It’s difficult now to remember a time before people were freaking out about social media. It feels like the definitive form of freaking out in my adult lifetime. The anxiety has gathered around two main points. One is the way social media reshapes our minds: the shredded attention spans, the gnawing sense of inadequacy, the addiction that makes you wander around in public staring blankly at your phone, at least until you bump into another, similarly zombified pedestrian. The other neuralgic issue is the threat to democracy. In just the last few weeks, there has been outrage at the collusion of social media platforms with government agencies to impose censorship, the role of conspiracy theories in the approaching American elections, and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.