Socrates bemoaned those young’ns who had the audacity to read their Homer, instead of memorizing it.
“Anything outside of the propaganda that I indoctrinate you with will rot your brain” - everyone in history.
Eh, there is sufficient evidence to recommend children and teenagers having limited internet and social media access during their formative years at this point.
The tiktok algorithm of mindless doomscrolling funny little bits all short and digestible for a decaying attention span is just the most egregious example why restrictions should at least be considered.
Apparently there was enough evidence to recommend children and teenagers to have limited access to the radio as well.
You realize that’s still true, right? You’re posting this as some big own as though it’s somehow not harmful to mindlessly consume any form of media to an extreme extent, especially in the learning years.
Somebody been watching too many tik toks?
Somebody been watching too many tik toks
What a ridiculous logical leap.
Erm ackchually it’s called an insult and it wasn’t meant to convey a logical point
I’m not saying it isn’t true. I’ve never used TikTok, Instagram, and avoid YouTube shorts. I saw some articles about “TikTok Brain” making their way across the internet yesterday and I wanted to call out the hypocrisy.
“I’m not saying it’s true I just wanted to imply it’s true to drive
enragementengagement”How is it hypocrisy if the previous forms of media were also bad for you, Tik-Tok is just more efficient at funneling meaningless drivel down your throat?
I think its hypocritical for a generation to consider the baseline media technology at the time of their upbringing to be generally acceptable, only to turn around and declare the next media technology to be unacceptable for their children.
What if I found the type content that my generation absorbed to be a problem as well?
The media technologies are not comparable, thats where your argument falls apart.
Fwiw I actively believe that reddit is responsible for shortening my attention span.
It is not hypocritical to call out tik tok for doing the same.
What situations your short attention span makes uncomfortable for you apart from things related to some sort of achievement (as perceived by your workplace, school, family, friends, etc)
It may be hypocritical, but have you considered that all of these forms of entertainment are unhealthy? The only difference is that they get more and more efficient with each generation, causing increasing levels of concern from each generation. That’s indicative of a rising trend
This is a rather interesting viewpoint and I can’t really find any fault with it.
@STUPIDVIPGUY @aCosmicWave I’m trying and eliminating are sources of entertainment from these websites since the saturation of entertainment content is much more than educational ones now.
I think that’s generally a good argument, however the rate and level of dopamine hits from TikTok and YouTube Shorts may far surpass that of prior mediums and so actually warrant additional considerations and precautions.
But then, I may just be an old man.
Thanks! I agree with you, I just think that each technological leap up to this point has caused the level of dopamine hits to greatly surpass the prior medium (hence the viral adoption). But young brains seem to accept the new baseline and then the cycle repeats.
When I was growing up I was bombarded with articles from older people telling me how bad video games were for my attention span, how they would increase my proclivity for violence, etc. This did not prevent me from enjoying them immensely, making friends because of them, and eventually leading me to a fun career in computer science.
I suspect that will be the case with each new medium.
Do you know anything about the reward system and addiction apart from the words “serotonin” and “dopamine”? /gen
Such generalizing statements are blatantly untrue, hypocritical, and harmful. People don’t use social media without a reason. Everything a human does is meet their needs, both psychological and physiological. When humans resort to social media it means they resort to social interaction and whatever other needs they may have like having feelings validated, visual/audio/etc. stimulation, but that doesn’t sound sensational enough, that’s not enough to scapegoat a group of people
Ok but research indicates that it fails to actually meet their long-term needs. This is actually a really confusing take, if humans always do what meets their needs then we wouldn’t have any issues at all? We TRY to do what we think will meet them, but we’re often mistaken, and this is an example of that.
Did I say that it does meet needs long term? What was the sample? What was the methodology? What communities were they participating in? How were they participating? What were the needs? Did they have a neurodivergency? What were their surroundings like? What was their childhood like? Do they go to therapy? What therapeutic practice did they do in therapy?
Also no. Addiction happens exactly when the needs are met more than usual, hence “social media addiction”, and it’s not the social media’s fault, it’s not “TikTok Instagram bad”. It’s weaponized misconceptions about mental health that are creating this issue in the first place
Edit: PSA - more than usual does not mean enough
You could say that about a lot of things, though. Video games and TV were commonly criticized this way. And it was a popular meme on Reddit that people would be so addicted to the site that they’d spend hours scrolling it.
Criticizing tik tok is just popular on sites like this because people here really don’t like tik tok.
At any rate, parents can already try to restrict their children’s access. But governments are gonna have a hard time doing so without hurting everyone as a whole (eg, see the attempts of some US states to require giving your ID to porn sites). Dunno if you remember being a kid, but I found my way around every restriction my parents set and I just disliked them for it.
They’re all mediums. The content on them can be anything from mindless to informative.It’s all up to who’s curating it. Do you leave it up to the algos and advertisers or actually provide something to your kids? Up to a certain age letting them do whatever on the internet is idiotic like letting them run around a bookshop that carries porn and mein Kampf.
Tiktok is digitial media, the attention span is the issue, not the media format.
I know a few people who admitted to me without me even probing them that they cannot handle watching or listening to a video over 1 minute long.
I am not for censoring Tiktok, however I will never used it since its horrible on privacy and has “back doors” to a powerful and malicious government. And I like videos that are long with good discussion or information.
No, tiktok is not digital media. It’s a chinese cyber warfare weapon of mass destruction.
I think your right about that. It can be used to divide and subvert the west, but American big tech platforms do the same domestically and abroad.
Social media in general and TikTok specifically have had major impacts to both our attention span as well as things like anxiety disorders.
Everything else in this list from reading to videogames is a different way to absorb a story, but social media isn’t built for that. Its designed on FOMO, and the idea that you have to keep posting and engaging or you’ll disappear. The algorithms are also toxic and designed like a gambling addiction. Books don’t do that, even TV can’t really do that. Videogames can, but not all are. Social media absolutely is, though. Everytime.
Removed by mod
As always the issue is loneliness. This has been proven since the 1970’s with the rat park experiment.
Worth pointing out here is that many of these criticisms all along have been totally on-target. The printing press brought on wars of religion and a multitude of poorly-thought out, often racist/hate-filled screeds along with advances in learning and science. Radio has brought us Father Coughlin and Limbaugh along with democratizing politics the way printed pamphlets couldn’t. I’m sure I don’t have to point out that both TV and the internet have their brain-rotting sides as well.
The fact that something won doesn’t mean it’s better. The fact that it’s better doesn’t mean it doesn’t have serious flaws.
TikTok, Social media, video games, rock and metal music, rap music, Dungeons and Dragons, Rock ‘n’ Roll, movies, phones, bikes, novels, older generations will always chose a scapegoat to focus on
Eventually it will be our turn
Counterpoint: They used to be able to memorise the works of Homer.
Who did?
I don’t know. It’s probably apocryphal, but I just stole what he had said in the title.
and now they’re able to memorize all the dances/emotes from a specific influencer/streamer. Almost the same, no?
Counter counterpoint: my generation had enough memory capacity to be able memorize the works of Homer Simpson and to quote him regularly. Children adapt to whatever is relevant at the time of their upbringing.
Youtube shorts, TikTok, Facebook Story, Snapchat Reel: they are all the same. If you block TikTok, then you need to block others as well.
Legal wise, it’s very hard to target a very specific type of media consumed. How can you really restrict that? IMHO, the only thing that might have better effects is educating people.
Same for drugs, alcool and tobacco. They are a all addictives at different levels, and they have different consequences as well that neeeds to be taken account.
They were right about TV and TikTok.
Argumentum ad antiquitum. Shame on you.
I feel like the actual danger is too much of a single kind of stimulation. So if you ONLY sit around and read books, literally never go outside, never take a walk, never go out with friends, stop working… Is your contention that people were wrong to warn against doing that?
Now, have you seen how some people consume TikTok? They will literally do almost precisely what I’ve described above. Just sit and stare and scroll for hours. Neglect other life activities.
If you scroll TT for an hour per day, you’re never going to experience negative effects from it. If you scroll it for 14 hours a day, you will probably become a vegetable. Find a happy medium (for me it’s 0 hours per day but everyone is different), eat, go outside sometimes, spend time with real life people, go to work or school, etc.
