I am such a grumpy old man.
But that doesn't make me wrong.
For years I have been talking about the impact of screen time on the young and social media addiction, and this dates back well before even Facebook was a thing. Of course, I know I was unlikely the first, but in my circles, I was the first and only one talking about it - and getting dismissed time and timer again. And now I feel a bit like people are jumping on the bandwagon.
“Absence of Evidence does not mean Evidence of Absence”
Carl Sagan
Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to be a scientist, let alone one of any renown. I am pretty observant of many factors though and have always enjoyed seeing if I can tie what might seem like unrelated events together to bring some clarity to unknowns - even if it is just a story. For me, it is a bit like a game of Sherlock Holmes, looking at the evidence I have in front of me, and working backwards to see what caused the situation. I was teaching my daughter this game yesterday, as she was walking around the house with binoculars looking for a "crime to solve".
Yes - I should get her a magnifying glass instead.
But it is interesting to me through my observations, that if we were a little more observational and reflective, we would probably work out a great deal about the world and our place in it, without much effort. Yet, because we are largely consumptive and looking for the easiest path to an outcome, we miss a lot of what is hidden just out of our awareness.
The evidence isn't absent, it is just absent from our awareness.
For instance, going back to the time spent in social media and on screens. I believe that the majority of adults should have been able to notice negative changes in their own behaviour over the last decade or two based on their screen activities. Yet, the majority of parents still encourage their children to spend a lot of time there also. They do this in many ways both directly and indirectly, because it is often more convenient. It is also clear that telling a child not to do something, is different to setting up an environment in which they don't do that thing.
And the environment we have available is what influences our behaviours. As I have used as an example for nigh on thirty years, if we surround ourselves with sales catalogues, we are going to spend more money on things we don't need. We are nudged to buy, because the "evidence" that we need something is brought into our awareness, and that builds the desire to act and fill the newly created void.
These days, we are surrounded by influencing factors all of the time, bombarded by advertisements that are designed to create a void in our lives to fill, so we will act. It isn't just to purchase a product or service though, it is to influence our thoughts and feelings to believe particular things too. We become like hypochondriacs who are influenced by every illness they hear about, and believe we have it. This is a small part of the reason that so many people are suffering mental health issues too - because we have become hypersensitive to the way we feel, with every slight fluctuation triggering an asymmetric response.
Like a bad pollen allergy.
The evidence is there, yet we keep ignoring it in favour of consuming irrelevant information instead. If we dug just below the surface of where we are paying attention, so much of our activity is seen as obviously pointless at the least, but probably more harmful than we have given it credit. It is like the build up of a poison in the body, slowly destroying a healthy body from the inside out. We don't notice the change as it happens slowly, but we start to feel it.
To push back, a lot of people point to improvements in society by looking at things like the number of young creators out there. But, this "evidence" is cherrypicked from the internet, which is set to highlight these types of people. The thing is though, society works on averages, and the average youth is less creative, more consumptive, and is likely to have a higher degree of physical and mental health issues than those earlier. In the past, every town was filled with curious and creative kids - now we have to look globally to find them.
The evidence is there.
It matters if we ignore it, because the average behaviours are what make up our societies and cultures. We are all impacted by each other, and even the wealthy are going to eventually paint themselves into a corner behind razor wire and armed guards, scared for their lives. We aren't building toward a healthy global population - we are developing an unhealthy one in the name of extending profits.
Human experience is degrading.
And again, the evidence is there, with the mental health issues, the drug addiction issues, the physical issues like growing obesity, posture, degrading eyesight and disease - and of course, the increasing amounts of personal violence at all levels. They are canaries in the coal mines of society, and there are many, many more.
Go for a walk around your neighbourhoods in your city and observe what is happening. Look at the state of equipment, eavesdrop on conversations, look into people's eyes when you talk to them, listen to what lays beneath their words. If you know any, sit down and talk with healthcare professionals and see what they have observed in their practices - spoiler: it doesn't paint a pretty picture of where we are heading.
You might not believe me, nor should you.
Go and collect your own evidence.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
We have to determine how we shape our environment and our daily behavior ourselves.
Technology isn't inherently bad, but its use may be the bad, and we often ignore the evidence available to us because it's uncomfortable or goes against the public opinion.
What's terrifying to me is that we are trying to adapte to this digital impact instead of finding solution to it.
Nothing is inherently bad perhaps. It is always how it is used. However, when the encouraged conditioning is for bad usage, well - then what? Is the average person strong enough to resist?
Anything for a bit more profit.
I watched a wonderful video about this very topic. A lot of people are doom scrolling their way through feeds and not allowing agency (ie, their alleged free will) to let them be masters of their own destiny.
Simultaneously, I am frustrated at the way in which that "doom scroll" has people looking for nothing in particular, but they want something, therefore it ends up akin to a video poker machine where when they do get what they "wanted" to see (instead of doing a damn search) - they get a dopamine hit which gets them to keep doom scrolling.
I observe this in my wife and it frustrates me deeply.
I was just trying to explain this to my wife and she didn't seem to fully get the difference between "looking for updates from friend" and looking for an update from a friend. One is a scroll hoping to passively find something interesting - the other is a directed search for a particular piece of information. The intention is very different.
I think a lot of it too has to do with the strict rules that were imposed by future generations. It's not that they were anything specific either, but it seems that somewhere along the line certain generations felt the rules were too harsh or "unfair". In response they have created these lax guidelines that basically gives children a blank check to act however they want and do whatever they want. This grumpy old man and "boomer" stereotype has become a bit of a joke lately, but I have a feeling eventually people are going to realize they should have listened.
Everyone wants "better" for their kid, as if what they had was worse. That is not a very reflective metric to say that anything in the past is worse than what we have now - especially when the results of what we have are not great.
I think part of it is me just trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. It's like trying to find something that might not even be there just to settle your mind.
Right it was even before Facebook or others, but the screen I spent hours was of TV :) We used to play console games, I believe it helped to improve our cognitive skills. It wasn't the screen of smartphones which could cause bad behaviours or habits for the children of today.
Did it improve cognitive skills in the right way though? There is a difference between learning, and learning something useful :)
Some games were needed an IQ to the some extend :)
I totally agree in every point that you written about in your post. But this particular one is by far the one that mostly jumps in front of our eyes! Back in 1980's, when a I was a infant, parents would have to almost "drag" kid back home for dinner, or lunch... Nowadays parents have to literally "force" kids to get outside to physically interact with other kids, and to play in real life
I've been doing the same "work" of looking for the causes of some things that we now consider "new world" problems
Funny isn't it? Parents would have to control their kids from being too creative with their time and getting up to mischief too.
New world problems... that we shouldn't have ever faced, let alone for as long as we have, and to the extent. And - it is only getting worse.
We’re really drowning in evidence but still act like everything’s fine. The bit about slowly poisoning ourselves without noticing is too real. People just scrolling their way into oblivion
If you avoid climate change by sitting in air-conditioned rooms - it will be a surprise when finally going outside to the real world.
hahahaha so true
It's nice that you quote Carl Sagan. He told many people about space and sent a message to other civilizations from Arecibo.
You're a big fan? :D
Yes. I love listening to astrophysicists and learning about the depths of the universe. Carl Sagan was one of the best.
We don't need a magnifying glass or binoculars to see. It's all around us.
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I agree too much screen time is definitely bad, especially for kids. My day job is software engineer and recently promoted to a solutions architect and I get tired from 8 hours in front of the screen. But that is my day job and I don't really have a choice. But if you are just a kid and your parents encourage you to spend hours in front of a screen that is not good...