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The high price we pay for social media | Tim Harford

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Sitting exams is unpleasant at the best of times, but my daughter believes she has extra cause to complain. Two of her A-level papers are scheduled for the same time, so she must take a break between them with only an invigilator for company. “I can’t even have my phone,” she protests. Because I am the worst parent in the world, I opine that it would be very good for her mental health to be without her phone for a couple of hours. She could challenge me to prove it, but more sensibly, she rolls her eyes and walks away. Ernest Hemingway once declared that “what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after”. I’m not sure if that stands up to philosophical scrutiny, but I do think it’s worth asking ourselves how often we feel bad after spending time on social media. I usually feel disheartened and a little self-loathing after doomscrolling on Twitter in a way that I never feel after reading a book or a decent magazine. That’s the experience of a midd

Sitting exams is unpleasant at the best of times, but my daughter believes she has extra cause to complain. Two of her A-level papers are scheduled for the same time, so she must take a break between them with only an invigilator for company. “I can’t even have my phone,” she protests. Because I am the worst parent in the world, I opine that it would be very good for her mental health to be without her phone for a couple of hours. She could challenge me to prove it, but more sensibly, she rolls her eyes and walks away. Ernest Hemingway once declared that “what is moral is what you feel…

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