This is a good analogy. I'd argue that what social media did was give kids a strategic and meta understanding of popularity, where there is very much a public and private self. AI will give kids a strategic and meta understanding of language and ideology.

The phone reference is not right as people specifically use telephones to "pretend," because to commit it to writing makes it consequential and 'real', whereas to say something on the phone is he-said-she-said. The phone is explicitly the domain of pretending. Regarding TV: a min-30% of people demonstrably ignore what is announced on television as well, so yes, something on television will affect us because it affects others, but that doesn't make it true.

A friends argument was, "just because you believe Santa Claus is a lie doesn't mean xmas isn't going to come every single year, and you'd be dumb to ignore that reality." The counter to this is, "Christmas does come every year, and when sustaining the dissonance of the crassness and lies about the season becomes too much, a few more people recognize what it exists to celebrate."

I'm saying that AI is making it untenable to believe narratives spread via the internet over what you see and physically experienced, and this is a cause for optimism.