The Great Splintering: How Digital Tech Shattered Cultural Control
Fertility is collapsing, measles vaccinations are plummeting, Gen-Z men and women seem to be drifting apart, anti-establishment critics are going viral, while Europe’s female immigrants often have high rates of economic inactivity. What connects these seemingly disparate trends? In this essay, I suggest that online connectivity has fundamentally transformed the scope of cultural persuasion.
For most of our history, religious rituals served as the bedrock of social cohesion. Families disciplined their children, safeguarding reputations among watchful neighbours. Stuck in their ways, village norms were taken for granted. Even those who were privately critical usually fell into line, for fear of ostracism. By policing ideas and behaviour, preachers and elders instilled local conformity.
The first revolution in communications - printing - enabled large-scale resistance, notably the Protestant Reformation. Writing in pamphlets and periodicals, Europe’s Enlightenment thinkers later lobbied for liberty and secularism. Governments got in on the act: mandating mass education and standardising curricula. Circulating libraries brought novels to the middle-classes, enabling female authors to reshape wider conversations. In this new era of nation-building, villages became engulfed in wider intellectual tides.
From the mid-20th century, we entered a new era of homogenisation and globalisation. Prestige played a key role transmitting culture beyond borders. Indonesian Muslims looked to Mecca, Soviet satellites followed Moscow, while Westerners marvelled at Hollywood. From the perspective of gender equality, Americans and Europeans then got lucky: our feminist revolution occurred at a time of homogenising media.
Then came 21st century smartphones. Online connectivity enables individuals to forge tribes with ideological allies across the world, while paradoxically spending more time in solitude. This technological leapfrogging, combined with declining face-to-face interaction, has ruptured both local and national boundaries.
Over time, each wave of communications technology has expanded the range of critics - from Martin Luther to Joe Rogan. Progressives certainly harnessed social media to champion their values (eg #MeToo), but this same technological freedom also enables authoritarian conservatives to mobilise resistance.
The rise of solitude and singles further rupture moral policing of behaviour. As we retreat from physical gatherings, our behaviour is increasingly private and invisible, susceptible to neither praise nor shame. Status - fundamentally about who receives respect - can only be conferred through points of contact. But what happens when the social fabric splinters?
All this creates a major governance challenge. J.D. Vance just announced that he ‘wants more babies in the United States of America’. But can any modern government actually persuade its citizens to act differently?
This essay explores how digital technology reshapes the scope of cultural persuasion - like mandating vaccinations, celebrating large families, galvanising support for gender equality, as well as promoting social cohesion.
The Panopticon & Peer Pressure
In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham designed a prison that would enable constant surveillance. He theorised that prisoners would obey the rules because they believed they were watched. Under my theory of culture, this applies more widely:
Desire for social approval combined with anticipated policing motivates conformity. This remains true in societies with low internet connectivity and strong dependence on kin.
The Panopticon was certainly powerful in my teenage years. We watched the same TV shows, hung out playing Nintendo, went to the pub, and had sleep-overs. Everyone succumbed to peer pressure. Almost all my friends drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, weed, and did occasional lines of cocaine. Though I abstained from narcotics, social judgment weighed heavy. At 14, boys teased me for being ginger. I dyed my hair - disaster. Accidental purple.
For more (empirical) examples see my earlier essays on 1970s US the power of TV, McCarthyism, General Pinochet’s media repression, 20th century struggles over cinema, the CCP’s Sent Down Youths, and radio propaganda.
But digital technology has fundamentally transformed ideological persuasion. Everything is curated to our precise preferences. Don’t like what you hear? Block. With infinite capacity to billions of content options at our fingertips, enforcing uniformity has become virtually impossible.
Consider childhood vaccinations. Government public health messaging, once effective at maintaining near-universal compliance, now competes with anti-vaccine content in personalised media feeds. After decades of stability, U.S. vaccination rates against measles have suddenly fallen, especially in states supporting Trump. From 2019 to 2024, the share of Republicans who viewed childhood immunisation as “extremely important” fell from 52% to 26%.
Progressive Campaigns
The past decade has witnessed an surge in institutional activism around bias and discrimination. Universities, news media, government agencies, and corporations have faced intensifying pressure to address systemic inequalities. Academic research increasingly spotlights racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, which have been widely shared across social media.
Under mounting pressure, organisations embraced ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ - launching campaigns, implementing training, and recruiting under-represented groups. Entertainment media followed suit: “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” partnered with consultants to enhance inclusivity.
But who was truly persuaded? I suggest that while online connectivity emboldened women worldwide, it simultaneously enabled conservative resistance.
Cultural Leapfrogging
Digital platforms have weakened the controls of traditional cultural gatekeepers. Armed with smartphones, women from Mexico to Malaysia are raising their expectations through exposure to more feminist media. Netflix shows like ‘Emily in Paris’ showcase female autonomy, while Miley Cyrus tops Saudi Arabian streaming charts.
As an Egyptian mother, Dalia, observed:
“If I say to my daughter, let’s watch a movie, she’s doing something totally different, she’s on her phone”.
Virginia Woolf famously championed ‘a room of her own’: today’s women claim their own digital headspace. I call this “cultural leapfrogging”.
Conservative Backlash
The digital revolution that enabled cultural leapfrogging also empowers resistance. While progressive ideas gained influence within Western institutions, a parallel ecosystem emerged online: independent content creators, especially podcast bros, building massive audiences.
What makes these digital spaces particularly powerful is their complete independence from establishment controls. As Nick Hilton, a podcast production company co-founder, observes:
“These people own their company, it’s in private hands, none of them have boards or shareholders… Predominantly young men with broadly libertarian, right-leaning views, are now in control of some of the most mainstream media platforms, with basically no internal or external oversight.”
This created a critical vulnerability in progressive advocacy: even as movements successfully pushed for institutional reforms, they could not monopolise the broader conversation. Independent creators, operating outside institutional constraints, found fertile ground for dissent. My interviews with men in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Barcelona, and London revealed growing resentment.
This backlash reflects tribal psychology: when advocacy appears to privilege certain groups while challenging others' core values, it often generates resistance. Imagine if media constantly celebrated redheads. It would certainly make me feel nice, but alienate everyone else.
Survey data confirms this widening divide: over the past decade, strong Democrats leaped leftward, while median US voter attitudes toward affirmative action and immigration remained largely static. The growing chasm between institutional progressivism and conservative backlash may help explain Trump’s win.
Gendered Ideological Polarisation
Social media enables us all to curate our own ideological universes. Young women are increasingly drawn to spaces that celebrate progressive values. Men are drifting apart, finding their own communities. Joe Rogan now has 19.2 million YouTube subscribers.
This self-reinforcing polarisation makes bridging divides increasingly difficult - each group can retreat to spaces confirming their priors.
Immigration and cultural integration
As fertility rates plummet, rich countries can only maintain large youthful populations through mass immigration. If each worker brings one dependent, Lant Pritchett estimates that by 2050 they would need to become 40-50% foreign-born.
Yet digital technology complicates integration. Germany’s newcomers needn’t tune into public broadcasters (ARD and ZDF). Instead, they can maintain community ties, and the ideal that male honour is preserved through female seclusion.
Among Germany’s Syrian and other refugees, only 20% of women have found employment. This is unsurprising, it is similar to rates in countries of origin. Analysis of Facebook data similarly reveals a pronounced gender gap in social integration:
Britain mirrors this pattern. New arrivals are no longer confined to the BBC, instead they can maintain prior connections - Whatsapping friends in Urdu, listening to Arabic sermons, and watching Turkish movies. In an age of digital choices and faith schools, cultural assimilation is largely voluntary. Travelling home on the Elizabeth line, Hussein observed that one passenger was watching “The Fast & the Furious”, while another scrolled through TikTok clips warning of hell fire. He remarked,
“Both living in London, but watching totally different screens!”
If Brits want to welcome their neighbours, offline institutions (like schools) remain really important nodes of connection. Integration is a two-way street.
Family values
The CCP is extraordinarily powerful. By leveraging its vast domestic market, it has effectively extracted foreign technology, and built the world’s most efficient Electric Vehicles. Today, US tech stocks took a dive after advances in China’s AI start-up DeepSeek.
And yet, the CCP is unable to persuade women to couple up and pump out babies! China’s netizens can self-select into their own echo chambers, read online literature, and share feminist ideas. Confucian ideologies of self-sacrifice are increasingly rejected. Meanwhile men are slower to change. Without love, marriage is down. On Chinese app Little Red Book, searches for “fertility” yield staunch anti-natalism! TFR continues to plummet.
What Replaces Corporate DEI?
Trump has just ordered the federal government to halt efforts on ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’. US corporations, like Walmart, McDonalds and Target, have simultaneously rolled back commitments. As Matt Bruenig argues, corporate DEI was always an unstable form of self-regulation - companies ultimately answer to investors and prioritise whatever is profitable.
Rather than relying on corporate initiatives, which Bruenig suggests are ‘practically indistinguishable from employer-dominated labor organisations’, progressive values increasingly depend on solidarity within peer networks.
Yet these are being ruptured!
The Rise of Solitude and Singles
All the available evidence points to growing isolation. With the decline of coupling, young people are spending much more time alone. 65% of young American men say “no one knows me well”.
This may be related to technological advances, enabling more online work and leisure. Research in the UK offers suggestive evidence - when areas gained better broadband access between 2005-2017, civic participation significantly declined. These effects may have been turbo-charged by the COVID pandemic and even more engaging media.
Why venture out when everything – from Deliveroo to Netflix to Zoom meetings – arrives at our doorstep? Smartphones deliver endless streams of stimulation sometimes eclipsing the appeal of face-to-face connection. Between 2010 and 2023, US young adults spent 4 times more hours gaming.
Labour market economists have been obsessed with whether Generative AI will replace market demand for human labour. But my question is different: what if tech replaces non-market demand? Personal online entertainment (sports bets, video games, podcasts, TikTok) are so engaging, they may be outcompeting real-world interactions.
Solitude and the rise of singles mean fewer opportunities for cross-gender empathy and understanding. Men and women increasingly inhabit separate social worlds. We increasingly become economic competitors.
Status is fundamentally about gaining respect - for social valued competences. So let’s suppose a local authority wants to raise the status of having 3+ children. This may be difficult in societies where people are less concerned for social approval because they have become - in quote Derek Thompson - decidedly ‘anti-social’.
‘Virtue-signalling’ occurs online precisely because social media has become our primary point of social contact. Status is now acquired in digital popularity - likes, retweets and followers. And even if others dislike my tweets, my actual behaviour remains invisible.
The Great Splintering: How Digital Tech Shattered Cultural Control
Culture is a gladiatorial arena, rife with the possibility of disruption. Diverse coalitions have always sought to harness the latest media technology in order to propagate their narrative and mobilise widespread support.
During recent human history, ideological persuasion has operated at two levels. Within villages, social conformity was maintained through local surveillance - we sought the approval of neighbours and relatives who monitored our conduct. Modern states then wielded a homogenising influence through mass education, censorship boards and state media.
Online connectivity has proved disruptive in two crucial ways:
First, we can now curate personalised echo chambers. While progressive movements gained institutional influence, digital platforms simultaneously empowered anti-establishment critics. Each group cultivates approval from ideological allies across the world rather than their immediate community.
Second, rising singlehood and solitude have totally thwacked moral policing. As people retreat into digital cocoons, we increasingly seek validation from dispersed online communities who monitor our curated posts, not our actual conduct. Our offline behaviour becomes invisible to those whose approval we seek.
This poses a fundamental governance challenge: how can states address collective challenges like vaccinations, declining fertility, and social cohesion when they can no longer effectively shape citizens’ aspirations?
It's odd why the section "Conservative Backlash" was titled as such, when the data shared in that section showed that the median public opinion, and the Republican opinons on social issues remained static. The only group that saw drastic change was Democrats veering far to the left. So, the median and Repubican opinions remaining static is somehow a "conservative backlash"?
Not done reading this piece yet, but so far it's fantastic. Thank you. Love this bit: "Desire for social approval combined with anticipated policing motivates conformity. This remains true in societies with low internet connectivity and strong dependence on kin." One suggestion that might increase reach is to chop this post up into short pieces. Post one short piece per day, everyday, until you're done.