[stevenAthompson]

Literacy rates have been declining in lock-step with the increase in social media usage. We are now at the point that 54% of Americans read below the sixth grade level. 1 in 5 are functionally illiterate. Those numbers will be worse next year, and probably in every subsequent year.

The average person now spends more than 4 hours per day looking at their phone, but only about 60% know that social media companies make their money via advertising. Around 48% know what a privacy policy is.

These massively uninformed, heavily manipulated citizens make up the majority of voters now and democracy may die because of it. Worse, anti-science madness in the form of anti-elitism and populist zero-sum economic lunacy have begun to prevail above reason.

Screens may still spell the end of personal liberty and an abrupt end to the forward march of human progress. It's just taken a bit longer than parents predicated when they tried to ban Beavis and Butthead.