So, here’s the thing: If seemingly everyone is wary, suspicious, or worried about the influence of these products, companies, and corporate titans… why are so many people still using those devices and on those social media networks? If we fear social media and our ubiquitous smartphones are manipulating us, controlling us, corrupting us, or making us dumber… how is it that 85 percent of Americans own a smartphone? (TikTok is more or less an extension of Chinese intelligence, and yet everybody under age 25 seems to be using it.)

Is it simply a matter of convenience and laziness? Or is it that we realize that as demonic as these devices and networks may seem in fiction, in real life, they’re… just sort of there? Facebook lost a half-million daily active users in three months in early 2021 – — not exactly a mind-controlling hypnotic device, then. It may seem like everyone is on a particular social media network, but they aren’t; Twitter has significantly fewer users than other sites and apps like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram – and in the U.S., just 10 percent of tweeters contributed 92 percent of tweets in 2020. We say we can’t live without our phones, and yet we are absent-minded enough lose about 70 million smartphones per year.

In real life, these new technologies are not quite as pervasive, ubiquitous, and all-seeing and all-controlling as their fictional counterparts.