> See: the glut of commentary from otherwise highly intelligent and accomplished people reporting their own ability to focus being negatively impacted by social media and short-form content.

Many people have long abandoned these platforms. No one is making you engage with them. These are not new problems. Famous example: Zuckerberg keeps his own family off his apps.

Your fourth paragraph is misinformed. Valorizing the Cronkite era is profoundly simplistic and boring. Humans always come up with alternative media. Conspiracies and half truths pervade every age. This entire internet ecosystem came up when the mainstream lied about the rationale for the Iraq War. Manufacturing Consent was written pre internet.

This paragraph also contains a contradiction with a statement you raise in your second paragraph as self-evident, given you offer no justification:

> given that we do now live in a society with a universal right to vote the need for an educated populace esp. regarding matters of civil society is more important than ever.

But in the fourth paragraph:

> Few of us have the time to consider the issues with any degree of nuance or accuracy.

So the populace must be educated but we need someone to tell us what to think because we have no time? Why is it so obvious that a society with universal suffrage requires an educated populace, vs say a populace simply capable of comprehending the instructions of an educated Cronkite?

Disclaimer: these are the contradictions raised by your own manner of framing the debate. The fact you missed this tension among neighboring paragraphs is something you have to account for. This is not the only such contradiction in your response fwiw, but hopefully you will grasp the nature of my point.

Do you not hear in your own arguments the same echoes of the uncritical pablum - the "glut" you also describe in contradictory terms - that passes for social commentary on "social media and short-form content" these days?

I merely suggest that you are just not thinking about these problems hard enough. Sorry, I'm not trying to cross some line, it just reads as obvious to me, on a critical evaluation of your statements. Why holding your statements to a high standard would be "beyond the pale" I'm not sure. You should spend less time online and reading more history. You would know better.

Here is something that may encourage you along these lines:

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus & Thucydides, for Newton & Euclid; & I find myself much the happier."

- Jefferson letter to John Adams, 1812.

Best of luck in your reading.

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