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The Americans (†) who grew up with constant surveillance (social media, cameras everywhere) aim for ordinariness. The entire generation is less likely to expres

The Americans (†) who grew up with constant surveillance (social media, cameras everywhere) aim for ordinariness. The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations. For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky under such an equation. I find this sad and worrisome. I like chaos and healthy disorderliness. I enjoy skilled conversationalists with fresh ideas. And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient. († Footnote: It isn't just Americans but youth coming of age in every culture. The "social cooling" effect is more pronounced among Americans as they exhibit greater variance in expression in the first place and thus have more to move toward the baseline.)

honkostani 1y ago
It helps to be already social isolated and socially suicidal. The freedom to think and speak, once again resides in a barrel and not with those who emptied it, who must stick to stagnant ideas with no explanation and prediction power. (the sun will disappear August 23, 2044). True science. true knowledge puts itself to the test, by performing predictions and miracles. Everything else just ain't. Typed on a miracle, a electrically state-full rock, predicatively turning up and on every morning.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
baxtr 1y ago
My best friend from school days has a son who’s now in 7th grade. Recently, when we were talking about him, we realised his school years are far less dramatic than ours. We had drama, lots of bullying, tears, fights, and mean things were done. In contrast, his son’s school days are absolutely harmless and benign. I know it’s n = 1 and maybe we were very unlucky back then. But it also makes me wonder if any chaotic experience is worth having.
- microtonal 1y ago
  I think it is really hard to extrapolate from single examples. My first two years were a little like that. Then I had to repeat a school year, got in the nicest class imaginable and had five incredibly fun years that I look back at with a lot of fondness. Having a kid myself, I think life is much worse now. There is the constant unconscious fear of getting filmed, etc. It was much easier for my generation to just experiment, do stupid stuff, etc., you know being a child/teenager, without the fear of repercussions.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > Having a kid myself, I think life is much worse now. There is the constant unconscious fear of getting filmed, etc. It was much easier for my generation to just experiment, do stupid stuff, etc., you know being a child/teenager, without the fear of repercussions. I don't know what generation you belong to, but I was still in school when mobile phones that could record video became "good enough" that most of my peers in school had them, today I'm ~33. But we were also thinking about that sort of stuff, especially when we were doing stuff you kind of don't want to be public, and there was a few cases of embarrassing things "leaking" which obviously suck. But I'm not sure how different it is today? Maybe it's more acceptable to film people straight in their faces, and less accepted to slap the phone out of people's hand if they're obnoxious about it? In the end, it doesn't feel like a "new" problem anymore, as it seems like this all started more than 15 years ago and we had fears about being filmed already then.
    - microtonal 1y ago
      I don't know what generation you belong to, but I was still in school when mobile phones that could record video became "good enough" that most of my peers in school had them, today I'm ~33. Ten years older. I'm from West-Europe and most people only got dumbphones around the time I was 18-19 (~2000 and mostly adults or 17-18 year olds). Phones with cameras became widespread quite a few years later. Even when I got an iPhone in 2009, most people were still using good old dumbphone/feature phone Nokias. After 2009 it changed very quickly. I think that aligns with you being 10 years younger + adoption in the US (assuming that you are in the US) being earlier. Phones were simply not a factor when I was in high school. If you had to call someone on-the-go, you would use one of the many public phone booths and a pre-charged card (there were always rumors that you could spay them with hairspray to get unlimited credit :D). But that almost never happened, you'd mostly just meet people IRL if you wanted to socialize.
agumonkey 1y ago
I'm shocked how all this crept up across society. Maybe I was just naive, but still. A society is a very subtle fabric, and the last 20 years distorted a lot of aspect of this fragile equilibrium.
captainkrtek 1y ago
How do you think the current political climate has shifted this? It seems maybe individuals won’t express a non conformist view as easily, but politics has grown more extreme in terms of what acceptable positions are in the first place.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  Unfortunately, the current political climate, with retribution against political enemies, has greatly increased self-censorship[1] https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/academic-self-censorship-under-trump-latest-middle-east-scholar-barometer-findings https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/academic-self-censors...
csomar 1y ago
> And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient. The social cooling effect always existed. It is just, previously, information and reactions traveled way slower. We are just adjusting to the new speed. Culture is a complex emergent product of the various basic human interactions. My guess is that this product doesn't make much sense when reactions travel fast as culture changes very slowly. So instead, the future will be culture-less. You decide your behavior everyday based on your first few (100) shorts/snaps/tiktoks of the morning. It does help that these snaps disappear by tomorrow. This new society will have no memory.
ajross 1y ago
> The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations. I think that's pretty arguable, and I'd want to see actual research. Certainly kids today are wildly more likely to embrace Stuff that Pisses Off their Elders than at any time since the 60's counterculture revolution. Think gender fluidity and pronoun choice, body modification, protest culture, rejection of career paths, embrace of the "neuro-atypical" as routine personality types... all that seems qualitatively but inarguably higher than when I was growing up 30-40 years ago.
- polio 1y ago
  This just happens to be the consensus opinion for their group. Kids have never cared about being accepted by people 20 years older than they are; kids have always cared about being accepted by their peers. Social cooling means that dissent from their peer group is harder.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > This just happens to be the consensus opinion for their group. That becomes non-falsifiable then. Everyone everywhere from every period in history has been part of some in-group or another with a consistent scripture/canon/creed/whatever. No one (especially nerd king HN commenters like us) is truly an independent thinker in the way you're constructing. The claim upthread was that modern kids were afraid of consensus-breaking because of technological surveillance. And that's clearly false because they hate the surveillors with a passion and are not quiet about those opinions.
    - only-one1701 1y ago
      I think you have the wrong end of the stick. The surveillance here isn't Palinitr; it's TikTok. And the kids love TikTok. Same goes for pissing off their elders -- as the comment above said, it's about their peers, not society at large, who matter (as it is for all of us).
      - 1y ago
nathan_compton 1y ago
People say this but is it true? Young people, for instance, increasingly say that political violence may be justified. That doesn't sound like a safe opinion.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >Young people, for instance, increasingly say that political violence may be justified This is gonna get downvoted for sure because HNs bias, but based on current events, it's only the left that does that. Right-wingers may say hurtful words but don't seem too keen on murdering opponents for political reasons or disagreements. At least not yet.
  - estimator7292 1y ago
    Like a coup?
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      Who got killed?
  - nathan_compton 1y ago
    Not really relevant to the point, but https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-violence-424157 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-... That poll from 2020 shows republicans and democrats roughly equal on the question. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the desire for political violence goes up among those currently out of power, anyway.
    - toomim 1y ago
      Try this newer poll from last month, in 2025: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kir...
  - scoopdewoop 1y ago
Razengan 1y ago
> For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky under such an equation. Or, repression will build up for so long that it will explode.

honkostani 1y ago

It helps to be already social isolated and socially suicidal. The freedom to think and speak, once again resides in a barrel and not with those who emptied it, who must stick to stagnant ideas with no explanation and prediction power. (the sun will disappear August 23, 2044). True science. true knowledge puts itself to the test, by performing predictions and miracles. Everything else just ain't. Typed on a miracle, a electrically state-full rock, predicatively turning up and on every morning.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

baxtr 1y ago

My best friend from school days has a son who’s now in 7th grade. Recently, when we were talking about him, we realised his school years are far less dramatic than ours. We had drama, lots of bullying, tears, fights, and mean things were done. In contrast, his son’s school days are absolutely harmless and benign. I know it’s n = 1 and maybe we were very unlucky back then. But it also makes me wonder if any chaotic experience is worth having.

microtonal 1y ago
I think it is really hard to extrapolate from single examples. My first two years were a little like that. Then I had to repeat a school year, got in the nicest class imaginable and had five incredibly fun years that I look back at with a lot of fondness. Having a kid myself, I think life is much worse now. There is the constant unconscious fear of getting filmed, etc. It was much easier for my generation to just experiment, do stupid stuff, etc., you know being a child/teenager, without the fear of repercussions.
- diggan 1y ago
  > Having a kid myself, I think life is much worse now. There is the constant unconscious fear of getting filmed, etc. It was much easier for my generation to just experiment, do stupid stuff, etc., you know being a child/teenager, without the fear of repercussions. I don't know what generation you belong to, but I was still in school when mobile phones that could record video became "good enough" that most of my peers in school had them, today I'm ~33. But we were also thinking about that sort of stuff, especially when we were doing stuff you kind of don't want to be public, and there was a few cases of embarrassing things "leaking" which obviously suck. But I'm not sure how different it is today? Maybe it's more acceptable to film people straight in their faces, and less accepted to slap the phone out of people's hand if they're obnoxious about it? In the end, it doesn't feel like a "new" problem anymore, as it seems like this all started more than 15 years ago and we had fears about being filmed already then.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    I don't know what generation you belong to, but I was still in school when mobile phones that could record video became "good enough" that most of my peers in school had them, today I'm ~33. Ten years older. I'm from West-Europe and most people only got dumbphones around the time I was 18-19 (~2000 and mostly adults or 17-18 year olds). Phones with cameras became widespread quite a few years later. Even when I got an iPhone in 2009, most people were still using good old dumbphone/feature phone Nokias. After 2009 it changed very quickly. I think that aligns with you being 10 years younger + adoption in the US (assuming that you are in the US) being earlier. Phones were simply not a factor when I was in high school. If you had to call someone on-the-go, you would use one of the many public phone booths and a pre-charged card (there were always rumors that you could spay them with hairspray to get unlimited credit :D). But that almost never happened, you'd mostly just meet people IRL if you wanted to socialize.

agumonkey 1y ago

I'm shocked how all this crept up across society. Maybe I was just naive, but still. A society is a very subtle fabric, and the last 20 years distorted a lot of aspect of this fragile equilibrium.

captainkrtek 1y ago

How do you think the current political climate has shifted this? It seems maybe individuals won’t express a non conformist view as easily, but politics has grown more extreme in terms of what acceptable positions are in the first place.

Esophagus4 1y ago
Unfortunately, the current political climate, with retribution against political enemies, has greatly increased self-censorship[1] https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/academic-self-censorship-under-trump-latest-middle-east-scholar-barometer-findings https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/academic-self-censors...

csomar 1y ago

> And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient. The social cooling effect always existed. It is just, previously, information and reactions traveled way slower. We are just adjusting to the new speed. Culture is a complex emergent product of the various basic human interactions. My guess is that this product doesn't make much sense when reactions travel fast as culture changes very slowly. So instead, the future will be culture-less. You decide your behavior everyday based on your first few (100) shorts/snaps/tiktoks of the morning. It does help that these snaps disappear by tomorrow. This new society will have no memory.

ajross 1y ago

> The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations. I think that's pretty arguable, and I'd want to see actual research. Certainly kids today are wildly more likely to embrace Stuff that Pisses Off their Elders than at any time since the 60's counterculture revolution. Think gender fluidity and pronoun choice, body modification, protest culture, rejection of career paths, embrace of the "neuro-atypical" as routine personality types... all that seems qualitatively but inarguably higher than when I was growing up 30-40 years ago.

polio 1y ago
This just happens to be the consensus opinion for their group. Kids have never cared about being accepted by people 20 years older than they are; kids have always cared about being accepted by their peers. Social cooling means that dissent from their peer group is harder.
- ajross 1y ago
  > This just happens to be the consensus opinion for their group. That becomes non-falsifiable then. Everyone everywhere from every period in history has been part of some in-group or another with a consistent scripture/canon/creed/whatever. No one (especially nerd king HN commenters like us) is truly an independent thinker in the way you're constructing. The claim upthread was that modern kids were afraid of consensus-breaking because of technological surveillance. And that's clearly false because they hate the surveillors with a passion and are not quiet about those opinions.
  - only-one1701 1y ago
    I think you have the wrong end of the stick. The surveillance here isn't Palinitr; it's TikTok. And the kids love TikTok. Same goes for pissing off their elders -- as the comment above said, it's about their peers, not society at large, who matter (as it is for all of us).
    - 1y ago

nathan_compton 1y ago

People say this but is it true? Young people, for instance, increasingly say that political violence may be justified. That doesn't sound like a safe opinion.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>Young people, for instance, increasingly say that political violence may be justified This is gonna get downvoted for sure because HNs bias, but based on current events, it's only the left that does that. Right-wingers may say hurtful words but don't seem too keen on murdering opponents for political reasons or disagreements. At least not yet.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  Like a coup?
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Who got killed?
- nathan_compton 1y ago
  Not really relevant to the point, but https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-violence-424157 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-... That poll from 2020 shows republicans and democrats roughly equal on the question. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the desire for political violence goes up among those currently out of power, anyway.
  - toomim 1y ago
    Try this newer poll from last month, in 2025: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kir...
- scoopdewoop 1y ago

Razengan 1y ago

> For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky under such an equation. Or, repression will build up for so long that it will explode.