Ross Douthat: Why digital life threatens freedom and family

New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat warns that digital life may be eroding the cultural foundations needed to sustain meaning, family, and community.

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Text and links to sources available here: https://reason.com/podcast/2025/05/01/ross-douthat-why-digital-life-threatens-freedom-and-family/

In this episode of Just Asking Questions, we're joined by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to discuss the cultural, political, and demographic pressures reshaping the modern world. His recent essay, "An Age of Extinction Is Coming. Here's How to Survive," explores how digital life—from AI companions to algorithmic distraction—is accelerating trends toward social atomization, institutional collapse, and even plummeting birth rates. We talk with Douthat about how libertarians should respond to these changes, whether neo-traditionalism offers a credible path forward, and what it means to maintain meaning and community in the 21st century.

Chapters
00:00 Coming up…
00:37 Introducing Ross Douthat and the age of cultural bottlenecks
04:57 Are digital technologies disrupting cultural transmission?
09:57 How the internet reshapes politics and encourages radicalism
15:22 Digital media and the decline of institutional trust and localism
18:42 Demographic decline and the fading urgency to preserve culture
26:52 Free choice or social breakdown? The libertarian tension
34:27 Suburbs, adaptation, and the future of normie culture
41:12 Risk aversion, parenting, and the erosion of community life
47:17 Fertility, tradition, and the rise of large families as subculture
54:07 Neo-traditionalism in a bespoke age: coping or coping well?
58:32 Can we rebuild meaningful culture in a post-traditional world?