pandemic period, which should be accounted for. However, the trends in youth mental health were well established before 2020 and have continued to accelerate post-pandemic.
Note: in the 1950s we started our journey in beginning to understand our physiology — junk food, asbestos, lead, and of course smoking. For the latter, how carcinogenesis develops in the lungs was for the common man more than a fuzzy concept — it was invisible, contested, and deliberately obscured by an industry with everything to lose. It is, as Tim Wu writes, "an underacknowledged truism that, just as you are what you eat, how and what you think depends on what information you are exposed to." And yet neurology — the science of a brain trying to understand a brain — is still in its infancy. So much so, it is important to appreciate that the DSM-5 only recognized behavioral addiction as a clinical category in 2013. Not only do we not have answers in the form of measurements, we hardly know what questions to ask. What are the effects of algorithmic information exposure on our psychology? Today, just as fuzzy as those smoke-filled lungs, indeed.
Ask yourself the following ridiculous questions we can't even begin to answer: at what count of followers, on which platform, will the identity of a self-absorbed influencer completely consolidate? We don't know. What information flow, divided by which particular news outlet, in what daily doses, will cause someone to believe that 5G caused a respiratory pandemic orchestrated by "the elites"? We don't know. And what dynamic of likes, comments, and messages classifies as an altruistic-reciprocity networking strategy for building "a brand and followership," versus two human beings trying to have an authentic friendship? We don't know.
Some researchers have dismissed the correlation between social media use and declining mental health as negligibly — as low as one percent of variance. As Haidt puts it, these people confuse the map for the territory. The dataset is not reality.
Haidt and Rausch make painfully clear the worsening well-being of children is a global phenomenon and no other variable can hardly explain it. Spending almost five hours a day, grabbing it every six minutes of waking life, tapping it almost three thousand times, constantly ringing Pavlovian bells with every notification, being continuously engaged in the unbounded preening of oneself, engaged in a predominantly passive consumption state of downward-social-comparison? This as the new, twenty-first-century predominantly discretionary activity of life is obviously stupid and yet another dumb experiment we should not run.
This "correlation is not causation" tactic is the same corporate playbook we have heard before. It was obvious when nonsmoking housewives of chain-smoking husbands developed cancer at a significantly higher rate. So too is it obvious now that nothing else is most probably the cause.
Unlike those who cite the one percent correlation confusion, as Haidt stresses, the burden of proof here is not that of a criminal trial — "beyond a reasonable doubt" — but that of a civil trial: the preponderance of the evidence. We do not need definitive causality to be prudent and wise here. We need probable cause. And the preponderance is overwhelming.
The reliable disastrous causality between time-on-device maximizing algorithms, neuronal rewiring, and its effects on our identity, our relationships to others, and ultimately our well-being, will be extremely obvious — and frankly dumb — in retrospect. I am with Haidt on Pascal's Wager here: if the alarm ringers are wrong, the costs are minimal and reversible. If instead the denialists are wrong, we will have stood by doing nothing while we ruined the lives of an entire generation. On the off chance a few trillion-dollar multinationals are going to miss out on some profit in Q3? Am I really going to take that chance, stand by, and do nothing? No. I will certainly not.
For further reading, my personal favorite on this subject is The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt (2018).
4. "Our life experiences equal what we have paid attention to": William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). 44 years on screens: Vision Direct / OnePoll research study (2020), n=2,000 U.S. adults — 17+ hrs/day across all screens over 60.7 adult years; by some estimates. 54% of waking life on screens: calculation based on ~8.5 hrs/day screen time (Common Sense Media Census, 2021: 8 hrs 39 min for teens 13–18) ÷ 16 waking hours = 53.1%. 89% of discretionary time on screens: ~8.5 hrs screen time ÷ ~9.5 hrs free time (16 waking hours minus ~6.5 hrs non-discretionary obligations) = ~89%. Almost five hours/day social media among adolescents: U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, stated at PBS interview (June 2024) and Dartmouth symposium (October 2025): "average use today of social media among adolescents is 4.8 hours." Three-hour threshold doubles risk of depression and anxiety: U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health (May 2023), citing Riehm et al., "Associations Between Time Spent Using Social Media and Internalizing and Externalizing Problems Among US Youth," JAMA Psychiatry (2019), ages 12–15. Every 6 minutes / 2,600 taps daily: The Brussels Times (2016), Android users; 150 daily unlocks across 16 waking hours ≈ once every 6.4 minutes. 11 years 8 months on social media: projected lifetime calculation based on ~4.8 hrs/day × 365 days × ~50 screen-active adult years. Highest self-reported loneliness in recorded history: Cigna Group / Morning Consult (December 2021), n=2,496, UCLA Loneliness Scale — 79% of adults aged 18–24 report feeling lonely, vs. 41% of adults 66+. ~1 in 2 U.S. adults experience measurable loneliness: U.S. Surgeon General Advisory, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation" (May 2023). For further reading on loneliness and social disconnection: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001).
5. "The Rearview Mirror" effect: Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967). "Democracy is, at its core, a conversation": Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018).
6. Systemic change and leverage points: Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008, posthumous). "I have a nightmare": Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There (2017). "Corrupted GPS" / adversarial technology: James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy (2018). "Amusing ourselves to death": Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). Decline in close friendships: Survey Center on American Life, "The State of American Friendship" (2021) — Americans reporting 10+ close friends fell from 33% to 13% (1990–2021). Mortality impact of social disconnection comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes/day: U.S. Surgeon General Advisory, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation" (May 2023), citing Holt-Lunstad et al. meta-analysis.
Learn more about Telos and our story.
