201–210 of 937 posts
Few deny that a drinking age is necessary. We also need a smart phone age. It's quite obvious that many teens are addicted to their phones and the mostly useless content they consume there.
I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. It's 100% bad but it's just trash filling the hole society is making. Looking top down at the problem, humans need self actualization or propose to be happy. Originally we evolved to live in medium sized social groups that worked together to ensure their survival, we took care of each other and that was what drove our purpose, or rather why that need evolved, it…
This is the actual problem, because the scope of realization is way too small for humans to comprehend. That is the reason why we're in a climate crisis, plastic waste crisis, middle east crisis, and housing crisis - all simultaneously.
How did that happen you might ask? Aren't people responsible for this?
Humans are very, very, very _bad_ at planning the future, and they should be absolved of that task, and absolved from the burden of making those decisions. We're in this mess because old people with old opinions lead our nations, and they were trained all their lifetime to only think for themselves and their small little community.
Right-wing populist propaganda works so well because they appeal to emotions around your "nice little community and its values", always painting a dangerous picture of change that people don't want to accept in their isolated world views.
Why humans still drive cars powered by oil today is the best example. Because they're not good at making decisions, and their moral values are always undermined by economic incentives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The archive of that site has many posts answering your question. Some have been on HN in the past months. Archive https://www.afterbabel.com/archive Here are 13 Other Explanations for the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis. None of Them Work. https://www.afterbabel.com/p/13-explanations-mental-health-c...
> Here are 13 Other Explanations for the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis. She finally gets to the deciding modern condition - the one where kids are systemically denied critical growth time (daily blocks of adult-free time & safe places to roam [safe=no threat of police or other compulsive adults]). And even tho she has this on her list of false suppositions she admits probably isn't as false as she infers. But she t…
The pressure children especially teen girls especially is super cultural. Invention of social media didn't make girls more depressed but allowed new manifestations of all the toxic shite in our society.
The solution is to change our fricking societies not to let assholes and racists to expound stupid theories on campuses, or to take girls phones away and keep them more pure.
What awful pseudo science nonsense.
I'd recommend reading Byung-Chul Han.
It’s not just social media. Free roaming and spending time outside on their own or with peers went down dramatically for the last 30 years.
I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. It's 100% bad but it's just trash filling the hole society is making. Looking top down at the problem, humans need self actualization or propose to be happy. Originally we evolved to live in medium sized social groups that worked together to ensure their survival, we took care of each other and that was what drove our purpose, or rather why that need evolved, it…
All this talk about “community” - what “community”? It simply doesn’t exist anymore even if you wanted it - short of arranging to stay near your extended family and in laws, what else is there in the modern western world? Churches, I guess is the only other true community left…
The Finns, Italians, and Californians by and large have a very different idea of "community".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m amazed that I had to read so many comments complaining about social media before I hit this one. How have so few failed to consider the idea that young people might be correctly anxious and worried about the future which looks, in many ways, pretty grim.
How did the future looked like for a kid living through 1929’s crisis? A world in between wars. Or living through the Cold War and the possibility of a nuclear extinction of humans? Despair and hope have always been cyclical and yet we always think we’re “doomed” when living through hard times.
Climate change only accelerates.