Perfection is not available to humankind. Flaws and contradictions are hardwired into our nature. Yet, it is upon the illusion of perfection that professional public health fanatics operate. They cling to the belief that there once existed an ideal state of human existence, before societal ills corrupted us.
I imagine that for them the pinnacle of mankind might have been during the Pleistocene era — a time when the collectivist unit of Neanderthals would haul freshly slaughtered woolly mammoths back to the campfire, gathering for an evening of communal storytelling. Things were simpler back then, they may wistfully claim. In their view, it was only through the rise of industry, capitalism and contemporary excesses that humanity fell from this supposed state of purity, leaving behind a world that must now be restored.
Nanny statists see it as their role to correct our self-indulgence. In framing every demand for regulation as the logical next step, they have managed to wrap alcohol, sugar, gambling, smoking, salt, baby formula and petrol cars in a puritanical chokehold. They cannot bear to imagine individuals may actually derive pleasure from smoking a cigarette, drinking a pint or laying a bet.
Now is the turn of social media. The murder of Sir David Amess, lockdowns and now a fictional Netflix series have each inspired calls for social media to be banned for under 16s. This has caused a swath of armchair scientists to start using big words like “dopamine”, to describe how predatory companies use our pleasure hormone to unwittingly manipulate us. Their sanctimonious stance is clear: alcohol, social media and gambling serve no useful or moral purpose, except to activate our dopamine response. Surely this could only be exploitative, right? Except, without the ability to feel pleasure, we couldn’t feel rewarded for eating, socialising, working or even basic survival tasks. Instead of returning to some imagined utopia of simplicity, we would simply cease to exist.
Anti-social media zealots often claim that devices are designed to be addictive — they are programmed to ensure that our dopamine receptors are continuously stimulated so that people remain on their platform for as long as possible. Yet there is no evidence that this is not just an incredibly sophisticated marketing technique — and one that’s been done successfully before.
Give fearmongering its scientific name: an exploitation of cortisol, our stress hormone
In the 1980s, two Austrians were attempting to manufacture a competitor to Coke, and they produced Red Bull — a more expensive beverage in a smaller can that was described by one focus group attendee as “tasting like piss”. Yet now, in a statistic which seems entirely illogical, it has a market share of 43 per cent. Why? Because we’ve been convinced that just one can is potent enough to “give you wings”. Indeed, in blind trials, people considered a cocktail labelled “Red Bull-vodka cocktail” to be more intoxicating than a drink marked “vodka cocktail”, despite the fact all the drinks were identical. This placebo effect would suggest that the actual effects of moderate caffeine consumption are exaggerated. There is no reason to suggest social media, in encouraging you to document every aspect of your life, is doing the same thing.
I do believe that giving children unfettered access to a digital world they are ill-equipped to navigate is irresponsible, and none of my own children have devices. Nonetheless, social media is just the latest stick left-wingers can beat capitalism with — this time on the basis that it makes us succumb to our innate weaknesses. They continue to operate from the premise that modern humans, from being exposed to poor societal practices, have no free will left and that we are at the mercy of profiteering corporations.
Social media is merely the trendiest target in a pattern of misplaced blame. In 2002 in Washington, 17 innocent civilians were murdered in cold blood by two snipers using a car with a broken back light to seemingly shoot their victims out of thin air. The lead member of the duo was later revealed to have been motivated by extremist ideology, having groomed his young, fatherless accomplice. But weeks into the investigation, Miami attorney Jack Thompson stated that the police should look at the plausible scenario that the shooter was “a video gamer trained on sniper video games”.
To this day, there is no evidence that violent video games translate into real-world aggression, just as there is no evidence online misogynistic material translates to an increase in male on female violence. Before social media was destroying young women’s self-esteem, thin models in glossy magazines were the culprit. The cycle repeats itself for every industry that deigns to make money for what the zealots designate as pointless endeavours: moral panic, misguided blame and an ever-growing push for control under the guise of protection.
It seems ironic that various organisations, institutions and charities endlessly criticise the abuse of our pleasure hormone when they appear to have zero qualms about the effect of their behaviour on our brain chemistry. The Lancet Planetary Health Survey found that 45 per cent of 16 to 25 year olds reported that climate change negatively affects their daily lives — meanwhile, 46 per cent of parents expressed significant concern about their teens encountering explicit content on social media. Let’s give fearmongering its scientific name: an exploitation of cortisol, our stress hormone. With this, public health officials have managed to demand evermore of our policymakers to the tune of £3.8 billion per year, behaving no differently to the billionaires they demonise as corporate and rapacious.
Public health obsessives want to punish humans for simply being human. They want social media companies to pay, both financially and otherwise, for their allegedly ruination of young, impressionable men. They want gambling companies to be fined in their thousands and millions for a tiny per centage of adults becoming addicted. They want to save the NHS cash by forcing supermarkets to increase the price of alcohol. In their eyes, life was simpler — less pleasurable but certainly more manageable — before we had the luxury of taking breaks from hunting and gathering to simply enjoy ourselves.
