2019
WISE Score
Amazon
A chilling but necessary autopsy of how the internet broke our brains and who held the scalpel.
4.5
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Andrew Marantz spent years embedded with the people who 'broke' the internet, and this book is the result. It’s not a fun summer read, but it’s an incredibly important one.
If your teen is starting to get interested in politics or tech, this is the 'red pill' (in the original Matrix sense) that helps them see the code behind the screen. It’s smart, sobering, and removes the mystery from why the internet feels so toxic. Just be prepared for some heavy dinner table conversations afterward.
This is adult non-fiction. While a very motivated 15-year-old could handle it, it’s best suited for high school seniors (17+) and parents who want to understand the digital landscape their kids are navigating.
It's a deep dive into the darkest corners of the internet. While the reporting is responsible and ethically sound, the subject matter—extremism, trolling, and digital toxicity—is the opposite of 'warm and fuzzy.'
Marantz traces the 'techno-utopian' dreams of the early internet and how they were twisted. It requires a lot of intellectual curiosity to follow the thread of how social engineering reshaped our reality.
It's a book, so there are no predatory algorithms here. However, it quotes and describes hate speech, misogyny, and white supremacist rhetoric as part of its journalistic mission. Not for the faint of heart or the middle-school set.
This is a masterclass in media literacy. It explains the 'why' behind the chaos of the last decade. If you want a teen to understand how they are being manipulated by their feed, this is the textbook.
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