Re:Getting Older Isn't What You Think
by shadowgovt on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @03:22PM
(#43919661)
Every time is different. Worse, I'll have to see.
What I'll be surprised by is if kids can survive the black death and the second World War and not a smartphone in their pocket.
Re:Getting Older Isn't What You Think
by 7thaccount on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @03:58PM
(#43920000)
Valid points. I will say though that this new era of instant gratification: smartphones, streaming services, engaging/addicting video games...etc is leading to large amounts of people choosing to not have kids. Heck, forget the having kids...people aren't even dating at the same levels as historical norms it would seem. Birth rates are below the replacement level in many countries already and that is concerning. Maybe we just drop back to older population levels after a sharp adjustment period.
The smartphone in their pocket connects them to services designed by psychologists to keep them engaged for as long as possible. I can't think of a historic analogue.
Technology development appears to follow an exponential curve while human psychological development has remained relatively static.
It is entirely possible that without equivalent biological change, the attack upon the human spirit by various forms of media will become critical and at some point the kids really will not be alright.
What other explanation is there for the evidence we have that teenage girls in many counties across the globe report being more anxious and depressed and also are admitted into emergency services for self harm at a higher and increasing rate each year with an inflection point in 2012 specifically?
Re:Getting Older Isn't What You Think
by shadowgovt on Wednesday May 07, 2025 @06:32PM
(#43921171)
What is the significance of 2012?
Facebook acquired Instagram.
Re:Getting Older Isn't What You Think
by 7thaccount on Thursday May 08, 2025 @07:44AM
(#43925197)
This is a pretty underrated comment. Yeah we've had world wars and stuff, but never some kind of service that makes young women hate themselves to such a degree. In my day they had the teen magazines, but not the 24/7 feed of polished celebrity faces and people with filters and stuff.
When I was a kid I had Saturday morning cartoons, but was bored a lot. Video games existed, but you got bored of those fast and rarely got new ones. We went outside a lot. Kids these days (as well as adults) have access to 24/7 dopamine hits. That doesn't mean we're in the end times, but I don't think humans were meant to live in our own curated digital bubbles. People are now less used to socializing in person and it seems to be causing exacerbated feelings of loneliness and depression.
Of course my father complained whenever I wasn't hard at work, but the difference seems to be the magnitude of the modern problem. At times I think humanity is rapidly evolving into something else and the physical bodies we have can't keep up. I can't imagine the next thousand years of progress.