The Judgment Epidemic

Why We Can’t Stop Policing Each Other’s Choices—And How to Step Back

Remember when "It's a free country" was a common response to a disagreement? If someone wanted to live in a high-rise downtown, drive a gas-guzzling truck, homeschool their kids, or eat nothing but fast food, the prevailing attitude was a mix of mild curiosity and live-and-let-live tolerance. You do you. But something has shifted.

Scroll through Facebook, and you’d think everyone had a PhD in urban planning and child psychology. Take, for instance, the way new apartment developments are often discussed online. People rush to criticize them as cheaply built and unsightly, despite having done no research on the units or considering why someone might choose to live there. Similarly, parenting choices—whether to homeschool, vaccinate, sleep train, or use screens—have become public battlegrounds, with strangers offering unsolicited opinions on deeply personal decisions.

This isn't just about housing or parenting. It's a broader social shift, one that has turned everyday choices into moral and political battlegrounds. Why do people feel so entitled to weigh in on the lives of others? And why does social media seem to be the accelerant?

The Collapse of the Private Sphere

Before social media, much of life was lived in relative privacy. Sure, people had opinions, but they were limited to family discussions, neighborhood gossip, or the occasional letter to the editor. Now, nearly everything is public. A parent posts a picture of their child eating fast food, and suddenly it's a debate about childhood obesity and corporate exploitation. A city announces a new apartment complex, and the Facebook comments fill with people who wouldn’t live there but feel the need to dictate how others should.

Social media encourages both personal sharing and public feedback, creating an environment where everyone feels compelled to weigh in on choices that were never meant for them. We were perhaps not all meant to be shouting into the same sphere together like this.

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." If you’ve been with me long enough, that is precisely where we started this journey together. Social media is not just a neutral space where opinions happen to be shared; it actively reshapes how we form and express them. Platforms thrive on outrage and strong opinions because they generate engagement. A measured, "I see the benefits of apartments, but they’re not for me" doesn’t go viral. "These new apartments will destroy our town!" might.

The same dynamic plays out in parenting debates. A reasonable, "I chose to homeschool because it works for our family" is drowned out by more extreme claims that public schools are indoctrination centers or that homeschooling is child neglect. The structure of social media rewards certainty over curiosity, performance over dialogue.

The Irony of Over-Involvement

The irony is that this intense scrutiny often comes from people who are not actually affected by the thing they are debating. The homeowner who fights a new apartment complex will never live in it. The person ranting about another family's parenting will never meet them. Yet the performative aspect of online opinion-sharing makes these issues feel personal, even when they are not.

This is particularly true with local development. The rise of hyper-local Facebook groups has given people a permanent forum to complain about projects that, in the past, they might have ignored. A new grocery store, a bike lane, or an apartment complex isn’t just a change in the neighborhood—it’s an existential threat, a sign of decline, a battle between good and evil. The stakes feel high, even when they are not. The same goes for parenting choices. What should be deeply personal decisions—breastfeeding vs. formula, how much screen time a child gets—turn into moral and cultural flashpoints.

This shift is deeply at odds with the classical liberal ideal of individual autonomy. In a free society, people should be able to make choices about their own lives without excessive interference. The growing impulse to police how others live erodes this principle. It replaces tolerance with judgment and freedom with social coercion.

Part of the answer may be as simple as stepping back. Recognizing that not every decision needs public input. That just because something exists doesn’t mean it requires your approval. That cities, like societies, thrive when people can make different choices without constantly being subject to the scrutiny of those who would never choose that path for themselves.

If you’re about to fire off a comment about a development you’ll never live in or a parenting decision you’ll never make—maybe just… don’t? A return to "It's a free country" might be exactly what we need. Here are a few ways we can behave more helpfully online:

1. Ask Yourself: Is This My Business? Before commenting on something, take a second to ask whether this choice actually affects you. If it doesn’t, maybe it’s not worth your energy. If it does, is the comment section of a post the right place to confront it? Perhaps attending a zoning meeting, county council meeting, or researching further is a better place to start.
   

2. Cultivate Curiosity Instead of Certainty. Instead of immediately taking a hard stance, try asking a question instead. “I wonder why someone might choose that?” is a far more productive mindset than “That’s obviously a terrible idea.”
   

3. Recognize That Not Every Thought Needs to Be Shared. Social media conditions us to believe that every opinion we have is worth broadcasting. But sometimes, the best response is silence. Not every debate needs another voice, especially when it’s about choices you’ll never have to make.