Digital Madness started well but had some anti-fat bias in it that stopped me from finishing it. The idea that children are lazy and watch too many video games, and that leads to obesity, is not the premise I wanted from this book. Because the anti-fat language came so early in the book I did not continue with it.

I thought this was a well done book. Most of the information presented wasn't entirely new to me, but I still enjoyed listening. It kept me occupied and I liked that I got to engage with the material via audio, I thought the narrator did a nice job.

Chapters 3 and 4 were terrific and should be the basis for a rewrite, the rest of the book is mostly a wash.

The first 23% is boring, unsolicited memoir dribble. If I've picked up a non-fiction book about social media, I want to read about THAT topic. Not about the author's family or his COVID experience. I don't mind a little backstory or why the author wrote this book or what his or her qualifications are, but this was excessive. Worse still, we have to go into his memoir again in chapter 9.

After the strong chapters, the next few chapters aren't "bad" per se, it just felt more opinionated and perhaps a little bit ranty. It just didn't rise to the level of previous chapters and non-fiction standards.

Then the book went off into a direction that made no sense. I'm not sure why the last third of the book is mostly a summarization of other books, history, etc. I have read all of the books he has mentioned and loved them, but didn't feel they fit here. The author certainly didn't add a thesis or string them together. His 'slams" on two authors will likely not be well received, particularly since there wasn't enough discussion there. I did find his points about shame and trauma provocative, however, and not untrue.

THE WORST PART of this mess, is that, like so many others, the author gives NOTHING actionable. The book lacks immediate takeaways, IMHO, he never gets to "how to restore our sanity" at least not directly. You can pull out from the text that we need belonging, community, and friends (all in REAL LIFE). This is old news.

I love a good sociological text. While many of the observations weren't really new to me, there was plenty to keep me interested. I hadn't heard about the increase in tourette's like symptoms in young people watching videos of people with tourette's on social media. There are also interesting discussions around social media's impact on suicidal behavior, gender identity and more. The author does discuss ways to lessen the hold digital media has on us, but I felt there was more room left in this area. Overall, as great book and certainly thought-provoking.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

Absolutely adored this book! I'm excited to record some video content to share to my socials, encouraging my followers to pre-order this text. I think it is the perfect book for the era that we are currently in. So many things about this text are so prescient, insightful & well-crafted. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to read it.