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Hot take: I don't think social media made people dumber. We've been dumb this whole time. It's just that you used to have to have a job that people sent their dumb letters to, to notice. This made "Engaging with fools" an occupational hazard rather than the 24/7 experience it is presently.

And surely many jobs like customer service, medicine, phone operator, bus driver, etc also exposed people to strangers acting like idiots. Especially domestic service. Maids had to be seeing some stuff. Foolishness comes out in real life, not just letters. Of course.

But without an Internet to broadcast one's opinions on, stupid has more of a confined physical blast radius. This may have perhaps limited the average person's total daily exposure of "other people's stupid." A dose-limiting effect. (One could still enjoy one's own homegrown stupid, of course.)