Social media and young minds

to gauge the impact of social media? A quantum leap in communications? A tectonic paradigm shift in human interaction? An unprecedented sea change in access to information? Or — to consider shadier implications — a hindrance to learning, a gateway to false and misleading data, dangerous exposure to youthful vulnerability, a portal to personal despair and isolation and, in the view of some, even mass shootings? Paradoxically, the descriptors seem both inadequate and exaggerated, suggesting that 21st century culture doesn’t yet fully understand the human implications of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter and assorted other platforms which, in only a couple of decades, seem to have turned the world on its head. At least one thing seems certain, to Jews as well as everybody else: […]