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Lots of politically charged comments here, but I actually work with students on a daily basis. It’s not about politics, people. Social media does play a role,
by timst4 4y ago
Lots of politically charged comments here, but I actually work with students on a daily basis. It’s not about politics, people.
Social media does play a role, but not in the way most would argue. All those saying it is an addiction are correct, but I would expand it to include most of the teen internet as well.
The thing is they don’t use technology like you do. They are CONSUMED by digital media if they don’t receive boundaries from home. Their lives are dominated by the virtual - memes, tiktok, news, Netflix, YouTube and they have been since an early age. They know this is not a healthy lifestyle and yet they cannot tear themselves away. Many are hopelessly addicted to the point of sacrificing sleep, food, and relationships to technology addiction.
Meanwhile, most teenagers are well aware of the problems they will inherit (climate, political divide, cost of living, etc) from the previous generations. I had to talk 7th graders off of a ledge this week after one student started a discussion about the latest IPCC report. However this alone isn’t the problem.
It is the vast DISJUNCTION between these two worlds that causes them stress. They have been raised by predatory technology into a world full of greed and a collapsing ecosystem. They are caught between virtual consumerist addiction and despair about reality on a daily basis.
Super heavy stuff for anyone to deal with.
- antiverse 4y ago>but I actually work with students on a daily basis. I hate to be the one but what's your sample count? What does, "I actually work with students on a daily basis" mean? Are you a teacher in a high school? University? Do they intern/co-op at your company? I attend a few schools for part-time things here and there, and I'm exposed to students aged 14-70 regularly. Politics are involved as a means of an identity, even if they realize that they are powerless to do anything. The lack of critical thinking for any given saucy subject (most recently see Roe vs Wade) means that the opinions people hold are generally prepackaged from whatever sources they obtained them from and are internally congruent† - they know things here and there about a given subject, but externally nonsensical given the situation that the person is in and what they ought to focus their attention/time towards - they are, for lack of a better term, wasting their precious time away getting baited by professional media con people with attention grabbing headlines and memes. † Best seen in person as a dialogue between two or more people where you're aware that their source material was written by one person in an essay (or a tweet roll) form, but has been changed to be a kind of a ping-ponged conversation where each person takes a turn to continue the over all narrative. (Better put: one big agreeable circle-jerk.)