OPINION:
Human thought, augmented by artificial intelligence and turbocharged by the internet, is stretching toward infinity the limits of what is thinkable, but how much of the information we allow our smart devices to pour into our heads is beneficial?
Straining out useless and destructive chatter that torments young people, in particular, is a daunting challenge of the modern era. As the government flails ineffectively at the overwhelming flow of social media notions and images, it becomes glaringly apparent that the first line of defense against internet inanity must be the individual’s acquired supply of common sense.
If wisdom is the lofty discernment of a proper course, then common sense is wisdom in action. Realistically, both wisdom and common sense are in short supply during the years of youth, when the urge to show off one’s presumed talents before the world has yet to be tempered by the sobering lessons of experience.
Consequently, foolish social media fads bloom and infest youthful populations like weeds in spring. The current obsession with “6-7,” which has infused American kids with the impulse to be the first to yell out the number whenever and wherever they spot it, is a relatively harmless example of silly trend-tracking.
More ominous are youthful eruptions like the “furry” fad, a current subculture in which individuals are induced to parade around in anthropomorphized animal costumes. “Therians,” a subsect of the “furries,” not only dress up as animals but also claim to believe they are, in fact, the beasts they model.
Weird crazes lighting up the internet, which seem little more than harmless self-deception, can have unforeseen and harmful consequences. Charlie Kirk’s 22-year-old alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, for one, reportedly harbored an obsession with the outlandish furry lifestyle, which may have engendered murderous hatred for the activist’s Christian traditionalism.
Are such social media fads wildly imaginative? Certainly. Fresh thoughts, after all, are the stuff of creativity. But constructive? Hardly. Some fantasies lead down a path of sorrow and despair, indicating that unbridled creativity — the routine currency of the digital feed — can be destructive and dangerous.
Attempts to tame the flow of inanities spewing from social media outlets have proved less than fruitful. A recent social media trial in Los Angeles featured Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s weak attempts to defend his internet platform from charges of deliberately causing harm to children.
Fielding the question from the witness stand of whether Meta’s Instagram is, by nature, addictive, Mr. Zuckerberg sputtered, “I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t think that applies here.”
Showing no similar befuddlement is the lawsuit’s 20-year-old, unidentified plaintiff, who is suing Meta and Google’s YouTube for her alleged technology-induced addiction and subsequent suicidal ideations.
Surely, watching the case with unwavering concern are millions of American parents who fret over their children’s mesmerized stare at steady streams of fashion, dance and prank videos that light up their digital devices morning, noon and night.
It is no small wonder that the National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the “Nation’s Report Card,” shows a persistent decline in U.S. student performance. Proficiency levels in reading for fourth- and eighth-grade students made incremental improvements over a generation until 2013, rising to 35% and 36%, respectively. Then scores plummeted to 2000 levels — 31% and 30% — by 2024.
Similarly, math proficiency rose in both grades until 2013. Afterward, fourth-grade scores turned south, falling from 42% proficiency to 39%. For eighth-graders, proficiency slid from 36% to 28%.
Tellingly, the dismal record of decline has coincided with the relentless rise in internet usage. U.S. teens claiming to use daily reached 95% in 2025, and those who reported being online “almost constantly” hit 46%, according to Pew Research Center.
Suggestions are many that are meant to help the government purge cyberspace of all manner of deceitful falsehoods and silly distractions that send credulous users off on time-wasting tangents.
Raising U.S. age requirements on social media use to 16, recently enacted in Australia, is one measure with which some U.S. states are experimenting.
AI, now frequently lurking in the background during online activity, unashamedly offers its own two cents on how to bolster internet integrity. Among its suggestions: enhancing digital literacy, strengthening platform moderation and adding content-sourcing transparency. Aping an act of chivalry, AI even recommends more robust tools to expose the influence of AI.
Can the mental well-being of fresh-faced Americans be entrusted to the likes of Mr. Zuckerberg and his fellow cyberwizards? When even the most upright of their smart machines are sometimes guilty of their own deceitful machinations, caution says no.
Americans, young and old alike, yearning to ward off the effects of internet bunkum, would do well to reinforce the pillars of faith upon which they have erected the world’s most copied culture. Preeminent among them is reverence for the causal Creator. Upon that foundation stands respect for oneself as an expression of the Creator’s handiwork and equal esteem for fellow members of the human family.
With these commonsense values firmly in place, individuals are better equipped to fend off the nonsensical and demeaning cyberjunk that eats away at human dignity and squanders the precious days of life on earth that each of us is allotted.
As government poo-bahs struggle to regulate the inflow of internet inanities, Americans can do no better than wield their God-given wisdom and common sense to fathom when to welcome the inflow of information and when it’s time to: Turn. It. Off.
• Frank Perley is a former senior editor and editorial writer for Opinion at The Washington Times.
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