Are We Entertaining Dentistry to Death?

In 1985, cultural critic Neil Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death, a warning about a society increasingly shaped by television.

His argument was not simply that television contained too much entertainment. It was more unsettling than that.

Postman argued that the medium through which we communicate eventually changes the kind of ideas we are capable of communicating - and even the way we think.

Nearly four decades later, dentistry may have its own version of this problem.

Our medium is no longer television.

It is Instagram. TikTok. Google reviews. Before-and-after photographs. Thirty-second reels. Online booking platforms. Influencers. Algorithms.

And increasingly, dentistry itself is adapting to fit the medium.

When Dentistry Becomes Content

Open Instagram and search for cosmetic dentistry.

The transformation is immediate.

What disappears between those two photographs?

Diagnosis. Biology. Risk. Uncertainty. Maintenance. Complications. Years of training.

And, most importantly, the patient.

The medium naturally rewards what can be seen quickly. A dramatic before-and-after photograph communicates far better on a screen than a careful explanation of why the most appropriate treatment might actually be no treatment at all.

That doesn't make social media bad.

But, as Postman might have asked, what kind of dentistry does this medium naturally reward?

From "What Is Right?" to "What Looks Good?"

Dentistry has always contained an aesthetic component. There is nothing wrong with wanting beautiful teeth.

The problem begins when appearance becomes the dominant language through which dentistry is understood.

A technically excellent restoration that preserves healthy tooth structure may be almost invisible online.

Twenty veneers are spectacular.

Preventing periodontal disease is difficult to photograph.

A full-mouth transformation is extraordinary.

Convincing a 25-year-old patient not to unnecessarily prepare healthy teeth doesn't generate much content at all.

And so the incentives quietly change.

Not necessarily because dentists become unethical.

The Patient Has Changed Too

This transformation is not happening only to dentists.

Patients live inside the same information environment.

We have become accustomed to extraordinary convenience.

Then someone walks into a dental surgery with a biological problem that has developed over ten years.

And dentistry says:

These answers can feel strangely unsatisfying in a culture built around immediacy.

But biology has never agreed to participate in the digital revolution.

Perhaps one of the responsibilities of modern dentistry is therefore to resist the pressure to make complicated biological realities appear simple.

When Reviews Become Reality

There is another consequence.

Modern patients often encounter the reputation of a dentist before encountering the dentist.

A Google rating becomes a shorthand for trust.

Reviews can be enormously valuable. They give patients a voice and encourage accountability.

But clinical quality and customer satisfaction are not always identical.

Sometimes excellent healthcare requires saying:

"No."

Sometimes the safest treatment is not the treatment the patient wants.

Sometimes an extraction should be referred.

Sometimes antibiotics are inappropriate.

Sometimes a tooth cannot predictably be saved.

Sometimes the ethical answer is disappointing.

Healthcare therefore contains an uncomfortable tension that ordinary consumer businesses do not.

If dentists become excessively frightened of disappointing patients, the five-star review can quietly become another clinical influence.

That should concern us.

Dentistry in the Age of the Algorithm

Algorithms introduce another change.

They reward certainty.

But good clinicians spend much of their careers learning something algorithms struggle to reward:

uncertainty.

Experienced dentists say:

That language is scientifically responsible.

It is also terrible clickbait.

And therein lies the problem.

Orwell, Huxley and the Dental Profession

Near the beginning of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman contrasts two famous dystopian visions.

George Orwell feared a world in which information would be restricted.

Aldous Huxley feared something different: a world in which people would become so overwhelmed by pleasure, distraction and trivial information that important truths would simply disappear beneath the noise.

Postman believed Huxley's warning was becoming more relevant.

Dentistry faces a smaller version of the same problem.

We do not suffer from a shortage of dental information.

There has probably never been more.

Millions of videos explain implants, veneers, Invisalign, whitening, root canals and smile makeovers.

The question is whether more dental information has created better dental understanding.

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

A patient may arrive having watched fifty videos about veneers and still not understand the biological cost of removing healthy enamel.

AI Will Accelerate This

Artificial intelligence may intensify the problem.

Soon it will be almost effortless for every dental practice to produce hundreds of articles, videos, advertisements and social-media posts.

The internet will contain more dental information than any human could possibly consume.

That makes an interesting reversal possible.

For years, the competitive advantage was producing more information.

In the future, the competitive advantage may be producing less - but meaning more.

The dentist who can sit across from another human being, understand their fears, explain uncertainty and exercise judgement may become more valuable precisely because machines can generate everything else.

What Should We Protect?

Technology is not the enemy.

Digital scanners are extraordinary.

CBCT has transformed diagnosis.

AI may improve radiographic interpretation.

Digital workflows can make treatment more predictable.

Social media can educate millions of people.

The lesson from Postman is subtler.

The responsibility of a profession is to notice the exchange.

Perhaps the question facing dentistry is therefore not whether we should embrace the new digital age.

We already have.

The more important question is:

Neil Postman warned us that a culture does not necessarily lose what matters because somebody takes it away.

Sometimes we surrender it willingly because something more entertaining comes along.

Dentistry should be careful not to do the same.