DELIBERATE INTERVENTION

A debut policy book calls for the regulation of digital technology.

Right at the start of her detailed work, Schmidt lays her cards on the table so readers will know whether or not they fundamentally agree with the pages that follow. When it comes to the vast subject of digital technology and its effects on young people, the author contends that society cannot afford to leave all meaningful regulation in the hands of the tech creators and purveyors. “Placing the responsibility on individual designers to fix these problems through ‘ethics’ is insufficient as a single response, particularly when capitalism is the paradigm they function in,” she writes. “Beyond these individuals, reducing the harms of digital technology is simply too big a challenge for the private sector to address on its own.” Schmidt takes some time to detail the history of governments intervening in order to regulate new technologies—everything from railroads, toys, and appliances to, more pointedly, radio and television. The author then elaborates on key concepts like “pain points” (the specific ways new technology is causing individuals distress, which can often be addressed by redesigning it) and “harms,” which can’t be quickly solved and call for intervention. Readers of such earlier books as Jean Twenge’s 2017 iGen will be familiar with the alarms that Schmidt raises in these pages, worries about tech-augmented problems like “wrongful imprisonments, spread of conspiracy theories, broken familial relationships, addiction to dopamine, the fraying of democracy, and widespread discrimination along racial and gender lines.” The author’s prose is passionate and refreshingly direct—she’s always compassionate and evaluative (and the text is well illustrated by Broadbent and expertly designed). But some readers will be alarmed by the Orwellian undertones to Schmidt’s call for the top-down regulation of what many would consider individual freedom of expression.

A thought-provoking, if sometimes overreaching, argument for policing new technology.