I think drunk driving campaigns are a great success story. We don't see them pushing drunk driving to dramatic new lows each year because we're already close to the limit of what they can accomplish. There are people who drink and drive despite them, but there would be far more people drinking and driving without them.

If you're a pessimist, maybe my pessimism has experienced integer overflow into optimism.

I admit that the DD was not a good example for two reasons:

One, there are very aggressive negative consequences --this has an impact on some people.

Two, we have a better chance of changing behavior if we do it in a coordinated manner with good methods when we start young. So, I may be a bit too pessimistic since I think we can make a difference if we start young but with good persistence practices. Given we indoctrinate kids against this since middle school, I think it's made a difference.

These are good points you raise. I suppose what I'm really thinking is that there needs to be some sort of "interpersonal digital communications normalization process" for young people that functions similarly to how being at school around teachers / outside at recess around peers functions to normalize children's behavior toward others (or at least serves to mitigate the most blatantly anti-social behaviors in many cases). As it stands, many children are introduced to the web and online communications without much (or any) guidance whatsoever as far as I can tell; it seems like the impact of this hands-off approach is quite negative in many cases, with young people lacking the tools to healthily manage their interactions with the web.