Similar concerns have also been raised in the aftermath of the ascendancy of the electronic media—television in particular has been often represented as a corrosive influence on public life.
Plato’s reservation about the influence of new media on culture continues to influence the current deliberation on the influence of the Internet and of social media. For example, Maryanne Wolf, an American cognitive neuroscientist and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain frequently draws on Socrates to reinforce her argument about the debilitating effect of the Internet on the so-called reading brain. Her extensive discussion of Socrates is linked to her conviction that his warnings about the risks posed by the written text are particularly relevant for thinking about the transition from print and digital media and its impact on children. She wrote that “Socrates’ perspective on the pursuit of information in our culture haunts me every day as I watch my two sons use the Internet to finish a homework assignment, and then they tell me they ‘know all about it.’”