I remember peer pressure being a big factor in teen years, mostly in the negative. Couldn't the rise of always-connected social media have super charged this negativity and made most teens feel like outcasts, with a few "teenfluencers" determining who is in and who is out? That would be a kind of hell for me to live in who was a teen before all this.
It induces and amplifies existential angst, particularly among teens. They are bombarded with over-sexualised imagery and levels of material consumption not easily attainable in their local economy. One way of reacting is to detach from that world, and play video games all day. Another is to strive to become a YouTuber.
We've devalued the meaning of having an ordinary life with an ordinary mate.
> I remember peer pressure being a big factor in teen years, mostly in the negative.
Some would argue this is a natural thing. Correction of social behavior as young adults are just learning how to interact in a more adult setting leading to mistakes that are then negatively reacted to, correcting the behavior for the future.
Doesn't work in all circumstances, but an argument nonetheless.
See the movie Eighth Grade for an anxiety inducing exploration of this theme. My personal take is that not having community is devastating, and the issue with social media is that it makes you think you have community in your brain, but your body/heart knows that you are actually just alone in your room. Even worse, it makes you crave a kind of unattainable community, so even people with loving family and friends might feel alone because they are longing for something nonexistent.
To your pet cat, the difference between you scrolling on your phone and you staring at the wall is nothing.
Sorry to make you feel bad, but that exact realization is the reason I don’t do remote work anymore. (I still scroll on my phone here and there!)
A cynic might retort that reading a book is also “doing nothing”, but I think there is a certain physical presence that is missing with the scrolling. Hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it.
There are so many different kinds of scrolling though.
For me:
- HN scrolling to find ideas/inspiration, staying longer if I find something interesting
- Twitter scrolling to get a glimpse of what's going on in the world and then staying if I get baited by something :D
- Facebook scrolling, usually for a particular purpose these days (maybe once every other week on average, to check up on someone in particular I happen to think of), then staying scrolling for a bit, past irrelevant posts for a while, where I might get warm/happy/nostalgic by some updates
- Instagram scrolling takes literally 30 seconds before I get annoyed by the ads and close the app (happens 100% of the time although I might last 1-2 minutes some times)
Those are all quite different experiences and I could do them all in quite different ways. I used to mindlessly scroll FB for example while not using Twitter at all. The psychological effects were quite different, but perhaps more socially attuned?
Nowadays I scroll less overall and more for intellectual reasons.
But... getting caught in the "must... scroll.... more...." mode is the same for all of them psychologically (Youtube as well), the same addictive behavior.
So yeah. I think there needs to be a distinction between scrolling for a (moderately healthy) while and doomscrolling. The algorithms can be quite very helpful in presenting relevant data, but they're also a potential black hole.
Oh and I'm not sure why I was replying to you specifically. I guess you got to be my therapist today.
There's nothing cynical about pointing out that "to a cat, there's no difference between staring at a wall and scrolling" is just a shallow truism that falls apart the moment you consider even many non-digital activities people engage in.
With a physical book people can ask "what's that about?" There's a big title on the back. When you are scrolling as far as anyone knows you're already in a conversation and there's nothing more isolating than that.
