If we’ve learned anything about technology in recent decades, it’s that we don’t prepare for downsides until the problems are so bad we can’t ignore them. The poster child is social media, which was hailed as utopian when it first arrived, but is now seen as a destructive and destabilizing force in society. It took more than a decade for this to catch on, but these days a vast majority of Americans believe that social media has a largely negative effect on our world.

Reasons cited include the spread of misinformation, hate, bullying, polarization, and…