[noduerme]

Can we stop redefining-down the word "pandemic" please? I think enough people are already going to stick their fingers in their ears and go "na na na" when the next actual pandemic virus comes along. Maybe just skip the comparison and say screen addiction is the most dangerous addiction humanity's ever seen. Then it just sounds like a normal hyperbole. Or try these:

"Screen addiction is an apocalypse"

"Screen addiction is a genocide"

...

[JKCalhoun]

It will interesting to see what term historians use. I suppose it depends on how disastrous they see our societal fetish for technology.

[noduerme]

Historians attribute the decline of the Roman Empire to lead in the water, but that doesn't make it a pandemic, it's something else. The Plague of Justinian was a pandemic. I'm arguing that it serves no purpose to conflate terms describing endemic social problems with those describing acute disease. In this case, language is important, and frequently weaponized.

[everdrive]

>Can we stop

No, that's not possible. Your comment will be seen by a tiny minority of people on the internet and is a drop in the ocean. The impulse to persuade social change works in small groups, and the frustration you're feeling is completely feckless on the internet. (ie, if you were saying "can we stop [thing] in a small workplace you might actually have success. Out here on the internet this is really impossible, and is a mismatch between our intuitions and reality.)

[crossbody]

Redefining "pandemic" is basically word violence!

/s

Fully agree with you comment. I am shocked that the hyperbole with the classic "greedy corporations are eating us alive" empty narrative got so many upvotes here