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Watching this from inside the media, I’ve experienced two contradicting feelings. First is a kind of powerlessness from working in an industry with waning influence amid shifting consumption patterns. The second is the notion that the craft, rigor, and mission of traditional journalism matter more than ever

“The media doesn’t actually set the agenda the way people sometimes pretend that it does,” he said late last month. “The audience knows what it believes. If you are describing something they don’t really feel is true, they read it, and they move on. Or they don’t read it at all.”

Audiences vote with their attention, and that attention is the most important currency for media businesses, which, after all, need people to care enough to scroll past ads and pony up for subscriptions.

It’s only going to get more addictive, more customized, more controllable. Already we can customize AI girlfriends with traits like “hot, funny, bold”, “shy, modest, considerate” or “smart, strict, rational”, making sure she is “judgement-free” and laughs at all our jokes. “Control it all the way you want to,” promises Eva AI.

We have to bring children back into the real world. We have to bring childhood back to Earth.

But first we have to let them, and ourselves, feel that loneliness. Feel it enough that we are forced to do something, to build something. To get up and get out.