Did social media cause the banking panic?

turmoil that has sent a handful of American and European lenders to the wall in recent weeks has a new feature. Use of social media and messaging apps, which spread information at lightning pace to an ever-larger group of panickers, marks a break from past crises. Meanwhile, new digital-finance tools let nervous depositors withdraw funds as soon as the notion strikes them, whether from offices in San Francisco or ski slopes in Saint Moritz. After the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, the idea of faster bank runs is understandably causing concern among analysts and legislators. Yet the wave of new tech in the past decade and a bit is by no means the first to change behaviour. Previous examples suggest something of a pattern: innovations initially help facilitate a boom, contributing to exuberance based on a sense of futuristic possibility, before speeding up and magnifying the eventual bust. History also suggests that recent technological changes may have a deeper impact, reshaping markets in the long run, too.