Pretty much. If you look at other EU countries, social media was essential in dividing the populations and promoting populist, nationalistic and xenophobic parties.
Assuming that social media is a primary factor, for the sake of argument, the solution to this problem isn't regulating the platforms via Haidt's proposals (which I should add seem to be too limited in effect). Instead, we should decentralize the platforms into protocols. While this will still allow stupid people to go into echo chambers (like with any forum or blog online) it will also limit their reach by depriving them of a singular place for a giant number of people to hear them all at once.
Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%.
Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when we have this common sense. Stop anyone on the street and ask them if they think constant notifications, scrolling, phone addiction and apps like tinder, TikTok and Instagram are good for our brains.
I'd be sad if people didn't unanimously agree that it's poison
As ever, the answer is “Yes”.