As a philosophy-reading, longhand-letter-writing nerd who grew up in a house without a television, I’m sympathetic to Roger Scruton’s points about the dangers technology can pose to a fully human life and flourishing relationships. I agree that the interposition of a screen between two human beings can encourage them to act more hastily and speak more harshly than people interacting directly would tend to do. To the degree that media such as Facebook and Twitter facilitate our objectification of others and marginalize civility in our social behavior, I agree with Scruton that they are problematic.
I think he’s wrong, though, that problematic things demand categorical rejection. In his discussion of Facebook in particular, Scruton makes the following claim: “Anything that interferes with [the process of raising ourselves above the animal condition] by undermining the growth of interpersonal relations … is an evil. It may be an unavoidable evil; but it is an evil all the same, and one that we should strive to abolish if we can.” Here, Scruton slips into the fallacy that plagues everyone from teetotalers to gun control zealots: he equates “X can cause harm” with “X is inherently, unavoidably, and always harmful.”
Sure, Facebook “friendship” can eviscerate real friendship, and social media can enable antisocial behavior. But can is not the same as must. These same media facilitate the activity of community groups, serve as a source of information on political and social issues, and connect deployed members of the military with their loved ones back home.
Social media are tools for human interaction. Like most tools, they have no per se moral character; their goodness or badness depends on how they’re used. The challenge is to learn how to use them in a way that enhances, rather than endangers, human relationships.
Miriel Thomas is a research assistant in legal and constitutional studies at AEI. This post is part of a series tied to the May 11 AEI debate between Tyler Cowen and Roger Scruton on whether social media destroys human relationships.