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No. When I was a kid people went outside. Same cookie cutter homes, but people outside. It's the Internet.
by peg_leg 9y ago
No. When I was a kid people went outside. Same cookie cutter homes, but people outside.
It's the Internet.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y agoYou not feeling lonely as a child doesn’t mean parents raising their children didn’t feel lonely.
- nsxwolf 9y agoI never, ever talk to my neighbors and that's what makes me happy. I wonder if they could figure out what gene I have that's responsible for that and then sell it as a CRISPR modification.
- gumby 9y agoLook at the date of the Betty Friedan book mentioned the article, or consider the Stones' song about "Mother's little helper" (valium) or, for that matter, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. All far predated the Internet or even the ARPANET.
- nrhk 9y agoI think its exacerbated the issue. Social anxiety ramped up due to social networks, plenty of cheap entertainment over the internet to just barely keep going while sinking ever deeper.
- ctdonath 9y agoNot long ago your social options were extremely limited. Today you can (roughly) be anywhere an 8000 square mile area within an hour, and talk to almost anybody on the planet within seconds. Without the Internet (personal cars being a thing not long before), you were stuck with whoever lived within a mile or so, with "instant" communications limited to your neighbors - which was great if you liked them, and sucked massively if you didn't. I'm oddly reminded of Victorian novels revolving around the notion "I dislike you and you're marginally ugly, but you're the only social option I've got so let's wed."