I can see we’re at the start of another moral panic about a technology – this time about a TV show raising concerns about the impact of social media on toxic masculinity. This actually isn’t about this TV show, it’s about every time we’ve been here before. Because people tend to forget, or they tell themselves this is different. But just a reminder.

The ancient Greeks said the same about books, then when the printing press took over it was about books being widely available, then it was about book being in English not Latin, then it was about them being so cheap your wife or your servant might get hold of them.

We had the same moral panic about newspapers, bicycles, automobiles, films, television.

In the 1950s it was communists, then comics, in the sixties it was rock music. I’ve lived through moral panics about TV again in the 70s, videos and video games in the 80s. Satanism was big in the 1990s, and heavy metal music specifically (as opposed to all music) came under the spotlight. Rob Halford stood trial for backmasking. Genesis P’Orridge fled the UK. Moral panics about pornography cycle round every so often, usually linked with a new medium. The one about virtual worlds in the 2000s made my PhD particularly difficult. The 2020s one about transgender people shows no signs of abating.

Each time we’ve looked back on the previous panic with bewilderment, or ridicule (people had to wave a red flag in front of their car!) or anger.

The people who led the campaigns, the McCarthys, the Werthams, the Eysencks, the Whitehouses, were realised to be delusional, or power hungry, or deceitful, or authoritarian. Nearly always all of those. But also, they are looked back at not just dictators but also leaders of cultural destruction. What Wertham took away when he eviscerated EC in the 1950s, the comics medium has never really recovered from. Whitehouse is still loathed by my generation. Our view of all of them is summed up neatly in the quote by Joe Rosenthal “Those who seek to ban books are never on the right side of history.” What’s also true looking back on the history of moral panics is “Those who seek to ban are never on the right side of history.”

So … this isn’t about the current one. Not really. It might be actually something to worry about this time round. But at some point we need to stop succumbing to the innate human distrust of anything new (which is why I think these things gain currency so quickly) and proceed with caution and a level of scrutiny of the claims that wasn’t conducted in any of the previous times we’ve been here. Because wolf has been cried many, many, many times before.