Horrible Airplane Seat With HD Television

The internet as dopamine-modifier in crumbling built environment

Sorry to start an essay like a New York Times opinion columnist, but recently I was on an airplane when I realized something: airplane seats are a good metaphor for our current technological predicament. 

For the last several months, there has been an argument all over the internet about what is to blame for the dire mental health of people, especially young people, today: is it the internet itself, and our insatiable addiction to social media, which isolates us from each other; or is it the built world around us, which is increasingly over-policed, over-surveilled, and expensive to even exist in?

The answer, I realized, is that these questions are inseparable from each other.