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At this point I’m just watching a slightly younger cohort of men repeat all of my worst digital addiction mistakes like getting inserted into the online video g
by jondwillis 2y ago
At this point I’m just watching a slightly younger cohort of men repeat all of my worst digital addiction mistakes like getting inserted into the online video game -> toxic online behavior pipeline (or worse, fascism), ideologies (Musk), crypto and options gambling (thanks Reddit a la 2013 for all of the crypto communities and WSB) too much computer (ouch, my neck, arms and back.)
I’m not doing particularly well, especially mentally, despite having tons of opportunity and successes. Worried about the younger cohorts, but I guess that is a tale as old as time.
- intended 2y agoWsb was 2013??
- siltcakes 2y agoAre they also drinking tons of soda? I can’t believe how much I used to drink. I don’t touch any drink with sugar (other than lactose/latte) nowadays. It’s so disgusting, don’t know how I ever did it in the first place.
- hashishen 2y agoGod my teeth wish i had just stopped drinking soda a decade ago. It wasnt even that hard to kick
- xattt 2y agoHow much of that was soda, and how much was it access to preventative care?
- mplewis 2y agoIf you're drinking soda daily, your teeth are coated in acidic liquid for hours a day. This is incredibly damaging to your enamel.
- xattt 2y agoI would posit there’s an overlap between those who drink cola daily and limited access to healthcare.
- jazz9k 2y agoDental care is cheap and insurace is usually sub $100/month (at least in the US)
- iknowSFR 2y agoBroad brushstrokes incoming and pure speculation but I wrote it out anyway… Today’s youth are more proactive with their identities these days than we were. We were and remain reactive with our identities. That preference influences what triggers the dopamine hits needed for life. The drugs of a reactive identity culture are sugar, alcohol, narcotics, work, anything that’s a trope in movies made by boomers. These drugs have consequences that shape the user’s identity. For example: weight gain or burnout. But the drugs of a proactive identity culture are those that drive the person’s perception of their identity. The live ahead of the consequences. Things like digital social networks, status symbols like shoes, colleges, or jobs, and anything that drives success in those status symbols. Example: Adderall helps the user study, which helps the user get better grades, which opens the door to a better college, which allows the user to flaunt that college association as part of their identity. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to those drugs but those consequences aren’t tropes of modern life just yet because we’re still normalizing their outcomes. All of this to say: sodas aren’t their thing because soda is “unhealthy” and that drags on their identity.
- stonedge 2y ago> Today’s youth are more proactive with their identities these days than we were. I wanted to echo this and say that I believe younger people create a "symphony" with their identity; picking and choosing from various sub-cultures to create a unique combination. Flexible, morphing.
- rcpt 2y agoGen Z uses a lot more steroids which tracks with your analysis. But also I think you're falling for sample bias. The ones who don't have a billion followers are overweight and generally less healthy than previous generations.
- jajko 2y agoAnd more depressed since massive quick/instant success is seemingly everywhere, apart from their own hands. Cancer if social media at its best, spreading depression like chemtrails. This breeds greed for status & perceived success and 0 patience to get there. You see it here on HN all the time when talking economy and real estate - young people complaining how they they cant own some well located nice house right now, how everything is shit and their future stolen, despite stats saying exactly the opposite. Where the fuck is at least a bit of decency to wait a decade of hard effort for such a success? Thats shit for losers, nobody got time for that. How I feel sorry for them, all the added value of technology is nothing compared to what they 'lost' or more like never experienced. At least many of them, the vocal majority, the rest goes on just like we did
- lm28469 2y agoI feel like the patterns are more or less the same but the cycles are getting shorter and more pronounced. I met the son of a family friend today, he's 13, already has an opinion about the Israel/Palestine war and spent $500 in roblox so far, they're not wealthy at all. Back in my days I was stuck in the free to play parts of mmorpgs (or had to beg for months for a $5 monthly membership), playing tf2 (free) and had 0 political ideas or even knew people who cared about politics
- onemoresoop 2y ago$500 in Roblox? that's a lot of money for a 13 year old and that money could likely be spent elsewhere... As far as the opinion about Israel/Palestine it's likely that opinion is inherited from family or cohort and it's not fully their own.
- RajT88 2y agoI recall in grade school in the 80's lots of kids had opinions on Jews, Poles, black folks, gay folks, etc. Clearly, all acquired from relatives. Young people emulating the adults in their life is how it always has been.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- voidfunc 2y agoOh yea I was a big Republican when I was in high school because I went to a private school and all my friends were also Republicans (except the theater students). We were all Republicans because our parents were Republicans. Then I got several years in the workforce and realized I wanted nothing to do with the Republican party.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- guelo 2y agoIf you don't have decades of built up propaganda it's pretty easy to see that Israel is the bad guy. The condescending "it's complicated" line is part of the propaganda telling you that you're not allowed to come to the obvious conclusion for yourself. My 10 year has figured out that Russia is the bad guy in Ukraine and that Israel is the bad guy in Gaza.
- hipadev23 2y agoonline games aren’t the problem imo, it’s disposable identities and ~zero repercussions for bad actors.
- portaouflop 2y agoThe remedy is far worse than the problem
- hipadev23 2y agoYeah I don't know how you preserve much-needed anonymity, while also binding humans to their personas and holding them accountable for their actions.
- mrguyorama 2y agoWhy do you believe anonymity is "much-needed"? Human society was built for tens of thousands of years on "stay away from Ben because he has a bad habit of not paying back what you loan him" Anonymity is new and probably not something the human brain, which isn't meant to handle more than a few hundred familiar faces, can manage reasonably. If you want anonymity 200 years ago, you had to print your own pamphlets and hand them out on the corner in a costume and hope nobody recognized you. Then you would go to church on sunday where the entire community would gossip about everyone's "sins" after the service. Human history was radically more transparent about who was doing what, and who was saying what. Nobody standing on a sop-box ever wore a mask, and while most used pseudonyms or pen names, there were only so many printing presses in the colonies, but that didn't stop the American rebels from spreading their claims.