[inglor_cz]

I agree with you, the infection hit quite a lot of older people very hard as well. I have problem getting some 40somethings to meet in person, even in professional contexts, they are just so soaked in a WhatsApp maelström of utterly irrelevant messages that they are conditioned to answer NOW!

That said, the core of the message should not be judgments between the young and the old, but the problem that we have introduced digital fentanyl into our pockets.

[isoprophlex]

You're right, as is your parent comment, in saying that this isn't something only the young suffer from. In fact it's everywhere; the people with the worst smartphone addictions near me personally are an 11 year old and a 70 year old...

That said the message, when taken as a general progression between how life was then and how it is now, stands.

[darkwater]

The same thing happened with TV in the 80s/90s. It will eventually fix itself, Gen Alfa will grow tired of smartphones when they will be in their thirties, I'm pretty sure. (that doesn't mean that there should not be active campaigning to point out the risks of smartphone addiction)

[bigmealbigmeal]

I'm not so confident.

TV use was higher in the 2000s than it was in the 1980s/1990s. TV viewing hours steadily rose from 1949 until finally peaking in 2010.[1]

But when TV finally peaked in 2010, did overall screen time go down? No. It kept going up.[2] Obviously, this is when the masses went all-in on smartphones, social media, and the internet.

Screen usage basically never went down. It has only gone up.

So I only see anyone getting tired of smartphones and actually using them less if they've found something more addictive to replace them.

[1] https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/3FzEghXwS-KkIYu1KwG-YyHh... (from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...) [2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-free-time-became-scre...

[darkwater]

You have a good point I overlooked, thanks for the correction. I actually missed the "TV was just displaced" angle, which makes sense both statistically and anecdotally, if I think about family and friends.

[Wololooo]

TV also had a social aspect that internet does not have by construction: You had the same program on only a few TV channels and this was funneling people to talk about similar things or have discussions about the previous day show.

These things rarely happen organically anymore unless "forced" in one way or the other...

[AdamN]

A friend of mine's kid (maybe 10 years ago) started crying when he watched regular TV for the first time. He literally thought the TV was broken when the commercials came on with the volume cranked up.

It's the same now with fb and these other old format social media sites. People just stop doing it. With that said I literally think fb will be with us for another 50 years as the people who are still on there are great marks and they won't be leaving until they 'age out'.

[hopelite]

It seems we (America) are in some kind of “middle”, or at least a phase change in a larger wave of the addiction cycle, with different stages affecting different generations and countries based on arrival of what can be described as the addiction dealers, “Big American social media”. It reminds me of the effects of the crack epidemic rippling through different generations differently from the late 70s to this very day still.

I don’t have hard data to substantiate it and my theory is based on anecdotal conversations but it seems, e.g., where there is some recovery going on amidst something like American millennials, who have both dealt with their own addiction and were the first generation that is also dealing with the neglect of addicted parents, they are also to some degree recovering (“reparenting” themselves), to some degree probably also spurred on by realizations shot the deleterious effects of phones and SM that come from exhaustion and different life stages. On the other hand, other generations of Americans, like those now elderly parents of millennials, not only are still, but increasing number of them are entering the earlier stages of “phone addiction” (which encompasses many different things), with the most tragic part being that they are in the latter quarter of their life and are unlikely to even realize, let alone recover from the addiction.

I also see this cycle and these stages emerging in other western societies in particular. My theory is that it is a particular effect or amplifier of the underlying culture to some degree, i.e., adoption, degree, impacts. It seems particularly pernicious in America because the underlying culture (if you can call it that, after decades of it being poisoned and corrupted by corporations and the government) was and is fertile ground for the societal rot caused by social media and its amplifier, smart phones, to have taken hold and spread like the virus it is.

It was even all described as “viral”, and yet we still engaged in it as if unfamiliar and investigated viruses spreading in an uncontrolled manner are a perfectly acceptable thing that should not even give anyone pause, especially if money can be made, regardless of whether it is something like HIV, with a very long lead-time, a delayed ETA for the reaper.

What happens now that we are in some kind of middle stage of the “smartphone“/Social Media civilization wildfire, with the first to have been affected looking over the devastation it has left in their wake, Shell shocked by the neglect and destruction, as the inferno is still raging on off in the distance as it consumes their parents and new generations, and even toppling whole countries through the “Color Revolution” playbook?

[pastage]

> maelström

Good use of that word.

English has ae in Maelstrom but the contemporary word in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian is Malstrøm/Malström. I wonder when it lost it's ae, I see Mahlströmn from 1698, reading the etymology it says dutch but I wonder if they just wrote it down first. Everything about the sea is always filled with mythology.

I think social media needs a less poetic word though.

[schrijver]

I would say that the ae comes from Dutch, it was the way the open a sound used to be spelled before it became aa (maalstroom). You can still see it in place names (Aerdenhout which is pronounced Aardenhout).

[tokai]

It never had the ae in swedish and danish. Its from male/mala, to grind or to mill. English somehow changed it to ae, maybe through dutch where its maalstroom.

[pm215]

The OED agrees about the Dutch idea, giving the etymology as:

"early modern Dutch maelstrom (now maalstroom) whirlpool < malen to grind, to whirl round (compare meal n.1) + stroom stream n"

and also thinks Dutch is the origin, with Swedish/Danish etc taking it from Dutch too:

"The use of maelstrom as a proper name (also in French) seems to come from Dutch maps, e.g. that in Mercator's Atlas (1595). There is little doubt that the word is native to Dutch (compare synonymous German regional (Low German) Maling). It is true that it is found in all the modern Scandinavian languages as a common noun, but in them it is purely literary, and likely to have been adopted from Dutch."

[Aldipower]

We have that word in German too, so it seems to be present and understandable in all germanic languages. Not sure about Gothic though. :-)

[Aldipower]

Yes, it seems to be everywhere. Like an epidemic. When I pick up my daughter from school, I have to wait outside the entrance for about 10 minutes with other adult parents. Nine out of ten parents just stare at their smartphones and don't even look at me. In the past, people would have started a conversation out of boredom and gotten to know each other. We are really losing so much.

[alistairSH]

hit quite a lot of older people very hard as well. I have problem getting some 40somethings

40something is not old, despite what Zuckerberg claimed before he himself aged.

[lotsofpulp]

In the context of the above posts, which is young people eschewing dancing in favor of using smartphones, old is an adult that is expected to behave at or near peak maturity compared to a younger person whose is just coming into their own (presumably 20s).