Governments across the West are increasingly treating social media as previous generations treated tobacco: addictive, psychologically damaging, and particularly harmful to children.

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They are probably right.

But the challenge facing governments is far greater than regulating content or limiting screen time. The real issue is not technological. It is cultural and psychological. Social media is no longer merely something we use. It is increasingly how we experience the world.

The platforms insist they exist to build communities. In some cases they do. But the idea that social media creates genuine social cohesion may prove to be one of the most successful marketing exercises of modern times. Its power cannot be denied. The more important question is not what social media does to us, but what it has replaced.

For centuries, churches, civic institutions, and local communities shaped how people behaved, what they believed, and how they understood their obligations to others. Even those who rarely attended church lived within a broadly Christian culture that emphasised duty, responsibility, and belonging. That influence has weakened dramatically over the past half century.

Today, regular church attendance in Britain has fallen to a small........

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