No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

Re:No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectivel... by HDThoreaun on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @12:39PM (#34985431)

Certainly the internet brings new problems that we have to grapple with, but overall I can't agree that it's net negative. Riffing on your phone example, are you really claiming that dealing with spam calls is bad enough to counteract the huge gains you get from being able to talk to your family and friends whenever you want? Imo that's not even close to true.

There's certainly a lot more bullshit to deal with today than there was in the past, and I can respect how leads to some level of existential angst and mental health issues, but I can't agree that it has overall made life worse.

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Re:No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectivel... by green_man_lives on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @12:49PM (#34985612)

I do think that life is better with the internet, but a counterpoint I'd like to make is that humans are very quick to adapt to material change.

Someone who goes from making $600 to $8000 a month will see their stress levels reduced but the $8000 will quickly become just a number for them.

To use another analogy, programmers will always quickly squander the gains made by the chips. I bitch and moan about webpack and React because I've never written a GUI in C, the intermittent gains are invisible to me.

Now for kids born after the internet's invention, they don't even understand the benefits of having the internet. Those are invisible. The negative effects are crystal clear though.

In my example, I am not saying webpack made life worse, but that it's easy to see what's wrong with it and hard to see what's right.

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