The primary source for this topic page is Stanley Cohen's 2011 edition of "Folk Devils and Moral Panics." ISBN 978–0–415–61016–2 My general use definition for things that are shaped like moral panics is as follows: there's a problem, this problem is an existential threat to society (or maybe just to you/people like you), this problem seemed harmless at the time and we let it get big because we were foolish or, more likely, we were deceived. If we don't fix it now, our way of life will die. Where I tend to see things that remind me of a moral panic are any time we all indulge in a conversation where this thing we all don't like about ourselves gets externalized in to an out-group. It doesn't have to be something like blaming immigrants for economic malaise, it can be something like blaming your phone's manufacturer for the fact that you feel shame for spending lots of time on it. It's when "Not my fault, his fault" becomes a national conversation. >"The objects of normal moral panics are rather predictable; so too are the discursive formulae used to represent them. For example: They are *new* (lying dormant perhaps, but hard to recognize; deceptively ordinary and routine, but invisibly creeping up the moral horizon) – but also *old* (camouflaged versions of traditional and well-known evils). They are damaging in *themselves* – but also merely *warning signs* of the real, much deeper and more prevalent condition. They are *transparent* (anyone can see what’s happening) – but also *opaque*: accredited experts must explain the perils hidden behind the superficially harmless (decode a rock song’s lyrics to see how they led to a school massacre)." (pp vii-viii) Note the factors that are in tension: 1) New and Old 2) Harmful Themselves, also Just a Warning Sign 3) Transparent and Opaque Many commentators note that there are people who tend to capitalize on the rise and fall of a moral panic or social panic. For our purposes, we'll just think of these as people who want to change the law or social norms (maybe both) and are responding to the opportunity, and then there's the normal coterie of cynical actors who don't believe in anything other than power. Politicians, etc. Historical examples for what exactly we're talking about here are sometimes in dispute; like a lot of things in sociology, there's a lot that's open to interpretation. I was exposed to the language and structure of a "moral panic" as a distinct phenomena in discussions of the Satanic Panic, a purported epidemic of satanic ritual abuse in the 80s and 90s throughout the anglophone world, originating in America. One criticism, or caution, of the use of the term "moral panic" is that once a movement has been labelled with it (either correctly or incorrectly), there is an immediate tendency for the educated and the liberals to dismiss everything involved with the movement as exaggerated and hot air. Moral panics are given form by social anxieties, which do not go away because they are "proven wrong" with facts and logic. It's also worth considering that "overblown" does not mean "entirely fictional." For example, while some may dispute that Instagram is to blame for an epidemic of teen depression, anxiety and suicide, it's almost certainly true that Instagram use has contributed to an amount of young people's mental illness, maybe even a measurable amount. AI psychosis may or may not be "coming for us all," but LLM chatbots have almost certainly contributed negatively to some people's delusional tendencies.