In 2001, social theorist bell hooks warned about the dangers of a loveless zeitgeist. In “All About Love: New Visions,” she lamented “the lack of an ongoing public discussion … about the practice of love in our culture and in our lives.”

Back then, the internet was at a crossroads. The dot-com crash had bankrupted many early internet companies, and people wondered if the technology was long for this world.

The doubts were unfounded. In only a few decades, the internet has merged with our bodies as smartphones and mined our personalities via algorithms that know us more intimately than some of our closest friends. It has even constructed a secondary social world.

Yet as the internet has become more integrated in our daily lives, few would describe it as a place of love, compassion and cooperation. Study after study describe how social media platforms promote alienation and disconnection – in part because many algorithms reward behaviors like trolling, cyberbullying and outrage.

Is the internet’s place in human history cemented as a harbinger of despair? Or is there still hope for an internet that supports collective flourishing?

I explore these questions in my new book, “Attention and Alienation.”

In it, I explain how social media companies’ profits depend on users investing their time, creativity and emotions. Whether it’s spending hours filming content for TikTok or a few minutes crafting a thoughtful Reddit comment, participating on these platforms takes work. And it can be exhausting.

Even passive engagement – like scrolling through feeds and “lurking” in forums – consumes time. It might feel like free entertainment – until people recognize they are the product, with their data being harvested and their emotions being manipulated.

Blogger, journalist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe how experiences on online platforms gradually deteriorate as companies increasingly exploit users’ data and tweak their algorithms to maximize profits.

For these reasons, much of........

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