On Twenty Years of Twitter—er, X

Twenty years ago, a small social media platform called Twitter was launched into public life. Few imagined that a service built around brief updates would become one of the principal architects of modern consciousness through an endless stream of opinions. Twitter—now X—would eventually reshape journalism and commerce and politics and entertainment and even the interior habits of ordinary people who suddenly found themselves living inside a permanent public conversation that seems to never end.

Every civilization develops institutions that slow the flow of information. Wisdom usually grows through reflection rather than immediate reaction. Editorial judgment has historically functioned as a cultural filter (through families, churches, publishers, schools, and universities) before ideas reached the wider public through some process of testing and verification, which often frustrated impatient voices while also restraining emotional impulses. Newspapers and television eventually joined that process. They frequently served the common good through courageous reporting.

They also frequently became ideological gatekeepers because concentrated influence eventually tempts every institution toward self-preservation. Every generation inherits imperfect editors. The only question concerns who edits the public conversation.

Twitter and social media at large dramatically weakened that editorial barrier because every opinion could be instantly published and immediately distributed. And that was via a system that rewarded speed, emotion, and controversy above reasoned wisdom because the algorithms “knew” that outrage keeps human attention longer than ordinary truth ever could.

Moving at the speed of technology

Marshall McLuhan famously observed that “the medium is the message.” Twitter didn’t merely transmit public conversation through a different technology. Instead, it altered the character of the conversation itself by rewarding brevity and immediacy through structural incentives that gradually trained millions of minds toward compressed thinking, sometimes at the expense of sustained reasoning.

The original 140-character limit became far more than a technical restriction. It slowly reshaped public habits through constant repetition until many people instinctively expected profound questions about morality, economics, medicine, religion, and constitutional law to fit inside slogans that could easily fit onto a smartphone screen.

Consequently, much of the public gradually learned to value pithy cleverness above wisdom because cleverness travels faster. This transformation extended far beyond one platform because every competing service eventually embraced similar incentives through short videos, short captions, and rapid engagement metrics that rewarded immediate reactions rather than careful contemplation.

Neil Postman warned many years before social media that every communication technology reshapes public discourse according to its own internal logic. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, first published in 1985, he argued that entertainment values eventually dominate public conversation whenever serious subjects become dependent upon entertainment media. History has repeatedly confirmed his warning.

Information itself has undergone a remarkable democratization during these two decades. Citizens no longer depend primarily upon newspapers or television broadcasts for current events. They instead receive constant decentralized updates from countless independent voices that often deliver valuable eyewitness accounts while sometimes also spreading rumors and distortions before verification is even possible.

Benefits and costs

That transformation has produced extraordinary public benefits because governments and corporations now face unprecedented scrutiny through ordinary citizens who can document injustice and corruption with devices that fit inside their pockets.

Social media thus exposed many failures that traditional media either overlooked or consciously ignored. Public conversations surrounding pandemic policy, transgender “treatment”, and government coordination with technology companies became considerably broader once legacy media no longer controlled the boundaries of acceptable discussion.

For many citizens, X became an oasis within a media landscape that had otherwise already surrendered enormous public trust.

Nevertheless, every technological gain usually introduces an accompanying cultural cost. The same architecture that exposes genuine wrongdoing also amplifies deliberate deception through algorithmic echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs until disagreement gradually becomes emotionally intolerable. People have always preferred confirmation of biases over correction in morality and objective truth. In that light, the algorithms simply industrialized that preference.

Jaron Lanier warns in Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now that addiction gradually turns one into a zombie and zombies no longer possess free will. Lanier argues that these platforms commodify personal identity while simultaneously obscuring truth because every click becomes behavioral data that can later influence future decisions through increasingly sophisticated predictive systems.

His observation warrants serious consideration because modern users increasingly consume information selected through invisible algorithms whose criteria remain largely hidden from public examination.

None of this means that social media itself created humanity’s deepest problems. Human beings simply brought their fallen nature into a new communications environment. Decades ago, legacy media demonstrated how centralized editorial authority could harmfully distort reality. Social media demonstrated how decentralized communication could generate similar—albeit much more widespread—chaos. Neither system will redeem human nature. Each system merely revealed different weaknesses already present within human social life.

Rapid changes demand serious reflection

What can we know after twenty years?

We can know that human attention has become one of the world’s most valuable commodities because entire industries now compete for every available second of human concentration.

We can know that journalism has fundamentally changed because reporters increasingly follow social media conversations rather than creating them through traditional investigative processes.

We can know that businesses transformed marketing through direct relationships with consumers using targeted advertising and online personalities whose influence often exceeds what we once considered traditional celebrity.

We can know that political campaigns increasingly organize around continuous digital engagement because candidates now communicate directly with voters without requiring permission from traditional media organizations. That development has strengthened democratic participation in many respects. It has also rewarded outrage, because emotional engagement consistently outperforms thoughtful persuasion within algorithm-driven environments.

We can know that every major institution now measures public perception through online reactions because digital sentiment increasingly shapes executive decisions.

We can also know that young people increasingly evaluate themselves through carefully curated online facades that simply do not comport with ordinary daily life.

Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, summarizes an enormous body of research showing that adolescent mental health significantly deteriorated alongside smartphone saturation and social media adoption during the early twenty-first century. Anxiety increased. Depression increased. Loneliness increased. Self-harm increased among many young populations through patterns that deserve sustained investigation rather than ideological dismissal.

Sherry Turkle similarly writes in Alone Together that the more social media we have, the more we think we are connecting while we are actually disconnecting from each other. She also explains that technology can give a person a voice while simultaneously amplifying loneliness because digital interaction frequently incentivizes performance while weakening authentic human presence and relationships.

A deep and destructive paradox

That insight explains one of the deepest paradoxes of our age because humanity today enjoys unprecedented communication while enduring increasing social isolation from genuine friendship. Conversations slowly gave way to broadcasting. Friendships slowly yielded to audience building. Community slowly became personal branding.

Meanwhile, commerce itself changed beyond recognition because businesses increasingly rely upon influencers who cultivate trust through carefully crafted personalities that blur traditional distinctions between friendship and advertising. Consumers often struggle to distinguish sincere recommendations from paid promotions because trust in the pseudo-relationship gradually becomes trust in the person. Economic incentives eventually reshape human relationships whenever every interaction possesses monetization potential.

Social media, therefore, transformed ordinary human identity into marketable content.

Another profound consequence emerged through constant exposure to limitless information because previous generations encountered natural stopping points during each day when newspapers reached their final page or morning and evening broadcasts concluded before families returned to ordinary life. Those pauses created opportunities for families to discuss what they had heard and to develop informed judgments together. Those stopping points have largely disappeared.

Every smartphone now functions as an endless information pipeline that follows its owner everywhere. Human consciousness rarely receives uninterrupted rest. History has not witnessed anything quite like this.

Distraction upon distraction, to what end?

Nicholas Carr argues in The Shallows that digital technologies continually reshape cognitive habits toward rapid skimming instead of sustained concentration. He memorably writes that we are the first generation to proverbially die of distraction. His broader thesis explains why many intelligent adults increasingly struggle with extended reading and prolonged conversation despite sincerely valuing books and thoughtful scholarship and genuinely desiring substantial friendships.

Whether we like it or not, attention gradually becomes whatever people repeatedly practice—and distraction has proven to be an extremely easy habit to form. Yet, even so, something else deserves careful reflection.

Al Kresta, my predecessor at Ave Maria Radio, belongs to one of the last generations that consciously remembers life before ubiquitous television and before universal internet access because those technologies entered his world during his lifetime. My generation entered adulthood alongside smartphones and social media because we witnessed that transition while growing up. Today’s children possess no memory whatsoever of life before digital connectivity. Tomorrow’s children will never remember a world before artificial intelligence. Every generation thus accepts as ordinary what the previous generation regarded as revolutionary. That fact alone should make us considerably more humble whenever we assume our present habits simply reflect what is natural to the human person, instead of developing a concept of the need for formation to steward each emerging technology well.

What remains unknown?

We still cannot fully measure how decades of algorithmic influence will reshape democratic and social institutions across multiple generations.

We cannot yet determine how continuous digital immersion will influence childhood and adult development throughout entire lifetimes.

We cannot accurately predict how artificial intelligence will magnify existing social media and long-term relational dynamics.

We cannot confidently estimate the long-term effects upon memory, reasoning, and imagination because civilization has never previously experienced conditions remotely resembling our present technological environment.

Humility, then, is the intellectually necessary call of the day.

Several trends deserve honest acknowledgment because sustained reasoning has visibly declined across public discourse, while emotional knee-jerk rhetoric increasingly dominates civic conversation. Ideological tribalism has steadily weakened patient dialogue through habits reinforced every hour by rage-baiting algorithmic incentives.

It is no surprise to anyone that quick bites increasingly define modern information consumption, precisely because they are easy. Long-form reflection demands deliberate, concentrated discipline.

Twitter undoubtedly contributed to this cultural detransformation because compressed expression through one hundred forty characters gradually trained public expectation toward pithy compressed thinking.

Prioritizing the Word

Here, however, is the deeper truth that we ought to be also honest about.

At the advent of each emergent communication technology, we saw that radio transformed politics, television transformed social life, cable news transformed international relations, blogs transformed publishing, and social media transformed public participation. As such, artificial intelligence will almost certainly transform every communication platform presently in existence. Every communication technology amplifies both virtue and vice according to the character of those who wield it.

Technology itself never sins. It is a tool (a weapon, according to the intellectual musings of some, and honestly, I agree to some degree). Human beings either steward wisely or misuse technology. Every communications revolution eventually becomes another mirror reflecting the present moral standing of human society.

The Church, therefore, approaches these developments through a richer anthropology rooted within natural law and divine revelation because every communication tool ultimately serves either truth or falsehood according to the moral formation of those who use it.

The Catechism teaches that truthfulness and charity govern every form of communication because respect for truth reflects respect for every human person created in the image of God (CCC 2464-2470).

Saint Paul likewise exhorts believers to think about whatever is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and gracious because interior formation always precedes outward speech through the gradual shaping of the soul according to Christ.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from these twenty years of Twitter and social media concerns the urgent need for more deliberate intellectual formation through Scripture, natural law, classical philosophy, and the living tradition of the Church. Civilization flourishes whenever wisdom governs information, rather than allowing information and disinformation alike to erode wisdom.

We possess enough evidence to reach several sober conclusions: Information alone never produces wisdom; unlimited speech never guarantees the propagation of truth; connectivity never ensures real and substantial human relationships. Every generation requires deeper moral formation than the generation before it, because every new technology increases humanity’s capacity for both good and evil.

The Church offers something that Silicon Valley cannot because she forms the intellect through truth and forms the soul through grace. Scripture, natural law, and the Tradition teach us how to judge every claim with prudence rather than passion. They teach us how to resist both corporate propaganda and digital tribalism. They teach us how to become genuinely free.

The Gospel calls every generation toward renewed minds and disciplined hearts through Jesus Christ, who alone remains the eternal Logos amid every technological revolution. Every platform eventually fades, and every algorithm eventually changes.

But the Word of God endures forever. Perhaps that final sentence deserves far more than a social media post. Perhaps it deserves a lifetime.