I was talking about Gaming. To me social media unabetted (like what you are describing) is the exact opposite of what I am talking about. Neither was I talking about kids. Social Media is the culprit for the mindless zombies that are traversing the streets nowadays (not just teens). I even see drivers doing the same thing. I agree with you on the totally on the kid front. The colours are too bright and the Games designed for people who were kids in the 80s are being consumed by too many 10 year olds. That is why I spend as much time as i can outside with my daughter and try to do as many physically interactive activities like pillow fights and hide and seek.
I can see it, no doubt there are some pretty serious mental health risks to social media. People still balk at it, but I think you kind of can't deny that it can be harmful.
But it feels cheap to blame that behavior entirely on the vice. To me, it speaks more of a lack of accountability, which is the larger problem imo and ime. Nihilistic values and decadent behavior are the rage. Consume everything you can, pursue whatever you want with zero rationale required, worry about nobody else, hurt nobody else. Unfortunately often this leads to self-neglect, which ends up harming everyone else on the whole. To me this social media overuse is an extension of that attitude. I'm not against that whole free-spirited attitude - I'm totally down for some decadent nihilism, but it used to be that meant you had to develop a strong sense of choices and consequences, you have to make it all real for yourself. Now, it's like kids do what they want and they just don't care. And then they wonder why they're depressed and everything seems meaningless. Might have something to do with how they care for themselves and spend their time, but I think I'm going way beyond the seam, now.
Of course, for a long time parents thought the whole internet thing was 'for the kids' and had no desire to engage, let alone any idea how to broach it. So now we have a couple of generations of people out in the world who have no idea what having no developed self-imposed restrictions on how they engage with it running around, really messing themselves up. We're just now starting to see how that all works on people. I like to think parents know it's wrong... but we're now dealing with the problem that we normalized something we didn't fully understand, and still don't. It's something that I think has immense power to do good and enrich, but the risks went dismissed and overlooked for too long.
A little anecdote... when I was 15, I started rolling with a rougher crowd, many of them not in high school anymore. We weren't exactly criminals (well... a few ended up being serious criminals, now with multiple felonies lol, but that's not relevant,) but also not super-responsible... often anti-responsible, in fact. My father protested this left and right. He would flip the folding chair around and lean on it, stare me down, and say things like "I'm gonna be like your shadow. This is serious." Just like in the movies... playing up the whole 'stern dad' thing. But he never outright forbade me from exercising my freedom, even if he did let me know he DID NOT approve at all and was very disappointed with how I chose to use it. One of those times when we were talking about morals, accountability, freedom, all of those wonderful things, he said something I will never forget. "Son, you know I love you very much. I wish you would listen to me because I don't see this going well for you. But you are almost a man, now. Make the wrong choices and there will be consequences. Do what you want, but I'm only going to tell you this once... if you go to jail, I will not bail you out, I will not come to your court date, and I will not visit you." And that was the end of the conversation. I sat out on the porch and smoked 3 cigarettes just trying to process how he could say that to me after all of the time we spent together and how close we were.
I never saw my choices the same again. I became a lot more mindful. That, I think, was the moment when I realized "Oh hey, if I screw up and do something dumb here, I'm going to have to handle it alone - because none of these people around me can do shit for me then. The things I do matter now." I always go back to that now. But that was always my folks. Loving and supportive all the way - my dad especially spent a lot of time with me, but I was learning to do everything for myself as soon as I had the aptitude. So I got used to thinking that I'm responsible for the outcomes of things that I do. And what I've found is that the very core of that whole way of operating requires constant mindfulness... as in, you have to pay attention to things going in and out of your head! A lot of my friends have it bad with social media, but look at me like there's no way they could be happy being me, always considering all of these little things and just always getting tied up with different interests... I guess it's too much to have to worry about how your habits trickle out. They talk about actually being deep into anything other than internet vices like "Yeah, that's super-cool, but it seems like a lot of work." To them, I just must have no chill because I don't really take a lot of time shutting my brain off. Those same people complement me for always being the 'level' and 'mellow' one. Tell me they don't know how I do it. I've tried to explain it...
I always think to myself "Happy being me? You're not even happy being YOU!" It's crazy man... it's like they don't know how to not worry about all of this crap they see on the screen. They can't be away from it, ever. The lesson I take from it is that you have to be careful of what you let that stuff do for you. All media, really. Even games. It can substitute for a lot of things in life, and that's not always a good thing. Some of the most impatient and neurotic people I know are also the most avid screen junkies. Sometimes talking to them feels like entering a separate reality.
If anything, our problems with social media and really all of this new tech are simply showing weaknesses in people that were always there, but never before seen on display in such a way. There just was never such a potent catalyst. I don't think people magically become that. You work your way up to it your whole life. And it doesn't go away just because you get off of social media. For all of the talk people put out there about mental health awareness, so many of those same people fail miserably where it counts the most. This all can teach us SO MUCH about ourselves, but a lot of people still take that for granted, even sending their kids down the same road.
One day, we will learn to better integrate these means of dealing with all of this information overload. There's just been no precedent for it. We all have to observe and adjust accordingly. I think it's actually getting better now. Ultimately, some really good things are going to come of it. But right now, it's a lot like how it probably was when humans first learned to distill alcohol. We had to, as an entity learn to drink without absolutely destroying everything we built up. We still fail hard at that sometimes, but at least there's order now. Same thing is going to have to happen with the internet.
Oh right... I'm 29. My bad. For a second I thought I was a boomer
