[dictum]

I'm not old enough to school the youngs but I'm old enough to take delight in sounding like a curmudgeon, but your comment would be recited nearly verbatim at some poetry slam of decades ago, except replacing "the internet" with such things as

- tv

- mass culture

- the suburbs

- the city

- small town/rural life

- sexual activity when everyone is having it, except you

- the written word

[Sentialia]

Are you arguing that my comment alludes to nothing more than platitudes and is thus not relevant?

[dictum]

Sorry for the snarky tone. I don't mean to discount your experience.

It's relevant, but on a certain level so were the complaints of previous generations.

People like me lamented all sorts of contemporary phenomena. Except for passing fads (which seem to get the brunt of overthought lamentations), those changes didn't destroy mankind.

As you get older, this stuff just becomes funny. Young people rediscover the age-old need for self control and adaptation to problematic environments/cultural contexts. Older people discover the joy of misguided, unhelpful arrogance.

[Sentialia]

I understand that your reply was well intended and I apologize for sounding offended. I only wanted some clarification because I was confused.

While I can't really speak for previous generations, I would like to quote one of the replies above:

"The difference being that you're not engulfed in all of that for hours/days at a time like you are with today's technology. It doesn't constantly follow you around to the dinner table, to your school, to the toilet. 15 years ago, most people had a family computer and you'd go on it and if there was something you weren't supposed to see, you'd still do it but with the added fear of looking back over your shoulder hoping your parents wouldn't catch you."

To the best of my understanding, previous generations also had several interactions with technology and culture (i.e. radio, pop media, television) but they were not as intrusive as the internet. The internet is everywhere and is used by almost everyone unconditionally. This may have been the intention behind its eventual design progression but it has resulted in exposing very young kids to terrible content. This has serious implications, which I attempted to unsuccessfully convey in my original comment by recounting my own experiences.

I was very recently like one of the adolescents I mentioned: uncaring, naive, addicted to the stimulus of receiving an empty text message accounting for nothing. When I detached myself from these technologies, I began to instantly feel more empowered and tried to get some of my peers to stop as well. However, their reactions ranged from being bewildered to even being upset that I would suggest such a thing. They are essentially zombies being swallowed up by an ever pervasive force that they themselves don't fully comprehend.

With television the actors were some idealized figures that were polished by an entire marketing team, but with Youtube or Twitter we have regular people holding no reservation when doing stupid things for attention. Children are witnessing and practicing the words of these people who themselves have no clue what they're doing.

Tangentially, I'd like to point out that social media in particular has degraded our abilities to face confrontation and provide rational refutations. Just yesterday I was discussing some matters with a few peers and the moment a controversial topic sprout up half of them went on glancing at their phones apathetically and the other half just blurted out their opinions without any defense. Questioning their beliefs, I realized that they were mostly superficial and held only because some guy on Facebook or Snapchat had posted something about it.

Here's an example conversation:

<person 1> What do you guys think about insert name

<person 2> That's a horrible person!

<person 3> Absolutely despicable!

<person 1> Why?

<person 2 and 3> I don't know, everyone on the internet says they are, so they must be

I am aware that this type of mentality is intertwined with our evolutionary inclination to 'fit in' with the crowd, but the internet is abusing this behavior.