We need a new temperance movement to beat our addiction to screens

Walk into any cafe today and you'll see it: heads bowed, eyes glazed, fingers flicking endlessly. We've quickly become used to this image, but from a historian’s perspective it’s astounding how quickly it happened - a radical transformation in the way we relate to one another.

- Rutger Bregman

Ask the CEOs of big tech companies and they'll tell you the rise of AI is bigger. Some say it may be the last invention we make. They are in a race to create alien minds: systems we do not understand, and may not be able to control. These minds are not designed so much as summoned into being. We must ask: what will the rise of AI do to our very humanity?

Well, the omens are not good. Just look at what the first wave of big tech has already done to us. Literacy and numeracy scores are plummeting. Teenage depression, anxiety and suicide attempts are rising. Face-to-face socialising is collapsing as we retreat indoors, eyes glued to screens. Solitude is becoming the hallmark of our age. The bleakest number I’ve seen is that American teenagers now spend 70% less time hosting or attending parties than in 2003.

An entire stage of life - the messy, social and formative experience of being a teenager - is under attack by Silicon Valley. Laughing together, drinking together, flirting, dancing, even fighting and making up: all the rites of passage that teach us how to be human are vanishing.