The morning surgery is only an hour old, but Dr. Sarah Chen has already seen two patients whose health has been shaped more by their phones than by medical evidence. One, a woman in her early forties, had been taking herbal supplements recommended by an influencer to manage her thyroid condition, and her blood tests had now swung dangerously out of range. Another, a retired teacher with a persistent cough, had confided that a popular online video told him that his symptoms were just allergies, so he had put off seeing a doctor for nearly three months. Scenes like these…

Every few weeks, another video appears on social media showing a protest in a European city. The footage is short, shaky, and stripped of context. It shows a line of police in riot gear, smoke rising from the pavement, people running, maybe a flash of orange light. Within minutes, the captions are everywhere: “Europe is burning,” “This is what happens when you speak out in France,” and, most disturbingly, “People would die if this happened in the US.” The comment sections read like a zero-sum game, with strangers competing to prove that their own country is worse, or better, or…