3 ms·
We have run this experiment on a society wide basis. The data are in, and it didn't work. Mental health diagnoses are skyrocketing across the board, especiall
by jimbokun 3y ago
We have run this experiment on a society wide basis. The data are in, and it didn't work.
Mental health diagnoses are skyrocketing across the board, especially for young people. And the evidence tracking these outcomes to access to personal phones and social networks for those young people is very strong.
Virtual communities have some value. But as a replacement for in person interaction the outcomes are terrible.
(Btw, good rhetorical technique there, implying Western society the day before the iPhone was introduced was full of "communal lynchings and hangings, pogroms, witch trials etc.")
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoWeird take. We know communal lynchings happened; people literally took family photos by them! People happily documented that hangings were the town spectacles when they happened! Let’s not play rose tinted glasses about communities before social media: if you were not “in” that group you were vulnerable to violence or death. We have that now, where a disproportionate number of homeless minors are homeless because their parents kicked them out for being gay or trans and, clearly, no one else in their “community” was willing to take them in. We need to be comparing how communities are right now vs how social media is right now and not some idealized notion of what in-the-flesh communities might be like. Right now we have a dearth of welcoming in-the-flesh community alternatives for people that have been cast out of traditional social groups and use technology to cope. This doesn’t mean technology bad. It means society needs to change so technology isn’t so tempting.
- jimbokun 3y agoStatistically, the mental health of gay kids is worse today than it was when there was a lot more real world persecution.