Speaking to a packed crowd at Battell Chapel on Wednesday, the social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt '85 invoked the biblical tale of the tower of Babel as a metaphor for the harms caused by social media in contemporary society.
In that story from the book of Genesis, Haidt reminded the audience, Noah's descendants settle on the plain of Shinar and vow to build a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens. Displeased with their hubris, God metes out a very effective punishment.
"God says, 'Let us go down and confound their language so that they may not understand one another's speech,'" he said. "Everybody spoke a different language, and nobody could understand anyone else. This is the metaphor to explain what social media has done to us. This thing that was supposed to connect us is instead making any sense of shared meaning, shared stories, shared facts shatter into a million pieces."
