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Comment by whatever1 | Hacker News Reader

I get the TikTok addiction, but before that it was fb, before that was the tv, before that the newspaper/magazines, before that the books, before that table games etc

I don’t know it seems that regardless of the technology the brain needs dozing off from reality.

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You read the newspapers, books, watch a movie: eventually there is an end and you have to do something else

Also, books, TV, board games, newspapers didn’t disappear. So it’s compounded in some ways

Oh you have not played backgammon. You cannot imagine the sheer amount of man-hours we have invested as a species to moving checkers on a piece of wood.

Hmm... this doesn't quite add up. Do we have brain scans showing that critical thinking centers of the brain turn off when people read books or play table games?

I think there is something distinctly unique between dozing off from reality by letting your mind wander or twiddling your thumbs, and scrolling short form video.

In my personal experience short form content is easier to get sucked into for hours on end than those other ones and something I’m more likely to regret participating in. (Learning this early I stopped so I’m not the biggest consumer of it and may have an atypical opinion compared to 1-2 billion people actively watching tik tok for hours a day.)

Something feels different with the short form, rapid fire stuff, at least to me

This is just a nonsensically reductive argument.

Reading is obviously healthier than scrolling tiktok.

Let’s take this argument to the extreme.

Why reading mein kampf is healthier than looking at random funny videos?

Both are addictive. The one is more dangerous than the other, demonstrably. Don’t get me started on religious books.

Exactly, should the "control regions" being deactivated be something that is activated all the time, or is that associated with burnout, or chronic stress?

"It's not that bad, everything was toxic befor so we can continue as if nothing was bad."

They are different categories. Brain rot isn’t an imagined thing and we aren’t confused about where it comes from

The Reddit tier mental gymnastics on display here to avoid any kind of acknowledgement of the dangers of short form video specifically is impressive.

The hyper normalization on technology fueled escapism is the difference.

Everyone had freedom to pick their poison so to speak. Now? All tech and screen based.

Hyper-social normalization always falls apart. It's unnatural; modern human biology evolved for thousands solving problems mostly in isolation. Tech fueled distribution of material goods humans need to survive is great as it removed risk to biology. But social normalization sucks.

Whether the socialized motive is appease gods by living up to scripture, keep a job/build career make money, or validate it just normalizes people and if we all know the same shit, why discuss anything with them? We already know the same shit.

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