I don’t care if “we” are more productive and I certainly don’t care what western economists think about pre-industrial agriculture. I care that the two billion people living in households dependent on subsistence farming have a better quality of life than they did before the internet or mobile phones, which they undeniably have. That much was obvious fifteen to twenty years ago when mobile networks were rolling out all over over Africa en masse and every village I visited on my continental roadtrip had at least one mobile phone that everybody shared to get weather forecasts and coordinate trips to the nearest market town.

Anyone in a developed country who bases their opinions on the effects of technology on their and their friends’ social media addictions is a complete fool. Life has gotten so much better for BILLIONS of people in the last few decades that it’s not even a remotely nuanced issue.