An open letter to India’s youth: Get off that smartphone. It can destroy you
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
The issue is what you do on a phone, not the phone itself.
In fact, phones make it a lot easier to create and not just consume, than televisions did back in the author's youth. And I bet there were similar anti-TV op-eds in newspapers in those days that the author would have rolled his eyes at.
The message should've been to create more and consume less. A phone let's you do either, the device is hardly related at all. You can't see what a person is doing when they're bent over their phone.
This needs to be said more and more with each passing year. I became aware of this phenomenon back in the early 2000s, with Facebook gaining popularity among my friends, and blogs were gradually losing steam -- people aren't creating anymore, but simply consuming media, and therein lies the problem: how can you express independent thought when your media consumption habits dictate your beliefs?
A nice essay on this was posted to HN last year.
Are you sure?
I think some indie movies as well, but don’t have a handy reference on my phone.
I’m sorry, what exactly is “digital wealth” supposed to mean?
digital - involving or relating to the use of computer technology
In this context, they presumably mean the abundance of resources that exist solely or primarily in the digital realm. Social media, Youtube, streaming services, and software / data in general as opposed to physical things like cars, houses, consumer goods, etc.
Now try that with tobacco. Indeed, in a very technical sense of the word, cigarettes nor mobile phones are not the issue. But telling people "just stop smoking" didn't do the trick.
Books without action can render useless. TV can consume countless hours and does eat lives. Smartphones are the same, but more so.
We must recognize the danger all these thing. Information without physical action is a danger.
Life requires balance. And everyone gets to decide what they do with their down time.
being synchronously social with other human beings is easily the last bad part of malls and phones.
tl;dr: There are no solutions, just trade-offs
There's a huge segment of the Indian youth population (around 30% iirc) that's underemployed or unemployed, that spends a lot of time on Facebook and Instagram. There's a reason India has the highest consumption among all countries in Facebook and Insta, yet one of the lowest ad revenue rates - advertisers simply don't find value advertising to these fellows.
I don't understand this line of thinking. Sure, it may not be the literal end of the world, but that doesn't mean that it won't cause a lot of damage before people 'adapt'. People have always adapted to wars, but that doesn't mean that the world wars weren't absolutely catastrophic.
And while I don't think that smartphones will 'destroy you', I think there's a good chance that it can both be very corrosive in all sorts of manners. I think smartphones are a lot more potent at sedating people and making them detached than novels ever could hope to be, which can have a very harmful impact on society at large.
At least there's some ability to interact with a smartphone, there's absolutely none of that with TV, and yet society survived.
I think it's kinda too early too judge (only ~60 years of widespread adoption and in this time the TV landscape has changed massively), but I think there's a pretty good chance that 'tabloid style' TV has caused a good deal more damage than the yellow press has.
> At least there's some ability to interact with a smartphone
Sure, but that also makes it a lot more addictive. You generally won't see people who are glued to their TV 24/7, but with smartphones that's not uncommon.
> yet society survived
Again, I'm not saying that society will just implode on itself, just that these things can do a lot of damage.
Thank you for the answer though, I appreciate consistency when examining the impact of media.
And I also distinctly remember the answer of Harald Schmidt, back then Germany‘s most famous late night show host, when he was asked whether he thought TV makes people dumb:
„With all due respect, I think TV makes intelligent people more intelligent and dumb people more dumb.“
20 years later, I couldn‘t have said it any better.
I'm not against motivational articles or against critiques of modern smartphone usage, but this one seems to be to be mostly an emotional appeal with the wrong arguments. Paraphrased, "if you use phones, you won't make it anywhere in life, and you don't want that, right?"
Worse, video games and social media are now explicitly targeted by big business to get kids addicted as early as possible.
It's a mess and we're heading for a huge shakedown and re-orientation in a generation.
(At one point cigarettes were seen as a "not big deal" too.)
Which is a hell of lot more prevalent when the addictive behavior is driven by a centralized market incentive.
Fentanyl - invented 1959 - didn't become a problem until the Sacklers' greed and fraudulent recommendations to doctors drove the opioid epidemic. Peace pipes and tobacco weren't a problem until the industrialized mass production of cancer sticks drove the manufacturers to reuse literally every ounce of waste through chemical reprocessing. I can't find the research right now but one paper I read on historical gambling mentioned that there is far less evidence of gambling as addictive behavior before urbanization because of a lack of opportunity and strong ties in small communities that kept both gamblers and bookies in line. It wasn't until the innovations in transportation in the 19th century that real estate speculators started building gambling enclaves like Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and the casinos along (and on) the Mississippi river.
Showing ads - aka manipulating human behavior - is now the most profitable. The same thing is going to happen now: the purveyors of the addiction will continue to drive the dystopia to its ultimate conclusion until it gets regulated into the ground (all of the above), loses the largest lawsuit in history and gets culturally sidelined (tobacco), and/or everything but the gains get dismantled (Sacklers).
I don't mean take your phone anyway but don't use it. That is not the same thing.
The value in this experiment is not to have your phone to fall back on. Initially you feel anxiety, but it soon becomes quite liberating. Having to look at road signs to navigate, relying on personal interaction or reading notices to find things out etc etc. Sounds old fashioned but it improves my quality of life when I do it.
Phones have value. That’s why people use them. Pretending they don’t and that we’re all brainwashed doesn’t change that reality.
Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone.
First of all, if I don’t check the opening hours of the store before leaving, I now have no idea. The whole trip may be for nothing.
Secondly, when planning my trip, my phone would help me suggest what line and where to switch, if necessary. It would alert me in real time of any issues, again with alternate suggestions. When traveling: no music. No audio books. Just the organic, wonderful and inspiring sounds of the city. Not to mention all the wonderful people on public transport you’re aching to know better.
When I get to the store, I may have forgotten my shopping list. And even if I brought it, I have no way of getting in contact with someone that may want to add something to it. If I find a new product I don’t recognize and I’m unsure of whether it’s overpriced, I can’t compare to any other vendor. I also can’t check reviews from other people.
I’m sorry if I sound cynical, but sometimes I feel like the spread (but not necessarily the preaching) of this whole luddite idea of smartphones ruining us is mainly fueled by people young enough to have grown up with them being everywhere, because I’m in my mid 30s and I remember what life was like without smartphones, and for the most part, it sucked.
Now try the same line but with heroin, or fast food, or whatever people use to their detriment...
Besides, anything that has value also has an opportunity cost, which can be much more important than the value inherent in the thing...
>Here’s an example: I want to take public transport to a grocery store. I walk out the door. I don’t have my phone. First of all, if I don’t check the opening hours of the store before leaving, I now have no idea. The whole trip may be for nothing.
Yeah, it's a wonder how people managed to live and visit the grocery store in the dark ages of the 90s and early 00s... All these people going out of their homes at 02:00am only to find the grocery store closed...
"I'd better be saddled with a device that can be addictive, that I spend hours on end each day on, that everybody I known can harass me at any time, any where on, that keeps tabs on all kinds of things including my every movement
-- lest I repeat this visited-a-closed-store blunder...
I'm not saying that a smartphone is not immesely useful -- I use mine for notes, video, photos (including pro work), phonecalls (duh), messaging, and so on.
I'm saying that "gives us things like grocery store times or gps routes" (or many combinations of such things) is hardly an argument for smartphones as "indispensable", nor a reason not to consider their, often serious, downsides (behavioral, cognitive, social, privacy, etc)
The capacity of being flexible is valuable. Yes, having the world in your pocket is valuable when something jumps up and goes "boo". However, most people should not need to Google-search "what do I do after 'boo'?" every single time.
Yes, and here's the key: they might still be wrong.
I'm not saying this is the case. I'm saying that this is a possibility. "I took an informed decision which is not due to ignorance" doesn't mean the decision can't still be wrong.
Not to mention that most people just adopt shiny new stuff, hardly pausing to indeed make informed decisions...
I truly do not believe I am wrong for having a smartphone in my pocket when going to the store. I understand the structure and behavior of mobile apps and mobile operating systems far better than most.
> Not to mention that most people just adopt shiny new stuff, hardly pausing to indeed make informed decisions...
Now we are back at the ignorance claim! I've got a PhD in mobile security. I've been working in this space for more than a decade! I assure you I have done more than "hardly pausing".
People claimed that bicycles would cause the destruction of society when they were introduced. Can't I just declare that all of the skeptics are ignorant luddites using the same arguments you are?
That's technical knowledge though.
But there's another thing when it comes to ignorance or not, that's not tied to "how they work".
The understanding of their social/political/etc implications.
Someone who even designs smartphones is not necessarily savvy to the latter. If anything, his whole career gives them an incentive not to be ("it's difficult to make somebody understand something whose career depends on not understanding it").
>People claimed that bicycles would cause the destruction of society when they were introduced.
Well, they were not far off :-) Though that's more like a "people have been wrong about X in the past, so they can't be right about Y now".
Honestly if I'm with my child I frequently leave my phone at home. We can both concentrate on each other that way, and there's rarely anything more important than that. My wife has sometimes suggested I should take a phone with me one particular day, in case she wants to change (working) plans at the last minute, but otherwise we're happy without.
And in case you perhaps didn’t actually read my comment, I pointed out the fact that I was one of those people who visited grocery stores in the 90s, which is why I know that doing it today is easier than it was back then. That’s the whole point. Falling back on childish exaggeration like “oh I wonder how ANYONE managed to do this before” obviously doesn’t disprove the fact that what was possible before is now still possible but easier.
You've missed the whole point. I'm answering the crap argument "Phones have value. That’s why people use them." - showing that people use things that don't have value (and can even be hamrful) all the time.
It's not about the relative danger of phone vs heroin. It's about "people use it, thus it has value" is a crap argument.
In fact, I also included fast food (which people don't overdose from), on my counter-argument, which you conveniently ignored.
>And in case you perhaps didn’t actually read my comment, I pointed out the fact that I was one of those people who visited grocery stores in the 90s, which is why I know that doing it today is easier than it was back then. That’s the whole point.
No, the whole point is that it's only marginally easier, to the point of hardly being worth it just for those kind of conveniences, while creating its own problems, which can have a much worse impact in one's life than "I missed the grocery store open times"...
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171130090041.h...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235285321...
Stores are pretty much open business hours, or 24 hours, they follow the same pattern. Or just show up and it is closed. Go somewhere else.
Public transport runs to a schedule. Just show up and transport will show up within n minutes anyway, whether you know the time or nor. Or just use the timetable at the station.
Yes, no music, just your thoughts. but take a book if you want.
Write down your shopping list on paper.
All I have just described is why it is so liberating.
Don’t you think it’s pretty obvious that this exact line of reasoning could be made against the use of books on public transport if we were discussing this in the 1800s? Why are you fine with distracting yourself with a book, but reading the news on a smartphone is somehow different?
As I have just written to someone else above - you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet..
It's about being a human, in an environment, around other humans, with time to spare for original thoughts and just to enjoy being alive. I expect many people on this forum are the "productivity" and "maximizing" type. Not that there's anything wrong with that! We need those people! But I think we might all be able to benefit from truly relying on ourselves in difficult situations, instead of just asking the answer box to help us avoid any annoyance or unnecessary difficulty.
If you wish your life to be a perfectly smooth series of directions given by a silicon hivemind, feel free friend. Sometimes the bumps and the dirt are what make life worth living though. Sometimes the empathy of unnecessary difficult situations can create bonds and perspective that shiny chrome smoothness cannot. Persistent smooth perfect answers have their purpose and we wouldn't have invented it if not for its use but I find the rather strong opposition to experiencing and exploring one's humanity, whether this way or that, rather frightening. Almost sounds like it's the chrome talking and not the human.
For example, I once used my phone to reroute my wife and I around an unexpectedly closed train station so we could spend a planned hour in an old cathedral. We were glad we were able to meditate and be alone with our thoughts in that cathedral instead of being alone with them trying to read unfamiliar train tables and chase down busy transit employees.
After that we used the phone to update our plans to meet a friend in that city. In the 90s we probably would have just gone home and missed seeing our friend for another few years. We had a nice, long conversation with her.
That doesn’t have anything to do with productivity and the only things we maximized were the most important leisure activities that day.
Your motivation is certainly a good one, to be clear.
I walk alone for 1-3 hours a day. Usually I wear headphones and listen to podcasts or the economist audio - I have learned a lot about the world this way. You could argue it is just entertainment, but I suppose my old CS lectures were just entertainment, too. Having audio content helps make the walks more bearable, and those walks have helped me lose over 100 lbs of unwanted body fat.
Sometimes I take the headphones out to enjoy the sights and sounds. Sometimes I pause and enjoy the views for a while. If I see someone I want to talk to, I stop, take the headphones out, and talk. There’s no binary choice and I find that by sparing me actual reading time, this practice gives me more time to spend on things I care about. I do enjoy the nature exposure, but I don’t need 3 hours a day of focus on it - it really just doesn’t change much day to day or year to year.
I wish living in a perfectly smooth chrome existence was an option, but it isn’t. My phone and the internet fail often enough that I still regularly need to call a real human and talk. The maps are wonderful, but they still require a degree of interpretation, like when a rail line is closed and the shuttle replacement isn’t listed. Just the other day I had to bother an airport employee to figure out where that shuttle pick up was. Having had that experience I don’t think it makes me better.
I have empathy for unnecessarily difficult situations, that doesn’t make me want to maximize the existence of those. It motivates me to build better software, do better work, and contribute more to public efforts to make the world a better place for humans.
Again, there’s no binary choice, people should use every tool at their disposal to maximize their happiness. I’ve got a perfectly good phone, but I walked the streets of a new city for 13 miles, soaking in the sights and sounds, and making minimal use of my phone, checking every few miles to make sure I didn’t overshoot my targets (parks and botanical gardens).
I frightens me that we've set up our society to value perfect productivity over all else. It's unhealthy, at least for some. Maybe even life was worse on the whole before the connectivity singularity stole our privacy and our free time, but you cant say it was worse in every way. Why are we opposed to allowing others the ability to gain that perspective? Why should we tell someone that the way they discovered more of their humanity is pointless because it might "waste time". Do we meditate? Do we rest? I could just as easily say that spending all your time on your phone on a bus or transit is just as much wasting your time as is sitting and staring at the ceiling. The mind never shuts off. Could I ask anyone to repeat to me the important information they learned from that post on their bus transit 3 Tuesdays ago? Maybe they did learn something important and do remember. But maybe I came to a realization that I wouldn't have, without giving myself the space to think. Or maybe I met this beautiful girl who I just had my first date with. Or maybe I just sat and stopped stressing about everything that's bad in the world. Maybe I took some time to breathe so that I could be a more pleasant person for my child after a difficult day of work.
You could say that these things are all achievable through the phone and I think we can all agree there are marked differences between conversations over text and those in person, between an interesting point we read and an epiphany that we came to ourselves.
I don't want to be hypocritical tell you that your way is wrong or that your perspective is incorrect, just maybe a little push to think about what it would be like to be someone else. Who might have written that post? What might their life be like to make them think those things? What in my life has lead me to believe what I do? In my experience, these are the kinds of thoughts I don't have through the phone.
As an addendum, I'd say that there are many many uses for the phone, I would guess that you don't have a snapchat and an instagram to check and constantly worry about. But these days you can't be social or even participate in high school (college to a slightly lesser extent) without having one or both of those things (probably even newer ones I don't know about). It's not necessarily just freedom from google maps, but from the panopticon and extreme pressures to portray your life in a certain way.
So, in the spirit of the original article, I buy it.
I live somewhere were having your phone out is dangerous so I'm forced to use it only when needed. The number one thing I use my phone for is checking bus routes (second is store times which can be very odd, especially with the pandemic). I know some routes off the top of my head but not the majority. Plus although I always plan where I'm going before hand so I know the streets (although many are missing signs), what time things are open, if the buses are actually working (apart from strikes, sometimes a bus line might be diverted due to construction/protests), often I end up going more places than I plan and end up needing to take a different bus than I had planned back.
I mean if I get my phone stolen or something I'll still be fine, but I don't get how having to hunt down road signs and depending on others to tell you the right info can possible feel liberating? I have navigated the city before it's bus app was built and internet was reliable, and it was not fun. Plus recently I've had problems with my contacts and because I can't stand my full prescription in glasses I can't see far away so it's been even more liberating to have my phone. I can quickly glance at google maps (even without internet and just gps on) and see where I am. Extremely useful in buses where I'm too far to see the road signs at all. I would hate having to ask the driver all the time to drop me off at the right street.
I’m an avid backpacker (>60 nights on the trail most years) and I experience the same phenomenon (I don’t mean the phone, which is just a deadweight in the country). I sometimes just do without some piece of equipment and find out I’m fine. You often don’t need a tent, even in the snow.
It turns out less clutter makes much of the experience more enjoyable; you have fewer decisions to make and more “attention” to pay to other things which could be where you are or it could be something in your head you brought with you. It can also be a real PITN if, say, it’s raining and you foolishly don’t have shelter.
Do I bring a tent? Often. But it’s ok if I don’t.
And what is the phone but an infinitely large backpack full of clutter? Worse, much of that clutter is actively designed to distract you and imbue FOMO (suggesting new things precisely as you complete the old, ruining the cognitive desire for “completion”). Phones are great and I always carry mine around in town. But losing it would be inconvenient, not devastating.
Then again, if you truly feel anxious without your phone all the time, maybe it’s worth a shot ...
But you are just proving the OP original article. Why not just try something different rather than pointlessly arguing about the intricacies of it all on the internet
Not having money is comparable to not having a phone - my phone is my money and it is far better at being money than the plastic in my wallet.
You should give ‘The Pessimists Archive’ a listen. You might realize why hearing the same argument about why you should liberate yourself from {insert tech here} is tiring. The argument against smartphones is no different from the argument about umbrellas, refrigeration, books, mirrors, Walkmans, radio or frankly anything else that doesn’t come naturally with a cave.
I suggest you guys try it. And yes, that includes if you don't run/jog, _try_ that as well, phone or not.
I'm pretty good with not using my phone, though.
3 Idiots (2009) and PK (2014) are my favourites. The best of the other recent Indian movies I've seen:
Barfi! (2012), Mardaani (2014), Lagaan (2001), Rocket Singh (2009), Dangal (2016), Dabba (2013), Black (2005), Rang de Basanti (2006), Taare Zameen Par (2007), Dhobi Ghat (2010), Secret Superstar (2017), My Name Is Khan (2010)
I have recently gotten headfirst back into turntablism/vinyl DJ’ing, and leaving my iPhone in my room, just wearing my Apple Watch with me to tell the time and to do a quick voice reply to someone if it’s important enough. I’m trying to start reading books again. It’s scarily hard to keep that level of attention span again.
I’m an iOS developer for a living, and I think screen addiction should perhaps start to be considered a workplace hazard.
Worse off for me - previous to DJ’ing, my hobbies have been game/homebrew development and hardcore audio production / editing / engineering - all on my MacBook, of course, staring at a screen.
Looking at the actual ‘Screen Time’ reports became jarring. I actually still have a dopamine response that tells me to look at my phone when it’s in the other room. Thank God the watch can’t do HN or Reddit.
It’s like a signal in my head, wired there, like ‘hey; you’ve gotta use the bathroom’ but instead it’s ‘hey, pick up your phone and start scrolling.’
I’ve had issues with substance abuse in the past that I’ve moved past and worked through.
‘Doom scrolling’ has, by no exaggeration, been harder to kick for me than any substance or even cigarettes, which I smoked for almost ten years - it’s going to take years to unprogram what it took years for the developers of things like Facebook/IG/Reddit to program in the first place.
It’s messed up to think that people who have never faced addiction before may deal with this as their first go. It’s going to be a hard recovery for a world buried unproductively with devices in their faces all the time giving them a much quicker and more consistent dopamine response than cigarettes ever could.
- Sent from my Apple Watch
Too much population, too little work. Everyone has just stared coming online. They are discovering infinite porn, TikTok and youtube.
What do you think the letter does?
But I will agree with fpip. India has so many fundamental problems that will require serious government and public change.
My state will not have enough drinking water for 30%+ of its population by 2030. Prices of food will go up as ground water becomes non existent. How do you think that will impact people?
Educated people are fleeing the country. They are willing to take any jobs to get out before it's too late.
If everyone tries to be an engineer or doctor because that’s the only way to have prospects in life, something is broken.
When I was a teen, I remember them not liking me watching "too much" of TV and grumbling about reading 'no good' fiction magazines.
Now this.. "get off the phone" advice.
The key is, the choice must come from with-in, like Diogenes of Snopes[1] tells Alexader the great to stand out of his sun.
Until the kids are capable of making the choice or until the kids turn into adults, parents and schools must create an environment that shows descent maker's alternative to phones. This needs lot of work on behaf of schools and sacrifices on behalf of parents.
The first paragraph (paraphrased) “I am writing in a BIG newspaper, and I was taught that when someone writes in A Real Serious Newspaper, I deserve to be read”
I look at newspapers like churches. Churches and newspapers are businesses in some ways, they exist because they meet the needs of their customers. I went to church as a little kid but I don’t as a man because it does not meet my needs, I have community in other places and I don’t need old white dudes yelling at me that I am living my life “wrong” (aka, not the way they think life should be lived).
Also, from an intellectual level this argument is extremely boring and stale. It has literally been made continuously throughout time since the Greeks and the beginning of our records of recorded discourse, and was probably made too before we have records.
I don't think the author of this article is white. Does that make you more receptive to his argument that folks who use their cell phones are living their lives "wrong"?
That's all to say - how are old white dudes relevant to this thread?
Kidding aside, its going to be really tough to wean people off social media. It will be the defining problem of the world going forward. Things only get worse from here. There will be woke people who get off of the internet but not woke population.
The letter is for parents and old people.
The article’s take on China is weird too; do they not have smartphones? The author probably wrote the article on a Huawei phone that the vast majority of Chinese people use every day.
Step 1: Turn off the notifications, will help you take control. Step 2: stay away from the Facebook empire.
...
I think due to smart phones nobody is buying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chetan_Bhagat novels :)
None of my pre "smartphone" PDAs did this, and I don't feel myself sucked into the mindless addictive patterns on my PinePhone (although that may be because Firefox can be sluggish on it.)
The generalization may be true, but concluding that there's no benefit or that we would be better off without would be a non-sequitur.
That may not be entirely true. Dark patterns like Doom scrolling are employed by companies to keep you hooked on their apps. Also checkout Social cooling.
No, zoomer, Facebook is not a good use of your time. Get a PC and create content, rather than consume it. You have access to a miracle of modern technology, and you squander it on garbage.
No, boomer, phones are not the devil, and you're being a drain by refusing to learn basic tech skills, and people are getting tired of holding your head above water when you immediately forget everything we try to teach you and plunge it back in.
The problem isn't what the new generation is using, it's what they're using it for.
The older generation's aversion to technology and deliberate lack of effort will only cause them pain in the future, and it causes pain to countless grandkids right now :^)
For a newspaper to write it, it must be acceptable somewhat.
As a youth today I'd be more worried that you are seen as so weak that they can talk to you this way.
Western society does jab away at the youth (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/avocado-toast), but not this bad and the youth fight back.
It's the older generation. They are the ones lacking critical skills and ability to understand what goes on Fb, etc
Edit: I don't see why this is so controversial. Younger people do stupid stuff on their phones, but they're more open to learning from their mistakes
The older generation has a more inflexible mindset and hasn't been on the internet/social media for longer (most of them, which is probably not so much the demographic here, even for older HNs commenters)
I see how a lot of people behave today and it's how I behaved and felt for a good amount of time. But that wasn't on the hate melting pot of Facebook, it was on more spread out and on more niche sites.
Or spoken in other words: some things are better left on a pub brawl table not as a hard statement on social media.
How many kids really understand what FB is made of? How many of them really understand what the internet is? They don't, it's always been there, who cares?
There is this misconception that just because a kid can swipe and type super fast on their phone they are "tech literate". As someone who taught tech in school I've seen the exact opposite.
When I was a kid I grew up between the city and the country
I knew about animals, how they behaved, what they ate and what was their role (cows for milk, chickens made eggs, pigs for ham)
Fast forward 30 years, my nephews know every burger place around and where to eat the best chicken snacks but have never seen a chicken or a cow alive, the younger one was shocked when he discovered that chicken nuggets and fried potatoes don't exist in nature and they don't grow at the supermarket
It might look an extreme example, but as a tech worker I see that younger generations have a way to using technology that is more immediate but is also more shallow
They take it for granted, like it always existed and usually don't think about the downsides much the same way I didn't think of the downside of using the car every time I needed to move
To make an hyperbole, there have been a generation that was born when fascism was established and for them fascism was normal
It's hard to see something from the outside when you are literally born in it and it's the only form you have experienced it
Perfectly described. And yes, this is a factor.
But though it is more shallow technically, I think it's a more profound connection socially (while lacking the life experience of the older generations).
Think of the "dangers" every parent warns their kids against. They're right in spirit but they're outdated in the technology/methods (and think they are immune to it - or maybe they never were)