Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigeria’s award-winning novelist and feminism activist, has spoken out about the harmful nature of social media stressing that it weakens and rewire people’s ability to concentrate.
The renowned Nigerian author while speaking on the impact of digital culture, highlighted the growing dominance of social media, as she argued that while literature expands focus and deepens thought, social media does the opposite.
“The thing social media can never do for us that literature does for us… it’s actually quite bad for our brains. It’s rewiring our brains and compressing our ability to focus. Literature does the opposite,” she said.
Adichie further expressed concerns over the handful individuals who care deeply about literature, as she calls for renewed efforts to preserve the culture of reading despite the distractions of the digital age.
The mother of two also slammed society’s uncritical embrace of new technologies such as social media and artificial intelligence, stressing that these developments must be questioned rather than blindly accepted.
“There is a kind of unquestioning acceptance of social technologies that surprises me. We should question more social media, AI. The few people deciding how our future as human beings should be is troubling. This is the time to question AI, because we haven’t even reached a global consensus on what it is supposed to do,” she warned.
Highlighting the potential risks, Adichie noted that while AI holds vast possibilities, it also poses dangers that could lead to disaster if not carefully managed.
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