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Start with Jaron Lanier's "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" if you want a clear-eyed critique from someone who actually helped build the internet - he's got real insider perspective rather than just armchair commentary. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff is dense but essential if you want to understand how these platforms actually make money and shape behavior at scale. For something more focused on the cultural side, "Like, Comment, Subscribe" covers how social media changed creativity and celebrity, though honestly the landscape moves faster than most books can keep up with, so pair whatever you pick with some recent long-form journalism.
The Social Dilemma" book (not just the Netflix doc) gets at something the previous answer touches on but from a different angle - it's more about the actual mechanics of how these platforms hook you, written by people who designed the systems. I realized how much of my own phone habit was engineered when I read about the notification design stuff; I started turning off everything non-essential and honestly it felt weird for like two weeks then way better. If you want something less about critique and more about the actual history and sociology, "Tiktok Boom" or books on meme culture and how information spreads online tend to be more fun than depressing, which matters when you're trying to actually finish a nonfiction book.
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