America, Social Media, & the Mouse Utopia Problem

I teach self-defense for a living, so I have learned to pay attention before a threat becomes obvious. A good decision usually starts before the punch is thrown. You notice behavior, timing, distance, distraction, and opportunity. You act early because waiting too long gives the other side control.

That is how I have started looking at social media in America.

This concern grew over time. I watched students, parents, children, and adults move through daily life with a device that constantly pulls them into anger, comparison, fear, and performance. Then I started reading more. The issue began to look less like a technology problem and more like a national self-defense problem.

John B. Calhoun’s famous mouse experiment, often called Universe 25, is useful as a warning. Calhoun built a controlled environment for mice with food, water, and no predators. The colony grew, then the social structure deteriorated, reproduction collapsed, and the population eventually died out. Human beings are far more complex than mice, so the experiment should be treated as a metaphor. The warning still matters. A society can have comfort, stimulation, and resources while losing responsibility, role, restraint, and meaning. 

America has more information than any society before it. That has not made Americans calmer or harder to manipulate. Social media gives people a public square, a personal stage, and a constant reward system for reaction. Pew Research Center reported that YouTube and Facebook are among the most-used platforms by American adults, and TikTok’s user base has grown since 2021. A later Pew report found that YouTube remains the most popular platform, while Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Reddit continue growing among adults. 

The effect on children should bother every serious adult. The U.S. Surgeon General reported that up to 95 percent of youth ages 13 to 17 use a social media platform, more than one-third say they use social media almost constantly, and nearly 40 percent of children ages 8 to 12 use social media, even though 13 is commonly the minimum age. 

A child living in that environment learns what gets attention before that child has judgment. Outrage gets attention. Sexualized presentation gets attention. Public humiliation gets attention. Tribal certainty gets attention. Victimhood gets attention. The platform becomes a teacher before many parents understand the lesson being taught.

Self-defense, we teach that fear, ego, and fantasy create bad decisions. Training builds awareness, control, and judgment under pressure. I have written about self-control as a self-defense skill because force without judgment becomes dangerous. The same principle applies to citizenship. A nation that cannot control its reactions becomes easier to provoke.

The business model is the issue. The Federal Trade Commission reported in 2024 that major social media and video streaming companies engaged in vast surveillance of users, with weak privacy controls and inadequate safeguards for children and teens. The FTC also said these companies did not adequately protect young users. That finding should change the way we talk about this issue. The problem is built into the incentives. More attention creates more data. More data improves targeting. More engagement supports more revenue.

A calm citizen is harder to monetize than an activated user. A child outside playing, a father eating dinner without a phone, a teenager training in a gym, or a family sitting together without screens produces less value for the platform than a person scrolling through fear, sex, status, anger, grievance, and humiliation.

This is where the national security issue begins.

The U.S. intelligence community has warned that foreign adversaries use cyber activity, information operations, and influence efforts against the United States. Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center reported sustained influence efforts by Russia, Iran, and China during the 2024 election cycle, including activity aimed at undermining democratic processes. 

America’s enemies do not need to create every division. They can find what already exists, add pressure, and make Americans less capable of trusting each other. Race, religion, class, Israel, policing, immigration, elections, schools, gender, and crime all become entry points. The goal can be confusion. Exhaustion is useful. Cynicism is useful. A public that no longer knows what is true becomes easier to weaken.

The asymmetry is clear. Authoritarian governments restrict their own digital space while exploiting ours. Freedom House reported that global internet freedom declined for the 15th consecutive year in 2025, with authoritarian governments using censorship and repression to control online activity. Its China report describes extensive power to censor and manipulate online content. 

A democratic country cannot copy authoritarian control and remain itself. America has to protect freedom by defending the conditions that allow freedom to survive. That means limiting foreign manipulation, forcing transparency around platform influence, protecting children from systems designed to capture attention, and treating digital vulnerability as a real security issue.

In Krav Maga, I first teach people to understand what enables the threat. How much access does the attacker have? What is the timing of the action or reaction? Where is the distraction? How is the opportunity being created? A nation has to think the same way. Defense begins before impact.

This calls for responsibility. Foreign influence should be exposed and limited. Platform incentives should be investigated and regulated where they harm children or national security. Parents should set stronger boundaries. Schools should teach attention, discipline, and real human interaction. Citizens should build the discipline to step away from systems that profit from their worst reactions.

The hard question remains.

Who benefits from keeping Americans distracted, divided, reactive, and unsure of who they are? Who benefits when children grow up inside systems that capture attention before character forms? Who benefits when political life becomes performance instead of responsibility? Who benefits when foreign adversaries can use America’s openness while controlling their own digital borders?

These are self-defense questions.

America does not need less freedom. America needs stronger people and moral boundaries around what is considered hateful vs useful. It starts with stronger institutions and stronger defenses around the information space that now shapes the nation from the inside.

Do something amazing,
Tsahi Shemesh