It was January 2025 when I decided to stop using Instagram. It was right after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would end its third-party fact-checking program. After doing so, I sent messages to several friends using WhatsApp (ironically also owned by Meta), telling them of my decision and asking to connect via chat messages.
Over chat messages exchanged, I’ve learned that one of my friends was living in another city, and was about to marry, another shared with me that he needed to reduce the use of social media and spend time with his wife and daughter.
Exchanging voice messages with my friends felt great, and I learned more about their lives than by following them on social media. Exchanging voice messages with my friends felt more genuine, more personal, and more real.
It was not so hard for me to stop using Instagram, since I made a similar decision in 2014, when I quit my Facebook account. At that time, I realized how much time I was wasting and subconsciously comparing myself with others. I was aware that people tend to only post the bright side of their lives and much of the content there is a “made-up” version of reality.
Nevertheless, I could not help feeling illogically jealous of other people’s lives, or feeling down with mine for no rational reason.
On social media, almost everyone has successful careers, cooks like three-star Michelin chefs, is in perfect relationships, or is on vacation in an exotic place. Deep inside, I knew this was not real life, so I decided to unplug and focus on what was real.
Later on, I discovered that this unconscious behavior of comparing myself with others, and feeling sad, is also felt by many (Abi-Jaoude et al., 2020).
I am still using LinkedIn for professional purposes, but I’m increasingly aware that even there the feed is engineered for engagement rather than the quality of content.
But now, after a detox period from social media, I am trying to be more selective with the content I consume on the web. I started to read more books, search for content in blogs and websites, seek information both from mainstream and independent media sources, and really look for information that would challenge me to see things from multiple perspectives.
So, it might look like this essay is about social media addiction, but is not.
It is about something quieter: the slow erosion of our ability to think for ourselves and effectively navigate a world of competing narratives, misinformation, manufactured urgency, cognitive overload, and accelerating technological change. This erosion did not start now and is not linked to a single technology. Our relationship with critical thinking was not broken at once, but rather in a gradual process that has been happening in stages.
At this precise moment in history, it is of high importance and urgency to acknowledge this, so we can preserve what is left of our ability to think critically to make sense of such a complex reality, navigate the world with consciousness, resist manipulation, and ultimately participate in how the future is being shaped.
Why bother researching? Just Google it!
It started with search engines and our instant ability to find whatever we want. Researching for knowledge became so easy, allowing us to quickly find almost anything we wanted to know in a few web searches.
I used to joke that we were outsourcing our memory to Google and Wikipedia, but joking aside, this might be what is actually happening. In the past you had to use your memory, today you can simply open your browser and google it.
Search results come in order of “relevance,” and we no longer need to think deeply about the sources of information provided. We don’t need to read different arguments and make our own judgement about what content is the most relevant. Since search engines bring a huge volume of sources, we outsource our choice to the algorithm.
Besides removing our genuine choice and making us susceptible to manipulation, we also lose our ability to read and analyze content deeply. We scan through results not to evaluate deeply, but to skim broadly.
Our ability to sustain attention, perform creative tasks, and learn began to atrophy not from the absence of information, but from its overwhelming presence.
The growing impairment of our cognitive ability to focus and concentrate on deep reading (for increased comprehension or enjoyment) came into focus when Nicholas Carr published an article in 2008 called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The article described Nicholas’s difficulty engaging in longer readings that were previously effortless or enjoyable. According to him, this became difficult and torturous after being exposed daily to the Internet and the use of search engines.
His article sparked a heated debate among scholars, neuroscientists, and journalists about the effects about the effects of the internet on our reading patterns and ability to concentrate and interpret textual information.
It is no surprise that since 2000, the rate of children who read for fun has plummeted, and a study published in 2023 suggests that digital reading is negatively affecting kids’ ability to comprehend texts (Pomeroy, 2024).
How to melt our children’s brains
Since my son was born in 2018, my wife and I have made a conscious effort to be more self-aware of our use of mobile devices and screen time. We have always believed that children are highly influenced by their parents’ example.
In our home country, Brazil, there is a strong internet culture, and we have seen many parents allowing their children to be entertained by tablets or mobile phones.
I recall one time when we visited the country and went to dinner with family. Our son was very small, perhaps 3 years old, and was at the dinner table reading a book. The waiter stopped at our table and said:
“A book! That is so rare! It’s been a long time since I last saw a child without a tablet.”
Crazy as it may sound, it is true. Children are having access to screens from very early ages, and according to studies this cause deep impact on their brain and cognitive development.
Research shows that when a child gets bored, their imagination and creativity are then activated so they can create something fun, whether this is a story, a game, a drawing or other forms to explore their surroundings. This lack of external stimuli activates what we know as divergent thinking, a vital process for innovation and creative problem-solving.
What happens to children’s creativity when we never allow them to get bored? This question raised Paulette Delgado in the article “The Lost Art of Boredom: How Screen Time Is Killing Creativity?”, seems to capture the essence of the current problem faced by parents, educators and children. When a children are given a screen at very early age, they turn into passive consumers of external stimuli being bombarded into their brains, which kills their motivation and capacity to be creative. Additionally, it may also hinder children’s emotional resilience, as highlighted by the psychologist Jenifer Delgado.
“Boredom allows children to connect with their essence and develop an emotional resilience that will be useful to them in adult life.”
I am not so radical or naive as to think that we can completely avoid giving children access to screen. I myself allow my son to watch cartoons (on TV) and think he must get educated on using digital tools. Additionally, I think he can have fun and be entertained by video games (although we are delaying this as much as we can). But, the issue is the excessive and unsupervised exposure to screens in exchange of convenience.
A new drug affecting kids: social media crap
In 2020, we moved to Spain and we found what we considered a healthier environment where children were encouraged to spend more time playing outdoors. We also felt that parents, in general, shared our belief about the harmful effects of excessive screen time for small children. We also felt hopeful that this environment would help us protect our son from harmful exposure to social media and its addictive effects and mental health implications.
The recent lawsuit involving Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, reignited the discussion about the connection between Social Media algorithms, addictive content, and the associated mental health disorders it can cause into their consumers.
A comprehensive review of several cross-sectional studies conducted in different countries pointed to a correlation between the increase of social media usage among children and adolescents and the increase in mental health issues, including increased anxiety, sleeping disorders, self-harming behaviours, suicidal ideation, and death by suicide (Abi-Jaoude et al., 2020).
For example, the review shows that over the last decade in Canadian hospitals, there was a relative increase of 62% in mental distress issues while admissions for other issues decreased by 14%. More alarming is the rate of young girls showing self-harming behavior which went up by 110% from 2009 to 2014, and the increase in suicides among the young population which became the second biggest cause of youth death in 2015.
Another study points out that suicide rates have increased 47.5% since 2000, making it the second leading cause of death in U.S. adolescents prior to 2020. It also shows that depression among adolescents (between 15 and 19 years old) is ranked among the top illness causes globally.
Social media platforms have amplified their addictive power by engineering ways to increase user engagement by promoting polarizing content, novelty, and social validation over informative, analytical, or trustworthy factual information.
The algorithm is optimized to show what keeps you scrolling rather than what would make you better informed, and it became the primary way hundreds of millions of people encountered information about the world.
There are studies showing that the excessive use of social media is associated with impaired attention, reduced working memory, and diminished problem-solving skills (Naik et al., 2025). All key cognitive capabilities required for critical thinking and making sense of complex information.
With that said, it is not a coincidence that legislators in different countries — such as Australia, Denmark, France, Greece, Malaysia, Slovenia, and Spain — are studying measures to protect children and young populations from Social Media, in an attempt to compensate for the lack of effective guardrails implemented by the social media companies.
It is hard to deny how harmful social media has become.
It is documented, and it is in the media: the latest lawsuit faced by Meta shows undeniable evidence that Instagram was intentionally designed to be addictive and to target adolescents and pre-adolescents.
Those numbers and facts describe a generation of children who grew up with smartphones before they had the emotional architecture to manage them, and our collective failure as a society to enforce regulations that would protect them from a system designed to profit at all costs.
This only illustrates how a technology meant to connect people deviated from its vision as a result of loose or non-existent regulation. This is now one of the most pressing and concerning topics given AI’s rapid advances and scaling. The difference between a toddler handed a screen to avoid boredom and an adult who asks AI to avoid thinking is not one of nature, but of scale.
Don’t waste your time learning: “just ask AI”
Everything described above — attention fragmentation, passive consumption, retreat from primary sources, the outsourcing of cognition — is about to be amplified by AI to an unprecedented order of magnitude. The effects on our ability to learn, think critically and retain knowledge are also a subject of study and concern.
Please, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying AI tools aren’t useful. They surely can accelerate research and be a useful learning resource, but if misused or used excessively, they can have the opposite effect and destroy our ability to learn.
If you are using AI assistants you know: they don’t just surface information. They synthesize, frame, and present it with the fluency and (over)confidence of an expert. They remove the friction from thinking and trying to connect complex concepts and ideas — and that friction is a vital element for the learning to happen. Saveedra et al. (2025), cited the work of the renowned neuroscientist Barbara Oakley to explain how the learning process works and how AI can influence these processes:
“When you first learn something new, you use what scientists call declarative memory: Every step requires full attention.”
With repeated practice, those brain pathways become automatic, shifting to procedural memory. For example, when you first learn to drive, every movement demands complete focus. Now you navigate traffic while talking. Oakley and colleagues have applied this neuroscience to understand AI’s impact. When AI does the thinking for us, this crucial brain transformation never happens. The mental pathways that create genuine expertise simply don’t form.”
So relying heavily on AI-ready answers and its promise of high productivity can hinder our ability to learn and retain knowledge. For instance Bjork & Bjork (2011) explain a distinction between performance and learning. According to their research higher performance cannot be a good predictor of learning, as experiments evidence that improved performance might not be directly linked to learning and knowledge retention. Let’s put this way, memorising a sum and knowing its answer by heart does not ensure you learn how to sum up things. As highlighted by Savedra et al. (2025):
“Looking good in the moment (performance) is different from actually changing what’s stored in your brain long-term (learning). When a student uses ChatGPT to write a flawless essay, their performance looks stellar. But has real learning happened? Often, the answer is no.”
This transition from searching the web for content, to consuming answers from AI impares our judgment as explored by Pondiscio (2025). According to him, when using search engines you still need to think about keywords, explore the content brought by the search result and judge, based on your interpretation of results and your knowledge, what result is valuable and which result may be less useful.
You must know something to judge the results, whereas in AI the judgement element is removed. It does not simply retrieve you with results, but rather it makes an assessment of what is relevant and how to communicate on your behalf. As he points out:
“AI, used uncritically or as a shortcut, does the opposite. It trains us to trust rather than test what we read. Its convenience invites intellectual passivity. The effect is not enlightenment but rather a collective anesthesia.”
The overuse of AI in education is already measurable. A nationwide survey conducted in the US highlights that 90% of college faculty believe GenAI will diminish students’ critical thinking skills; 74% say it will affect the value of academic degrees for the worse (Gerlich, 2025).
In the Tech Industry there are reports showing that junior programmers who learned to code with heavy AI assistance are struggling to debug problems independently or understand the logic of code they didn’t write themselves. Students produce flawless essays they cannot explain. Researchers generate literature reviews on topics they have not actually read in depth.
The pattern is consistent: AI allows us to look smart without learning.
Over time the gap between what we can produce with AI and what we can actually know without it grows wider. This has major negative implications not only on how we learn things at work but also this may impact how education as a whole system works.
For instance, Pondiscio explores the work of the American educator E. D. Hirsch and use this knowledge to analyse how AI technology applied to education may offer risks for our ability to learn as well as to teach.
The “Teacher’s dilemma” describes the danger of AI misuse from the perspective of who teaches. For example, the practice of providing feedback on a student’s work is a foundational part of teaching and a complex one. The teacher must interpret student work, understand what it’s being communicated, whether the student’s understanding is accurate or not, and how to guide improvement. It relies on three core capabilities: the ability to understand the work from the student’s perspective, develop a human connection with the student, and be recognised by the student as someone with authority in the knowledge field, or that could push students to explore multiple perspectives of a problem or subject. If teachers excessively rely or misuse AI they risk losing all these three skills, and at some time frame their knowledge in what is considered relevant.
AI also relies on similar mechanisms exploited by Social Media to generate engagement, becoming indispensable in ways that raise questions about who controls knowledge in the future? And, what interests would it serve?
This is perhaps one of the most important questions of our time.
But here is an even more unsettling question: if people lose their ability to evaluate AI critically, how can they interrogate AI’s claims, notice its biases, recognize when its confident synthesis is concealing genuine uncertainty or corporate interest?
Keeping Your Critical Thinking in Check
When it comes to disruptive technologies such as AI, we tend to be overly optimistic or pessimistic with what is being out there. Some say AI will “solve the world’s most pressing problems” while others will lead humanity to “chaos and suffering (if not destruction)”. Although theories may be rooted in possible scenarios, they are usually amplified by excitement or fear. Note that a few industry players position themselves as the most ethical or “savior” choice (sometimes based on very arguable yet convincing press releases as we will explore in my upcoming article).
The reality? This is a complex, high-stakes game involving trillions in investments, deep ethical dilemmas around data privacy, control of global tech infrastructure, cybersecurity, tech weaponry, income concentration, mass surveillance, and more. You won’t find the truth on social media feeds or in corporate press releases. You’ll find it by rebuilding the habits of mind this essay has described, and by choosing your sources carefully.
Six Practices to Start Today
- Question your own bias first: I learned this the hard way after quitting Facebook. I realized I’d been consuming content that confirmed what I already believed, never challenging my assumptions. Before you settle on what AI means for the future, force yourself to read the strongest arguments against your position. If you’re excited about AI’s potential, read the technical critiques. If you’re convinced it’s overhyped, engage seriously with the research.
- Follow the money: When someone tells you AI will change everything, ask: who profits if this becomes a common widespread belief? Is this a polished demo shown under controlled conditions, or something tested at scale in real conditions? When companies overpromise and constantly redefine “success” ask yourself why the goalposts moved. These narratives aren’t reliable and are meant to please investors in the technology multi-billion-dollar game. We have seen several examples, from OpenAI statement that it would remain a non-profit organization not to bend its safeguards for money, to Anthropic promise to ensure risk mitigation before scaling potentially dangerous technology.
- Go to the source: I started doing this after realizing how much gets lost in AI summaries. Read the actual research paper, check who funded the study. When an article cites research, click through and read it yourself. By doing so you will find other angles that not brought in AI summary, and may even provide you additional insights for iterating over your answer or solution.
- Dedicate some time for offline reading: it may sound obvious or even nostalgic, but I do actually recommend some time dedication to read actual books as one of the key activities to keep your brain healthy. Visiting bookstores and spending time researching the book shelves could be surprisingly fun and spark your creativity.
- Using AI to enhance quality of work rather than purely automate work : I am using AI in some of my work activities, but I am trying to educate myself not to rely on it and become dependent on it to form my solutions or answers. I am actually finding quite productive to use AI to analyse the work I did, and get feedback on things I can improve on. It also helps me to find other works that would complement my view with alternative perspectives.
- Explore ethical alternatives AI tools: We may think we have a limited option of tools concentrate into the most popular big techs (Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft), but in fact there are several other projects in development. I am now exploring some other tools and there are several ones promising to reduce environment impact, keep your data private and not use for model training and so on. I will create a new post soon with the result of my exploration.
…
Read From People Who Aren’t Selling You Anything
Since I started my journey to detox from the overload of information and Social Media, I started to pay more attention to the voices that had no product to sell, no stock options to protect, no venture capital to justify. Here’s what I suggest for a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of AI landscape:
Ethics in technology, power dynamics and accountability:
- AI Now Institute — Rigorous analysis on who controls AI and what that means for power, labor, and democracy. Their annual landscape reports examine uncomfortable questions corporate white papers won’t touch.
- DAIR Institute — Timnit Gebru’s community-centered AI research formed by globally distributed group of academics, activists, and engineers who believe in technology that benefits everyone
…
Policy and governance:
- Tech Policy Press — Independent non-governmental press entity that advocates for better regulatory framework to advance a pro-democracy movement in tech and tech policy. They bring analysis and also offer a policy tracker tool that brings the list of laws and regulations in debate, along with government investigations and litigation, that will shape the rules and accountability for tech companies
- Centre for the Governance of AI — Explores policy and security research on international coordination, compute governance, and regulatory frameworks.
…
Technology publications and analysis:
- MIT Technology Review — world-renowned independent media company founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899 that explores and analyses the newest technologies and their commercial, social, and political impacts. Special focus on Karen Hao’s investigative work.
- IEEE Spectrum — Technical analysis for people who build things. The antidote to hand-waving.
- Gary Marcus — Cognitive scientist documenting AI’s limitations since 2018, back when skepticism wasn’t welcome. He’s not anti-AI. He’s anti-bullshit.
…
Independent journalism:
- The Markup — Nonprofit newsroom challenging technology to serve the public good through investigative, data-driven reporting.
- Futurism — Independent tech journalism covering the uncomfortable issue of technology deployment that are not commonly made visible in corporate announcements..
…
Read What Companies Promise with pragmatism
Once you’ve built a foundation of independent perspective, then read what AI companies publicly commit to:
- Google AI principles and yearly progress report
- Anthropic purpose and Claude’s constitution
- Open AI charter
- Microsoft AI Responsible Principles
…
But read them with pragmatism and reflect about questions such as : What specific commitments are being made here? What enforcement mechanisms exist? How would I actually know if these principles were being violated? Who has the power to hold them accountable, and have they ever used it?
Thinking as an act of courage
Václav Havel in his essay The Power of the Powerless, written from within a totalitarian regime, describes what he called “normalization” which is the slow process of accepting what feels wrong simply because it has become normal, out of comfort or lack of courage. However, the concept applies to current days: the normalization of outsourcing our thinking, and the fact that many of us do not challenge that out of convenience or fear.
As Havel maintained: truthful words and actions of citizens matter, and each one of us has the responsibility to be a bit more courageous than we want to be.
We have power to influence how technology evolves. But only if we use it now. Not later, after the decisions have been made. Not after we’ve become too dependent to choose differently.
The next essay in this series turns to the specific claims being made about AI by the people building it — and asks, with the critical tools we’ve been discussing, whether those claims hold up.
References
AAC&U.(2026) National Survey: 95% of College Faculty Fear Student Overreliance on AI and Diminished Critical Thinking Among Learners Who Use Generative AI Tools. The American Association of Colleges and Universities — Press Release [Online]: https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/national-survey-95-of-college-faculty-fear-student-overreliance-on-ai-and-diminished-critical-thinking-among-learners-who-use-generative-ai-tools
Abi-Jaoude, E. et al. (2020). Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health. Canadian Medical Association Journal [Online]: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/6/E136
Agence-France-Presse. (2026). French lawmakers vote to ban social media use by under-15s. The Guardian [Online]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/27/france-social-media-ban-under-15s
Amodei, D. (2024). Machines of Loving Grace. darioamodei.com [Online]: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace
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Delgado, P. (2025). The Lost Art of Boredom: How Screen Time Is Killing Creativity. Institue for the Future of Education — Tecnológico Monterrey [Online] https://observatory.tec.mx/edu-news/the-lost-art-of-boredom-how-screen-time-is-killing-creativity/
Havel, V (1979). The power of the powerless. Penguin Random House UK — vintage edition published in 2018.
Hay, K & Sherman, N. (2026). Zuckerberg defends Meta in landmark social media addiction trial. BBC [Online]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y42znjnjvo
Jingnan, H. et al. (2025). Meta says it will end fact-checking as Silicon Valley prepares for Trump. NPR [Online]: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/07/nx-s1-5251151/meta-fact-checking-mark-zuckerberg-trump
Livingstone, E. (2026). Australia has banned social media for kids under 16. How does it work? BBC [Online]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
Oakley, B., Johnston, M., Chen, K.-Z., Jung, E., & Sejnowski, T. (2025). “The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI.” In The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities (Springer Nature, forthcoming) [Online]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.11015
Ostanin, J. et al. (2025). Suicidal Behaviors Among United States Adolescents: Increasing Clinical and Public Health Challenges. National Library of Medicine — PubMed Central [Online]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11763352/
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Pomeroy, R. (2024). The loss of deep reading: How digital texts impact kids’ reading comprehension. Big Think [Online]: https://bigthink.com/the-present/digital-reading-fails-kids/
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Reuters. (2025). Malaysia says it plans to ban social media for users under 16 starting next year. NBC News [Online]: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/malaysia-says-plans-ban-social-media-users-under-16-starting-2026-rcna245562
Reuters. (2026). Slovenia prepares legislation to ban social media for under-15s. [Online]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovenia-preparing-law-ban-access-social-media-minors-under-15-2026-02-05/
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Revista más sana. (2025). Aburrirse también educa: el papel del aburrimiento en la creatividad infantil. Revista más sana — translated. [Online]: https://massanarevista.com/2025/07/10/aburrirse-tambien-educa-el-papel-del-aburrimiento-en-la-creatividad-infantil/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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