by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Social media offers hope of achieving higher social status, something that is increasingly out of reach in our winner-take-most economy.
I’ve often addressed the decline of social mobility and the addictive nature of social media, for example, Why Is Social Media So Toxic?
I have long held that the decline of social mobility–broad-based opportunities to get ahead financially and socially–is part of a larger dynamic I call social depression: the social decay resulting from economic stagnation and the decline of social mobility and financial security. America’s Social Depression Is Accelerating.
Japan offers a real-world 30-year lab experiment in the negative social consequences of economic stagnation, a topic I’ve addressed since 2010: The Non-Financial Cost of Stagnation: “Social Recession” and Japan’s “Lost Generations”