Like it or not, you're supposed to fit in with people around you. If you can't do that then there's something either wrong with you or them.
That inherent urge to fit in is being digitally compensated, and I don't think it's healthy to avoid being challenged by all these factors we take for granted, from something as simple as eye contact to behavioral consequences.
This comes from my experience thinking I didn't need to fit in for a very long time.
People being different is bad?
Some of this is just me not being hip with the next generation's culture. But he also has not seen almost any of what I would call the American film canon. So we can't even discuss cheesy 80s action films. Eventually we figured out he had seen Stargate. He was surprised I had seen it.
He can't tell what's mainstream and what's highly esoteric. I do think that's a problem. I know no one will have any idea what I'm talking about if I bring up my favourite synthwave artists in conversation.
It occurs to me that the form of media often informed my awareness about that. Was it on TV? Popular book at the library? Or did I find it in the back of some weird 'zine?
It's all the same on YouTube. Though there is the view count. It's often watched alone, so no social feedback. When it comes to movie nights, for example, finding something that's acceptable to most, not just hyper-tailored to yourself and full of in-references, is an important social skill.
I think most YouTubers and uncomfortably fake to watch, but I would still prefer people watch that over mainstream tv…
My point is that there was such a thing -- a common film canon -- that people who were interested in film, could be expected to be somewhat familiar with. No longer true?
Yes. Lowest common denominator. Some common point of reference gives a common vocabulary. Even if it sucks.
Believe it or not, not a whole lot of people will watch Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time and think it was an amazing movie anymore. That’s not to say it isn’t well made. It is. But is also just not very interesting to modern youth.
The place I volunteer at has quite a few teen volunteers, and I've noticed I can immediately spot the chronically-online teens (and there's a lot of them), because it's like they're from a different planet. They use language I don't understand, their humor revolves around memes I don't understand, they constantly reference people/events from their favored internet niche, and then completely lose interest in talking with people who don't understand their niche.
I think this ends up decreasing the amount of difference and diversity teens are exposed to, because when there are a million [insert niche here] fans online who "totally get you", there is far less incentive to make friends in the real world. And if you do make real-world friends, they likely are going to be part of that same niche, and have the exact same language/interests/etc that has been crafted by the online community. (It's honestly a bit eerie how good these niches are at creating cookie-cutter teens. I've had bizarrely similar conversations with kids who have never met each other, but are into the same niche. And it's not just their interests that are similar, it's their attitudes/outlooks/political views/etc.)
I find this really concerning, because it's important for teens to be exposed to a wide variety of people/experiences and be encouraged to respect them all. And that's hard to do when you're in a bubble of people who are identical to you, and have very little incentive to branch outside of that bubble.
I think back to my teen friend group, and it was a hodge-podge of computer geeks, theatre kids, journalism nerds, etc. I got so much benefit from having such a diverse friend group, and it's concerning to see those types of friend groups becoming rarer.
When you make hyperspecialized memes, and you have many of them, you're basically fragmenting a larger pool of shared meaning into many smaller ones.
Diversity, and of itself, is not inherently a virtue -- although lots of people would like it to be. Rather, diversity in the ecological sense, leads to more resiliency. There's still have to be some kind of unifying aspect (such as, unifying on humanity as a whole, or better yet, the whole earth as a whole) within which there is diversity. There's a sense of belonging to something greater than you while simultaneously participating and relating from the uniqueness of an individual.
> less cultural cohesion due to hyper diversity in memes resulting in fewer shared experiences
My take is it’s a bunch of people who are out of touch with the youth assuming that the youth feel out of touch with each other.
"Social media" accelerates unmoderated interaction with other irresponsible people, which, generally speaking, is not healthy for teenagers.
Other irresponsible people means their peers right? Like teens talking to teens without adult supervision?
Merely existing on the playground, on the field, or in the cafeteria in the 80s and 90s reinforced the idea that being different was bad.
How is this unique to post-2012? At least Instagram doesn't hold you up against a chain-link fence while TikTok punches you in the gut for being different.
On the recon side, gossiping is a fun bonding activity, but scrolling through snaps/reels is relative drudgery.
On the performance side, "be pretty and vivacious at fun social events" is no longer sufficient without obsessively managing your profile's brand. This doesn't only include posing for, curating, and editing photos, but a bunch of arcane rules about tagging etiquette, who's included in your photos, etc.
This is all from the horse's mouth, with a little bit of editorializing. The social environment of an in-crowd high school girl has always been extremely intense, but these tools hage made the process simultaneously more work and less fun, to hear my cousins tell it.
I know that in some respects, social media is uniquely bad, but perhaps the bulk of the problem is just being hooked on anything that makes you look at a phone or a screen all the time and neglect other aspects of life. Social media just happens to be the most popular thing currently to be hooked on.
It seems to me, with modern technology, things are shared amongst people to create shared experiences and discussions but these are not people within your local physical community--leading, again, to isolation and the dangers therein.
Can you elaborate? I only ever see children like 9-14 happy doing the latest Instagram or TikTok dance craze in the park/at the mall/with groups of their friends.
Many characters in "Nosedive" (Black Mirror episode) looked really happy as well.
It feels a little "anarchist" to say "down with all social media! it's most likely a total net negative! nobody should be allowed to enjoy it because it isn't inclusive of those who might be left out!"
I agree that we shouldn't just ban anything that exclude some users. I'm not as shrill as some people are about the dangers, but I do have a generally negative opinion of childhoods that are spent so online.
I have several young relatives—ages 9-22—that are heavily online. For the most part, they're the popular kids in their schools. Yet I see and hear constantly how they would never dare do things because of the pile-on potentials. Things I (a nerd who desperately wanted to be cool) would still have done.
When I was in elementary and middle school, I was definitely in the lower quartile of popularity. I was bullied occasionally, and I would sometimes dread going to school because of my social standing. BUT, I had friends at home! I had a life outside of school that I could return to after a short day of that stress. Even in school, the social pressures abated during class. If Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok existed during my school years, I would have found no refuge from the hierarchies and drama of school. The game I was "losing" between first bell and final bell would have gone 24/7.
My only saving grace would have been parents that refused to let me play the game in the first place. I think parents and schools should lean harder in this direction. Kids need to learn their social skills in small settings first, before they're exposed to literally the whole world. An awkward 11-year-old can only do so much "damage" to themselves in the limited setting of IRL. Let's get the mistakes out of the way before they're broadcast across space and time.
The middle ground I've settled on is regulating it like alcohol.
Children should not be hanging out in bars and they should not be on social networking sites, period. COPPA should be vastly expanded.
Social media is our generation's nicotine. "Wait, it's HOW dangerous??" followed by the next generation's "How could those idiots not realize?"
Have you ever watched a child watch YouTube before? I don't know if comments are turned off for kids videos (maybe they are) but most kids videos have 2m+ views if not much more.
- more localized isolation as kids spent a higher % of their attention in internet communities - less cultural cohesion due to hyper diversity in memes resulting in fewer shared experiences. - a shift in perceived life value/success based on internet influencers and incentive to emulate their lifestyles. - always online presence increasing the stakes making embarrassing or uncool mistakes permanent and detrimental to one's image.