Last I checked the iPhone didn’t exist in 1929 when the economy collapsed and sent huge swaths of the population into poverty. It still had an impact even without a single iPhone to tell people the market crashed.
Which would be an overwhelming factor that would probably be unusual in the west. 95% of all other news going on right now would not reach me without social media, which didn’t exist until very recently.
Ukraine, I’d hear very vaguely about and have little opinion on. All the other repeatedly ignored crimes against humanity that I’d literally have to go to therapy to ever find my way through? Wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t gotten bored enough to scroll mastodon at the worst time.
Back a couple decades ago, most kids could cover their ears and scream because reading the newspaper was something boring their parents did. Now, there are no real alternatives because everyone wants to hang with their friends and social media is the definition of doing that.
Recognizing that it may make people sad to be subjected to a constant reel of everything wrong with existence isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Yeah, those things should maybe possibly be addressed ever, and raising awareness of it is crucial to any hope of that. I cannot, myself, make Turkey give Syria their water back though. So what good is it doing me to know about it, other than shorting out my will to live at all?
Dismissing it as “grouchy old people hating tech” glosses over that it does genuinely have a huge mental impact that is still relatively new.
Last I checked the iPhone didn’t exist in 1929 when the economy collapsed and sent huge swaths of the population into poverty. It still had an impact even without a single iPhone to tell people the market crashed.
Which would be an overwhelming factor that would probably be unusual in the west. 95% of all other news going on right now would not reach me without social media, which didn’t exist until very recently.
Ukraine, I’d hear very vaguely about and have little opinion on. All the other repeatedly ignored crimes against humanity that I’d literally have to go to therapy to ever find my way through? Wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t gotten bored enough to scroll mastodon at the worst time.
Back a couple decades ago, most kids could cover their ears and scream because reading the newspaper was something boring their parents did. Now, there are no real alternatives because everyone wants to hang with their friends and social media is the definition of doing that.
Recognizing that it may make people sad to be subjected to a constant reel of everything wrong with existence isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Yeah, those things should maybe possibly be addressed ever, and raising awareness of it is crucial to any hope of that. I cannot, myself, make Turkey give Syria their water back though. So what good is it doing me to know about it, other than shorting out my will to live at all?
Dismissing it as “grouchy old people hating tech” glosses over that it does genuinely have a huge mental impact that is still relatively new.
Very well said. There have always been problems, not all of them are solvable and it’s ok to zone most of it out. Think globally, act locally.