> Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to our devices and should go touch grass.
And yet, their generation seems to be the most addicted these days, and the most unhinged when it comes to following conspiracy theories.
And yet, their generation seems to be the most addicted these days, and the most unhinged when it comes to following conspiracy theories.
We can see lots of useful examples of a protective social norms with alcohol. For example, it’s quite common for people to not drink any alcohol before a certain hour of the day. It’s not illegal to drink alcohol earlier, but it’s “just not done”. We can easily see the benefits of not drinking at the start of the workday.
I’m not going to guess what kind of social media norms people are developing in general. For me I only follow boring, topic-focused people on Twitter, and I only use the “Following” feed. Nobody is making me do this.
Agreed. A lot of older generations fall for a lot of satire and comment on things as if they're 1 on 1 with you instead of realizing that it's a public forum. However, a lot of younger generations are incredibly aware that everything they do and say could potentially be public or go viral. That brings a whole host of other problems and challenges with it.
The ultimate problem is every incentive goes against a "healthy" social media. Companies don't want a "healthy" social media as they're focused on engagement, screen time, content, and advertisers. Most of the primitive portions of our brains don't want "healthy" social media either, as it craves the rush of more likes and followers. I don't think that the logical, self-aware portions of our psyche are going to change the direction of how things are going.
I find this point quite interesting. I didn't drink alcohol until I was nearly 30. I skipped by most of the formative alcohol consumption experiences most people have.
And, incidentally, I don't seem to follow the same norms about what time of day it's okay to drink: I'll happily have a beer well before noon.
The younger generation were raised with media that spread obvious untruths such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, etc. and they learned to think more critically about what they are reading.
Except that talk radio is way older than that, and it was the same kind of content.
As a side note, one important change in the modern times is the ability to cross check information from a wide range of sources easily.
I suspect that one reason is that "digital natives" have been raised with the tech, so have sort of a "natural resistance," yet the oldtimers were hooked almost immediately.
For myself, I have been using electronic communications, almost since they were invented (BBSes and UUNet, anyone?), so I have "more resistance" than most of my peers.
Yet, I still have to stay off of Facebook. This is pretty much my only social media venue. The main reason I stay, is because people play [relatively] nice, hereabouts.
Social media, gen z wins: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1314973/global-daily-tim...
Phones in general, millennials win: https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/which-generation-....