How to Check Your Privilege
The status quo has been good for me. It hasn't for millions of other Americans.
Yesterday, I re-launched this newsletter under the new name The Agonist. More on that here. I’m really excited to be writing here more often and I look forward to engaging with more of you in the coming weeks and months.
— Shadi
Some of us have benefited from the status quo. Others haven’t. This, rather than left versus right, is the fundamental divide in American politics today, as I recently argued in The Washington Post. To wrestle with the last 15 years of American politics is to contend with the fact that society has changed considerably, in some ways even radically. Whether we think America is already great, or that it needs to be made great again, hinges on whether we think those changes have been, on balance, good — or bad.
In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt persuasively argues that smartphones have been something close to a disaster, particularly for young people. I don't disagree. In his fascinating essay on how to live without a phone,
captures just how dire the situation is. The kids aren't alright. But it's worse than that.The kids can't read. They can sound out the letters and recognise words, but they find it impossible to sit in one place and ingest a single extended linear piece of prose for more than five minutes. The kids don't go outside. They don't feel the sun on their skins. They spend whole summers locked in their rooms, alone, experiencing the world through five and a half inches of glass… The kids are desperately unhappy.
The story of smartphones, like most stories in the new America, is one of winners and losers — those who benefit from “the system” as it currently stands and those who don’t. While I really liked Kriss' piece, I'm not sure it produced the outcome he (or I) was hoping for. I came out of it more convinced that smartphones are actually quite useful. In being reminded of all the reasons that they're bad, it reminded me of all the reasons that they're good. So, it really comes down to what you prioritize. And that's a personal question.
But I think it's also possible to say two things at once: 1) smartphones are, on balance, good for me, and 2) smartphones are, on balance, bad for society at large. One can say the same for any number of other things, such as college debt relief. It's good for elites, because it disproportionately benefits the college-educated, who still represent a minority of the overall population. But it's not particularly good for the rest of society.
This tension between individual benefit and collective harm is what makes the smartphone debate so intractable. As the technology writer Nicholas Carr notes, "What makes a technology truly revolutionary is that it changes our relationship not just with one aspect of existence but with many or even most aspects." Smartphones have done exactly this. They are revolutionary. The very nature of revolutionary things is that they come with both good and bad. Unfortunately, though, the good and bad can’t be disentangled, which makes it difficult to assess their ultimate value or whether we would’ve been better off without them. The same can be said for the French Revolution: it might have been necessary and inevitable, but it was also destructive.
**
Returning to smartphones, why do I like them? Or, to put it differently, why are they — on balance — good for me (that said, I might be deceiving myself)? The main reason, if I'm being honest, is transportation, something that Kriss only touches on indirectly. For those of us without cars, it used to be really hard to get around, so much so that we simply wouldn't do things, go to places, or meet people if it was too difficult. I live in Washington, DC, but I end up going to the Virginia and Maryland suburbs relatively often for different events. Without the existence of Uber, I simply wouldn't go. For those who drink, Uber has saved countless lives. It might be difficult to remember it now, but many of our friends would drink and drive. I don't know if they were always over the limit, but there was, technically, no way to know for sure.
Consider what else we've gained: instant access to virtually all of human knowledge, the ability to maintain connections with far-flung friends and family, translation tools that break down language barriers, health tracking that saves lives, and financial services that have brought banking to millions who were previously excluded. The media scholar
observes that "communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring" — meaning their true impact comes when they're so integrated into our lives that we stop noticing them. And, indeed, it seems most us have stopped noticing them while becoming much more attuned to the drawbacks.Dating apps are another example. It's true that the experience of being on them is often awful. But if you don't use them, you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage when it comes to finding a partner. It's a collective action problem. If none of us were on dating apps, it would be for the best. But if a majority of young people in a given city are on them, then you suffer by being in the app-less minority. But, of course, dating apps — as has been well documented — are particularly prone to the winner-loser problem. A minority of "high-status" men and women attract most of the matches on these apps, the majority swipe in futile hope. Essentially dating markets, in this sense, are like any free market. While rising tides might lift all boats, for the "losers" it probably doesn't feel like that. You can show them data that a growing number of people, even average people, are finding love online. But in their own lived experience, it mostly just sucks.
The problem, in short, isn't that smartphones have no benefits — it's that the benefits are unevenly distributed. As philosopher Martha Nussbaum might say, what matters isn't just whether a technology exists, but whether people have the "capabilities" to use it in ways that enhance rather than diminish their lives. The historian Melvin Kranzberg's First Law of Technology states that "technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral." The impact depends on context, use, and distribution. Smartphones amplify existing inequalities rather than creating them from scratch.
Which is to say, Kriss is probably right: society would be better off if iPhones had never been invented. But now that they have been invented, it comes down — like so much else — to where we sit on the spectrum of "privilege." The obvious retort is that, in an ideal world, we would check our privilege and take one for the team, sacrificing our individual well-being for the good of the whole. But I wonder how many people stop using smartphones for this reason. Most people who go phone-less are doing it for self-interested reasons, and that's perfectly legitimate too: they want to more present with the people they love; they want to read more and better; they want to be able to pay attention; they don't want to lose countless hours doomscrolling on social media; they want to be able to go to a concert without feeling that temptation to reach into their pockets.
The discourse around smartphone harm has produced a kind of digital asceticism movement, with figures like Cal Newport advocating "digital minimalism" as the path to salvation. While I appreciate the sentiment, it’s just not a scalable solution. It's no accident that this sort of minimalism (or most kinds of minimalism) appeal primarily to the professional classes who can afford to disconnect without serious social or economic repercussions. Minimalism is expensive.
I’m probably privileged enough to afford minimalism (except that I write for a living so maybe not). But it’s certainly true that the smartphone “revolution” has created winners and losers. I happen to be among the winners. And I suspect many of the loudest critics are too, even if they're reluctant to admit it (physician, heal thyself). But you don’t have to be privileged to appreciate the still somehow magical feeling of being able to order an Uber at 11pm in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere is a real place.