Re:Stop that It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass soci...
by refurb on Tuesday December 06, 2022 @08:18PM
(#33889534)
One major problem, in my opinion, is that people think what they see online is a representative sample of the population. It’s clearly not.
You don’t have to browse Reddit for long to to see plenty of self-described loners, people dealing with anxiety and other mental issues. And it makes sense that these people would find community online.
But if kids are going online and being bombarded with “the world is doomed”, and “what I thought were just the challenges of growing up are actually a mental illness” or “once I did [unhealthy coping mechanism], I felt like my problems were solved”, they developed unhealthy and distorted views of how kids their age think and act. I can see it being very easy to get sucked into the worst kind of community.
And if kids isolate themselves further the online world is literally 99% of their entire world view. And what an awful distorted world that is.
You don’t have to browse Reddit for long to to see plenty of self-described loners, people dealing with anxiety and other mental issues. And it makes sense that these people would find community online.
But if kids are going online and being bombarded with “the world is doomed”, and “what I thought were just the challenges of growing up are actually a mental illness” or “once I did [unhealthy coping mechanism], I felt like my problems were solved”, they developed unhealthy and distorted views of how kids their age think and act. I can see it being very easy to get sucked into the worst kind of community.
And if kids isolate themselves further the online world is literally 99% of their entire world view. And what an awful distorted world that is.