While I do think extreme doomerism about new technology is misguided, I also feel this hand wavy "they said it about us an we're fine!" dismissal is also misgui

While I do think extreme doomerism about new technology is misguided, I also feel this hand wavy "they said it about us an we're fine!" dismissal is also misguided. Just because TV and video games did not lead to total societal collapse does not mean they are free of negative side-effects, nor does it make these technologies necessarily comparable to any other generational-shift technology adoption. TV definitely had and has negative societal side effects. Prolonged and uninhibited video game usage definitely van have negate side effects. Same thing will likely be the case for smartphones. I also think smartphones are a special breed since they can expose children much more easily to fringe ideology than either video games or mass media ever could thanks to gatekeeping mechanisms. We'll never get a handle on appropriate, healthy societal relations with media technologies until we stop summarily treating them as purely negative, purely positive, or purely neutral and start doing the work of analyzing each technology and its use and potentialities in their particulars.