[numinix]

> Gijsbert van der Wal’s famous 2014 photograph of Dutch teenagers ignoring a Rembrandt masterpiece in favor of staring at their phones has become for many psychologists, social theorists, and concerned ordinary folks a portrait of our current Age of Digital Addiction in a nutshell.

While a great photo, to me it looks like the kids are just doing some kind of school / field trip assignment.

[aprilthird2021]

It could be anything, but it resonates with people for a very good reason. Many people feel the negatives of technology and social media and miss the time before it. I know how sentiment will skew here, and I know it's easy to take for granted the advantages of having a fully capable pocket computer. But I also understand what we have given up for it.

[dcminter]

A similar example I've seen is a photo of a British railway carriage full of commuters staring glumly at their phones.

It makes me laugh because we all just used to stare glumly at our newspapers! It's not like we were discussing philosophy or something...

[aprilthird2021]

Sure, again, there is a reason these things resonate with people. They aren't mad that people aren't communicating with each other. They are reflecting on their own smartphone consumption and feeling that it had substantial negative effects. Something virtually no people feel about newspapers

[krageon]

Every generation that had that big new thing had an enormous group claiming it was terrible and would destroy everything. Smartphones are worse because corporations are allowed to be more evil while receiving more praise (and in that axis everything is worse). Don't scapegoat the platform here. If all we had was newspapers today they'd fuck you in very similar ways. Some executive would make sure of it.

[dcminter]

Ah, how lucky we were to have such benevolant benefactors as William Randolph Hearst and Robert Maxwell running those organs of old ;)

[aprilthird2021]

> Every generation that had that big new thing had an enormous group claiming it was terrible and would destroy everything.

Isn't it possible that they all did have negative consequences (as well as positive ones) and we're just now reaching the tipping point?

Like surely movies are less cognitively stimulating and make one less learned than only reading books. But it didn't hinder us to the point where people are frustrated like they are now with phones and social media and slop feeds, etc.