Social Media

Assignment: Superbloom: Chapters 5-6

Almost everybody experiences social media distracting us, exhausting us, and even angering us. And there is good evidence that the way we engage on social media isn’t simply as passive recipients but as people formed by practices and habits (think back to MacIntyre).

Today’s readings explore some of the challenges and consequences of our social media engagement by reading portions of Nicolas Carr’s 2025 book, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. Carr is best known for his 2010 book, The Shallows, an exploration of how the internet rewires our brains. Superbloom is broader and, in some ways, darker. As one friend suggested to me, an alternate title could have been Superbloom: I told you so fifteen years ago but you didn’t listen.

Superbloom traces the long arc of communication technology from the telegraph to today’s AI-driven platforms, showing how each wave promised new forms of connection and delivered some—but also came with costs we didn’t see, or didn’t want to see. Carr’s central argument is that our tools have become too frictionless, too fast, and too ubiquitous. They flood us with communication that isn’t actually conversation, information that isn’t wisdom, and connection that isn’t community. Constant messaging, algorithm-shaped feeds, and AI-generated content give us the impression of being connected to others when in fact we’re losing the skills, patience, and presence that make real relationships possible. In the chapters you’ll read, Carr argues that more communication does not necessarily produce more understanding, community, or democracy. Chapter 5 emphasizes that constant digital exposure to other people’s opinions, performances, grievances, and private lives can create irritation, envy, resentment, and contempt rather than sympathy; social life depends on boundaries, privacy, and selective disclosure, all of which digital platforms weaken. Chapter 6 critiques the belief that democratized communication naturally improves democratic life, arguing that open networks can amplify tribalism, demagoguery, conspiracy theories, and motivated reasoning as easily as they spread knowledge. Together, the chapters suggest that connection without limits can deform both personal relationships and public discourse, making people less patient, less charitable, and less capable of living with disagreement. Indeed, if we continue to replace embodied practices with digital substitutes because they’re easier, cheaper, or more scalable, we shouldn’t be surprised when the virtues those practices once cultivated begin to disappear. Universities, churches, workplaces, and civic groups cannot outsource formation to platforms without quietly redefining what kind of people they are trying to produce.