The authors who are holding the tech giants of social media to account

Writers have a “fantasy” that they are going to change the world, the author Kit Fan told London Book Fair audiences earlier this month. “We know full well that’s probably not going to happen. But deep down we also think that literature is indispensable.”

The political impact of books can often feel opaque, intangible. But the same can’t be said for a title published two years ago this week: Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, which lays out the devastating impact of social media on young people’s mental health. Wednesday’s landmark ruling against Meta and YouTube is a win for a campaign arguably spearheaded by the author.

This week, I heard from the publisher of Haidt’s book, as well as the editor of another huge title sounding the alarm on tech’s harms: Sarah Wynn-Williams’s Careless People.

Plus, Sophie Mackintosh – whose newest novel, Permanence, is out now – shares some books she’s enjoyed recently.

When the wife of South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas finished reading The Anxious Generation in early 2024, she told him he’d “better bloody do something about this”. Less than two years later came Australia’s social media ban for under-16s. Now, the UK government is considering Australia-style measures.

On Wednesday, a jury in Los Angeles found that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive algorithms that led to the young plaintiff’s mental health problems. “As of today, we are in a new world,” wrote Haidt in his reaction to the verdict on X. “A jury affirmed what parents have long known: Meta and YouTube were designed to exploit young people, with devastating consequences.” One reply came from author Rutger Bregman: “Thank you for leading this movement.”

Haidt’s book is “profoundly political” – one that “speaks to readers from across the political spectrum”, says Josephine Greywoode, publishing director at Penguin Press. It’s had a “phenomenal impact”, encouraging “individuals and communities to reclaim their agency through collective action, and governments to enact legislation”. She tells me the book has sold roughly 3m copies globally since its release two years ago.

Wynn-Williams’s Careless People – a whistleblowing account of her time as director of global public policy at Meta – has similarly had “a crucial role in driving an urgent international conversation about our relationship with social media and technology”, says its editor, Mike Harpley.

Though nonfiction has been “under pressure” – sales data suggests a decline – “the past few years have shown the vital importance of nonfiction books in holding power to account and fostering public debate”, adds Harpley.

Last April, for example, saw Wynn-Williams testify before a Senate subcommittee, alleging Meta worked “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communist party to build censorship tools “that silenced and censored their critics”.

A “very small” team at Pan Macmillan worked on the book, Harpley wrote in the Times in February. They used encrypted messaging to communicate, and when the project was discussed, anyone who wasn’t involved had to leave the room. The rumour in the office was that they were working on Taylor Swift’s memoir.

The nervousness was warranted: upon publication, Meta secured an order preventing Wynn-Williams from promoting the book. Reading the frank memoir, it is “easy to forget” that its author “still remains legally silenced”, says Harpley.

Haidt himself has described Careless People as a “well-written bombshell”. And in a “lovely example of the Streisand Effect, the publicity around Meta’s efforts to silence Wynn-Williams seems to be driving more people to read her book”, he wrote on Substack last March.

A year on, it’s still working, maintaining a top five place in the paperback nonfiction chart since the February release of its lighter format. Yet, Harpley says Wynn-Williams’s silencing is an “injustice that must be redressed”. The writer is, as it stands, “unable to take part in the very discussions that she helped inform.”