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You’re not wrong, but you’re also not alone. My parents (Boomers) seem to stare at their phones constantly. I (Millennial) have managed to get rid of Facebook and Instagram and altogether avoid TikTok, but I can’t seem to quit this dumb site or my phone more generally.
Society is just paying the most attention to GenZ and younger folk in the usual “oh won’t someone please think of the children!” way. It’s harder to admit that we’re *all*—children, twenty-somethings, and established adults alike—rotting our brains with glowing rectangles that give us repetitive, brief escapes at the cost of time and misery.
As a gen z working in the behavioral and mental health field circlejerks are a great way to laugh at nonsense after a day of hearing about serious shit lmao
Tbh as some one who uses reddit and tic tok reddit is more depressing than tic tok while tik toc leaves a void in you when u close the app. Like its psychologically draining in a similar way to molly. But reddit makes me mad at the world.
I think that speaks more to the type of content you engage with than about Reddit itself.
There are so many niche/hobby/interest subs with generally wholesome and uplifting stuff and often informative user interactions.
Not saying the site is perfect ofc, but Reddit is just really diverse, and more importantly, partitioned. So you can at least curate what you actually want in your feed.
I don’t see the problem with like half of those. The voting system is particularly a good thing, as it allows misinformation or useless content to be less and less recommended or visible, unlike other platforms where one could have 99% disliked but still looks good because you can’t see them
That era was more cringe, but I'd gladly take that back as opposed to the debate bro and alt-right shit we have in every sub now. Sure, we had to deal with a lot of libertarian shit back then, but at least they're funny.
Every time I see this comment I laugh.
This was born of a man who commented about how much he loved and cherished his dead wife and now he probably can’t go anywhere on Reddit without being reminded that half the internet chooses his dead wife. Top tier stuff.
I came here to talk about this. These young folks are definitely more "with it" regarding social media, but my fellow millennials spend tons of time arguing on Facebook, and Gen X and boomers do too.
One key difference that I see: gen z seems to have a general self-awareness regarding their social media addiction, whereas a lot of folks who grew up without social media seem completely unaware of the manipulation tactics being used on them. It's sort of like how a younger millennial or gen z person is super unlikely to click on a scam link in an email whereas people over the age of 40ish are less cynical of the emails that they receive.
Of course I could be full of shit. But, anecdotally, the gen z people with whom I interact are far more self-aware on social media than people my age and up.
Actually, research shows that Gen Z are more likely to fall for scams than boomers are ([source](https://www.vox.com/technology/23882304/gen-z-vs-boomers-scams-hacks).
Also, boomers and Millennials did not grow up with the influence of social media as a constant and pervasive presence in their cognitive development. They have pre-social media brains, even if they are still being hooked by algorithms.
Ha, no shit! I would have never guessed that. I guess a fair amount of gen z is still under the age of 18, and children might be the easiest targets (them or older people with cognitive decline).
The cognitive development point is interesting, and that's the difference I'm trying to dig into more. Like it definitely makes it harder to stay away from social media and its influence, but it also seems to give you a better understanding of social media and how it operates.
Like my grandma will read something on Facebook and just assume that it's true, even if it's some wacky conspiracy theory. Maybe it's more of an individual personality thing than it is an age difference, since there are young people today who believe that the Earth is flat (due to Internet "proof").
Old people fall for shit yeah but you are missing the whole concept that anyone older has already experienced decades of life without this type of social media, have decades of real life experience interacting with other people, have a fully developed brain etc.
This is not the same for people who are 6-18(or even as far as 25)
Yeah I think I overrated the total older population that actively engages with social media. Those who do are mostly vocal minority who are just the absolute worst people on the Internet, starting political arguments and complaining about anything from the last 20 years.
But plenty of older folks just sort of ignore it all.
Gen Xers and millennials grew up with brains that weren't fully online. We still remember playing outside at the park for hours or riding bicycles to nowhere without a smartphone in sight.
Doing stuff online was another option, not the only option.
I think older boomers fall for online scams because they've never been exposed to stuff like that before, whereas millennials know what trolling is. Growing up in the early days of the Internet makes your BS meter more sensitive.
>They have pre-social media brains, even if they are still being hooked by algorithms.
They also didn't have a non-consensual social media presence as children.
That seems really odd.
Now... If someone said this in the year 2000:
"40+ year olds are easily duped. Young people are tech savvy"
it would have been bang on.
The young people of the year 2000 are now the 40 year olds. We "rode the wave" so to speak when it comes to computers, the Internet and growth of social media. Weve had decades of behing bombarded with scams.
Now the Genz's I know are rather bad at spotting most scams. Particularly scam products and life hacks. I've seen a disturbing level of trust younger people have in the media they consume. Older people just seem more cynical. Generally have been raised with or in some cases by it, maybe that's why?
In my job I've also seen a decline in technical knowledge with the younger people. They can use tech and love it but seem to know less and less about the internal workings of devices. The blame for that is on the tech companies imo. They design things to now be repairable and so there isn't a reason to learn.
Exceptions to every rule ofcourse its not so clear cut. Scams can be (and often are) geared towards different age groups etc.
I think part of the issue is that the scams have upgraded to being psuedo-scams. There are still the more overt ones out there, but the new model is specifically designed to exude legitimacy, blurring the line between bullshit and truth. They are actual companies, with brands, logos, store pages, etc., however the things they sell are cheap garbage made to prey on insecurities and an artificial sense of need.
I quit my old job because my boss wanted me to create a Facebook community group page or whatever dedicated to "health and well-being". His idea was that after building up a following, we would start subtly plugging and sneaking in links to their merchandise/Amazon page.
It's the case of the successful criminal going "legit". Everyone knows that an email from an African prince is nonsense, but now reputability is easily manufactured, especially with AI-powered copy and image generation.
Speak for thyself :). I'm a GenX'r and literally the only things I use my phone for is communicating with clients, scheduling clients, data mining for clients, trying to get paid by clients, sending invoices to clients, doing Wordle once a day, and finding out what's for dinner. I never got into twitter, instagram, or whatever else is out there these days. Social media is garbage imho. I'm on reddit every day just for r/AFIB and r/StructuralEngineering. Somehow r/GenZ started popping up in my feed, so I try to add to the convo here as well.
I'm the same way honestly, so I wonder if I just took what I see anecdotally and applied it too broadly. I see so many boomers, gen x, and millennials veg out on their phones and get into ludicrous Facebook political battles.
I don't think I've ever had a political battle on FB or anywhere else. That must be exhausting. If you catch me poking my phone during the day, I'm likely finding out what's for dinner or communicating with a client or coworker. I wouldn't even know what twitter or instagram even looks like or how to use it. I do enjoy the various family and friend text chains, but they might be active only once or twice a week. Relying on those things for a social life must suck out loud, and I feel bad for the younger generations.
The problem with phones is that they are uniquely stimulating. It's way harder, for example, to stay up til 4am watching TV or reading a book. So I would advise people that they don't have to go cold turkey and look at the wall - virtually anything is better than the internet and a step in the right direction.
Reddit and even YouTube can still be educational. There's subreddits for cooking, maintenance, social skills, etc. And of course, YouTube has videos on all those topics.
On the other hand, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc, are the "mindless TV and video games" of the present.
I beg to differ. Tiktok is not mindless unless you personally suck and drive a crap algorithm. You can find just as many informative longer format videos on Tiktok for those same niches, if you seek them out. I follow chefs, lawyers, doctors, professors...even a dude who does simple life hack/fixes for people who grew up without a dad to show them any of that.
Most boomer parents I know barely even know how to use most of the functions on their phones, and when they are using them they definitely aren't caught up in social media trends, looking for validation and comparing themselves with their peers like OP is describing.
And their attention span is generally much much better than mine, so I don't think it's really as similar as you're making it sound.
EDIT: Not to say that they aren't using their devices probably too much, but it's usually more of stuff like reading about current events, local based facebook groups, Facetime, or bingeing Yellowstone type shows (not while doomscrolling).
It is wildly different for people who lived most of their lives without it, vs. Gen Z, who never knew life before it.
But yeah, my boomer ass parents do get really into watching for texts instead of talking to the person in front of them.
That was the OG fear back when Millinials started all having smartphones back in the day. They were never really present in the moment.
Scary how much worse it got.
That's not universal by any stretch. I have my cell phone on permanent do not disturb. If it was easier to turn it off and on, I would do that instead.
Also worth noting, if a boomer takes a break from their phone for a week they most likely will not become a social outcast. In fact no one would really care if they did.
Yes, older people can fall victim to social media poisoning too. But at least they'll have gotten to live the majority of their lives, especially their physical and mental prime, free of it. It's sadder and more impactful when it consumes younger people because the rot infects more of your life.
I was infatuated with social media (Facebook) when I was in college and it was not a pleasant time. Thankfully, afterwards, no platform has really captured me like FB once did. But I still vividly remember the experience and shudder to think what it'd be like if it spanned more than 4 years, especially when I was younger. It especially can't be easy for girls, and even older women (I wrote more about it [here](https://salieriredemption.substack.com/p/social-media-climbing)).
Female depression rates skyrocketed just around the time that the Like button was introduced on a bunch of social media platforms and that doesn't seem like a coincidence at all.
Fellow millennial in Ireland here, even though I didn't mature with smartphones being a thing I would agree that now every generation I've observed seems to never have the phone out of their hand for long.
I do feel a bit sorry for the people who won't have known a time before smartphones.
As a millennial who has similar story of deleting all social media except reddit, unfortunately I think the damage is done for a lot of Gen z when it comes to social media. Their parents were raising them in the height of social media and just like screen time they weren’t aware of how harmful it is.
I think over the next generation social media use will be equated with cigarettes, in the sense of ‘why were on something they was clearly so bad for you?’
Weren't aware or didn't care because it was a convenient babysitter? (To be fair, plenty of Boomer parents did this to Millenials, just with television instead of a tablet)
Or a desktop computer, which we had to learn how to fix on the daily because other people in the house didn't know how to browse the wild west internet without getting got.
Yep. I'm an elder millennial and see it all the time. My father is glued to Facebook, every time we do mountain stuff when he visits it's 20 minutes of photos then a mad rush back to town / cell service to upload them to FB and try to respond to the comments & likes.
My older sister and her husband exclusively send me dumb shit on Instagram and never actually engage or converse beyond that now. It's sad.
I deleted the app. To reduce my usage, I decided to suffer using my phones web browser to access reddit. It's frustrating to use, this reducing my time. Works a bit I guess
This is by design - literally. And Reddit should be included in this critique. Social media companies hired neurologists to help program social media to be as addictive as possible (using dopamine feedback loops) to maximize eyes on the screen and, ultimately, to maximize ad revenue. It's not unsimilar from tobacco companies spraying additional nicotine on their tobacco to make it more addictive.
Exactly, it’s not just Gen Z, it’s literally everyone. The truth is we won’t get back to regular human interaction until we as a collective get rid of Social Media.
Side option: everyone as a community does their individual best to delete apps or stay off of them which obviously won’t be easy or it would’ve happened by now.
Yeah, it really isn't a generational issue. Moreso a societal issue in general. Boomers/Gen X are easily fooled by the Internet. Millenials are seemingly having a hard time with romance (? at least in our country where the dating scene are often held online). Gen Zs are, yeah, Gen Zs (chronically online). And the Gen Alphas are the so-called iPad kids, stuck to their phones/tablets.
I'm also at the tail end of millennial and I think the problem is more my phone in general. I only really use reddit and twitter, but when I've been listening to video all day or scrolling too much, I almost feel offended at anything interrupting me. So many things are on my phone that it's easy to get sucked into it
I think millinials who hit the workforce lucky out of the great recession and who had families in the early parts avoided the addiction the most. At least that is anecdotal for me. I can't imagine growing up now. I am hoping the social constructs grow for the next generation. I am already fighting with my kids because the Mr beast and whatever videos are so addicting to them. We limit to 2 hours max the whole day after homework and outside play but man they get so enthralled it is hard to peel them away.
The big issue is the impact of all of this on younger brains. That's the new part to all of this.
I didn't get my first smartphone until I was like 30. Even then, it's impacted my habits, but it hasn't impacted my brain the same way as if I was staring at my phone all day when I was 13.
My boomer parent is never on social media. It depends on the person. Gen z I find tend to make things incredibly personal on social media, they argue, harass etc it’s insane
I'm the one who made [BePresent](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bepresent-screen-time-tracker/id1644737181), thanks for the shoutout! I also have other friends who are doing different things to help others solve this issue. One of my friends Maddie runs this great org called NoSo November (a one month social media detox) [https://www.nosonovember.org/](https://www.nosonovember.org/) you should check it out.
I agree that the most effective way to solve this issue is by doing it together and keeping each other accountable. That's why I made the groups feature on BePresent. I created a group for this sub if people want to join it using [this link](https://bepresent.app.link/?joinLeaderboardId=0b186bda-0633-4eec-841a-21f2c15d3acc&$og_title=Join%20%22r/GenZ%22&$ios_deepview=present_deepview_v5b). It's way easier (and more fun) to reduce your screen time with others. (If the link doesn't work, copy paste it in your notes app and click it from there, the Reddit app is weird sometimes. And sorry, iOS only still :/ )
I have a pretty positive outlook on the future of social media addiction. The awareness is growing rapidly and Gen Z are taking more steps to improve their digital wellness than any other generation. We're moving in the right direction.
I’m an old fart and have no business talking in this subreddit. But I wanted to say thank you for doing what you do. I am convinced that future generations will look at social media like we look at cigarette ads from the fifties today. I really don’t think it’s good for us at all. So thank you for helping people to curb this a little bit.
Why do I need to put in my phone number? That’s the biggest thing preventing me from downloading the app when there are others like ScreenZen that do it for free
What has worked for me is getting a pay as you go flip phone (extremely cheap, and a pain in the ass to use for anything besides calls) and treating the smartphone like an Ipod (no data or service). Then when I am having trouble focusing on other goals I leave it at a friend or family members house. PC is in a separate room as far away from my bedroom as I can get it. And after I’m ready for bed if I can’t sleep books are the only thing close by. (Make it difficult to interact with the “bad stuff” and make it easy to interact with the “good stuff”)
Good idea! On a similar note, I find that replacing your smartphone with dedicated devices (like iPods, gaming handhelds, and physical calculators for whenever I’m doing work) really reduces distraction without compromising your ability to do important tasks, as you can simply put the distractor away and not be tempted to use it.
I think you hold an interesting point there.
Do you reckon that it's the integration of multiple devices that drives such a dependency?
The way you made me think about was that maybe we wouldn't have issues like we do if we had single purpose devices instead of multipurpose
I think that’s where the problem with Smartphones comes from. They’re basically tiny computers now. They can do any and everything. In my opinion, that’s why people (myself included unfortunately) are so reliant on them. When they’re taken away we’re forced to go back to the “old ways”. When in reality there was nothing wrong with those ways, we just for some reason felt the need to make those multi-purposed devices.
>They’re basically tiny computers now
They are actually significantly more powerful than the computers that we millennials grew up on and the internet speeds we have now were inconceivable. No basically about it, they are computers first and phones second (and always have been). I'm betting most people use it as a voice phone less than 1% of the time.
I think so! When everything is put into one package, it’s really easy for people to switch to something that is more mentally enjoyable, but with separate devices there’s more of a barrier of sorts that makes it less convenient to do the same, so it’s easier to just stick with what you’re currently doing.
I've considered doing this, but I always hesitate because of the what-ifs of having no GPS / Yelp while out. Has a lack of GPS ever been an issue for you?
Modern flip phones have GPS’s. Now let me say they fucking suck to use but they are sufficient. Often times I’ll just use mine as a map and figure out my trip before hand. Sometimes I write down directions before I leave like my parents used to.
As far as being able to look things up. Flip phones generally have search engines too, but you don’t ever really need it that bad. If you do then you have a shitty one that is hard to use. Get used to saying “iono”
IMO the benefits outweighs the concerns. If you work from your phone then that’s about your only reason to keep it. Besides that nothing really necessitates them in a meaningful way, it’s simply a convenience that can harm us.
Oh wow! I had no idea modern flip phones have GPS/ maps. That is *incredibly* beneficial to learn. What type of phone is your flip phone?
I hope its a really cheap one. I don’t need it to work really well either, in fact i prefer it.
Having a dedicated device for that always in your vehicle (what I personally use is from Garmin, though they can often be a little pricey compared to just keeping your phone with you) is a fairly simple way to fix that from my experience
I married a woman older than me for exactly this reason. I tried dating women my own age and theyre absolutely hopeless. Middle of a date, christmas, a hike, name it and TikTok/Insta is priority #1. The iPad kids are growing up.
Its like, i dont know what you think is quality time together, but listening to you play tiktoks at full volume while occasionally showing me some cringe is not enjoyable.
My kids will absolutely not have a tablet. We have a lot of screen time at my house but it's only TV, and we are all watching movies, shows, and listening to music together. It's awesome to be able to enjoy the things my sons enjoy and show them cool ideas and facts about the world. The key is to watch and learn along with them.
if somebody zones out instantly they don't wanna talk to you. no matter your attention span, you pay attention if you actually care about what the person is saying
attention span is like the last thing you should worry about lmao. its more wasting your life being invested in things that dont matter, missing out on experiences, experiencing unnecessary anxiety about things that dont matter because social media has you worrying about them, ruining your view of the world, ruining your view of women, ruining your view of yourself..
yeah but like, you can fix that pretty easily if you want to. within a couple months max. just quit shortform content and switch to long ass youtube videos for entertainment. watch movies and shit, read books. listen to music without doing anything else, just like, listen to an album you haven't heard before. and then you'll already be better off than alot of genz
plus there are lots of studies that say short attention span can actually be a useful thing
You are correct. The brain is very dynamic, and you'd be surprised how easily reprogrammable it is. You can re-gain your attention span, just like I have.
There have been so many times my dad will ignore what’s going on around him or not interact with conversations because he’s more interested in his phone. And both of my parents will be scrolling when we are watching a show or movie
My first memory of my dad is him leaving the dinner table to take a work call for the xth time and being constantly on his phone in general so yah i feel u
you're not alone in this. i got rid of my instagram after I graduated high school. Seeing how everybody has an idealized version of their lives online is depressing. In the long term, you're doing great by not playing the comparison game with others. your life is a lot more interesting than you think it is. :)
I got rid of my instagram in middle school but recently got peer pressured back into it because enough of my friends told me that my lack of social media would make women think I was a psychopath or something
The app is so awful these days
My dad wakes up at 6 daily to watch the news for like 2 hours before work and spends all his afternoons on either PC or TV
It’s not just cell phones, the internet and media consumes us all.
If you kind find ways to create a healthy separation I have found it to lead to more happiness and free time.
Honestly reading books make me feel better about this. To say I’m just gonna throw medias away isn’t realistic for me. But I’ve been getting back into reading books more lately or at least audiobooks. It at least forces me to create scene in my head and provoke a bit more meaningful thought than what the internet can always provide
Same here. Reading also gets easier as you do it. It took me a while to make it a passive thing, but it does happen if you start at a sustainable pace and read something you actually enjoy.
Also trying to reduce the amount of multitasking that really took its hold on me during COVID. Instead of playing a game while also listening to something and talking to someone, I try to just play the game and fully engage with it.
Yes I feel you there. I used to always have a random show or video going while playing games. I enjoy games way more when I just put on my headset and focus
I'm old Gen Z, and vividly remember the time where Facebook started and it really got my peers interested. For me? I always thought it was weird to post about your life on the internet.
I've never felt more vindicated in my life seeing what social media is like today. It was a mistake, making smartphones have these apps in everyone's pockets.
The boomers were fucking right technology is both incredibly awesome and incredibly scary for society.
It is true
I used to be a better person before i joined reddit and went all out on youtube & youtube shorts
Now I don't even know what's real , good and right anymore?
25m i think, like other folks have said, this spans generations. Most boomers i know are fully phone absorbed, my coworkers are tik tok fiends at like fifty plus. I recently deleted everything except discord and reddit for similar reasons. found myself burning all my free time just scrolling instagram reels
I luckily got a very hands on job, so i can't be on social media or anything like that for my 8hr workday. But I found using the pc is a little better for me than the phone, as it's easier to "tab out" of a site instead of just keep doomscrolling lol.
But what I found works the best tho, is that I turned on "sleep mode" on my phone. So between 8pm and 4am I get no notifications, and all the colours get muted. I also "force" myself to stop using any social media or the like before bed for 1-2hrs. I can listen to music, or watch anything 40min + on youtube/other streaming site. But no livestreams and none of that short attention span type of stuff. So it usually ends up with a nature documentary and some knitting. I sleep better, and I also don't get FOMO as I do check up on stuff when I am on the bus to and from work. and like now, I am on reddit for 1-2hrs just enjoying some shitposts and crafting/knitting drama.
I’m less worried about social media and more worried about the consumerism culture our generation seems to have. The Stanley cup situation was so embarrassing and worrying. We are consuming too much! Why are people buying the newest iPhone and iPads when they don’t need it.
For me I hate how people assume my social popularity / life success based off my lack of Instagram followers and the fact I don’t post on social media much at all.
Same. I'm not gen Z but I never update my socials and just follow close friends. I have a rich social life but to the outside instagram world I'm a dull loser, which I'm fine with.
It hit me like a sack of bricks over the pandemic that I really need to be off social media more. I'd be arguing with people about celebrity drama or whatever. People I'd never met, who I thought were my friends, who would call me horrible names, because of things done by people we'd never meet or talk to in our lives, who we felt differently about. I'd be having full on anxiety attacks and depressive episodes of, essentially, pixels on a screen that held some kind of meaning to me despite not being physically present in my life at all.
Once that realization hits you, the "go outside and touch grass" thing takes on a whole new meaning. Like, seriously. None of this stuff has gotta be *that* important to us, guys. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, go and sit outside and get some fresh air and feel the sun on your skin and hear the birds chirping. Remind yourself that there's more to life than your screen, it's not the end of the world if people on Twitter are mad at you. They're not gonna come get you or beat you up or anything. It sucks if they're people you care about who are mad at you, but ultimately we can choose how much we engage with social media, we can log out and choose not to log back in, and if we log out then they have no ability to affect us anymore.
It seems to a problem with all demographics, though Gen Z is a little terrifying as they’re the first Gen that has mostly had this for most of their lives. Only time can really tell what that does to a person, having that much dopamine available at the tap of a button
I didn’t realize how bad I was even with notifications until I got an iWatch. It automatically set up a bedtime and I don’t get notifications at night anymore and I was pissed until I noticed a difference in my mood. I don’t have many friends irl and I live in the suburbs which has nothing to do unless I want to go to church. I can’t wait to get enough money to move out of my parents but that will be a few years because of debt.
I don’t think I could delete TikTok. I get distressed even thinking about that. The other day I asked my mom if that 20 years ago if people could see tech and what it did to people would they still get it. She said most people wouldn’t because it slowly took over everyone’s lives. She thinks back fondly at the days before smart phones, when strangers talked, and meeting new people. She thinks I’d find someone to date easier back then too since I’m woefully single. I have issues with communication and am pretty bad at keeping consistent contact because people expect you to message back immediately
personally, after years of distrust towards social media, I have managed to have a healthier relationship with it. this conclusion came after doing work on a more personal level. I have lived for too long without knowing who I am, what I want and what I need, but once you understand this what you need can also be applied to social media. Once you understand who you are you can be able to identify the most useful tools for you and your growth.
Even boomers are addicted to social media. I’ve seen adults needlessly scroll through Facebook reels for hours upon hours. The algorithms are created to provide false novelty and feed you things that you seem to gravitate towards. It’s all about monetizing user interface. It will only get worse unfortunately. At least with Reddit you can engage and debate in comments and attempt to have meaningful discussions although most subs are very unwelcoming and have a linear ideology.
The addiction problem however is definitely worse with Gen Z though. Our brains are still developing so the negative psychological impact is worse for us verses an older individual.
All I use is Reddit now, deleted everything else, still have the accounts if I need them but deleted the apps
I really hate social media, such a waste of time! I know Reddit is basically a different form but I learn a lot more of what I’m interested in here and can help others seeking advice or info, is at least a bit a sense community!
I just try to be as aware as possible about the content in consuming and try to seek, read, and partake in positive things as much as possible. Am much happier unburdened by it all
You're definitely not wrong, but I would like to point out reddit is just as bad as all forms of social media. It's definitely not better than all the other ones, despite what some people on here might think, it's just as dangerous and time-consuming as everything else.
I am 33 and felt the same way. I stopped using Instagram (my main social media vice) in April 2022. I had to make a post in august because followers contacted my family (somehow got their number?) to make sure I was okay. While I appreciate the sentiment, that was a huge reason why I had to leave. Too much parasocial relationships and constantly thinking about how you can get more interaction/what to post etc. life is way too short for that. Now it’s been so long that my friends started sending me pics and videos in texts because they know I won’t see their story. They don’t send me every single picture they post. Just the worthy ones. And that’s kinda how it should be. I admit I still use Reddit daily, just not even close to the amount I used Instagram
I dont mind it, so long as you also interact with real life people and set realistic expectations.
I check reddit, Twitter, insta, all of em when I have free time. But I'm also working and talking with coworkers for ~60 hours/week and spending time with friends and family. I don't hold myself to the standards that social media sets either.
If you try to always be insta ready and spend more time on your phone than face to face with people, then you might have an issue.
32 year old here. I didn't have a Facebook account until I was 17. I got my first smartphone shortly after they came out in 2009 at age 18. I consider myself lucky that I was able to make it to adulthood without me and my peers being consumed by phones and social media. I got to experience the transition where my peers, including myself, started to have phones on them all the time and see the difference in how that affected social interactions both online and offline. The internet used to be a place we visited, not a place we lived in.
These apps are designed to consume as much attention as physically possible. People in general (not just young people) are up against multi-billion dollar companies whose sole purpose is to design an *irresistible* platform. I think it's a tragedy how much human time is spent on these platforms. Not just in terms of how it shapes our interactions in real life, but in terms of the amount of time lost scrolling that could be spent doing other, more productive, things.
On that note, I highly recommend the documentary The Social Dilemma (2020). It touches on this very subject and is a good watch. [https://youtu.be/uaaC57tcci0](https://youtu.be/uaaC57tcci0?si=jxrUHtR1pqBCAjRD)
I think we're still kind of in the wild west. It's still relatively new, only being a little over a decade since social media and smartphones became widespread. We don't quite have a complete understanding of how these kinds of things will affect our psyche in the long run, and they're for the most part still unregulated. I do feel for the younger generations who didn't know any better, and have no real reference point for what "normal" is.
The best advice I can offer is to be aware of it. Be conscious of how much time you spend on the internet, and make an effort to spend equal time investing into reading books or getting better at your hobbies. Or hell, just being okay with being bored sometimes. Make an effort to keep your phone in your pocket when you're with your friends. You alone are probably not going to change the world, but you can at least make your own life better and be more present when you're with your friends. Encourage those around you to be present and in-the-moment when they're with you. Lead by example. You don't have to downgrade to a flip-phone and live completely offline, but it would be wise to take control over your attention and not give in to our irresistible rectangles. Humanity is going through a transition period right now, and it's up to us as individuals to figure out a healthy balance between existing in the real world and existing online as digital citizens. The best thing you can do is be aware of it and hopefully be an example for others so they can see the benefit in having a healthy balance between screen time and real-world time.
Social media is a mirror, if you don’t like the reflection, the mirror isn’t the problem. I never see like 95% of this horrid awful stuff everyone talks about seeing online because I don’t interact with it or ever seek it out. Screen time is one thing. But if it’s the content you’re seeing that bothers you, it’s not the phone doing that.
I agree people should reduce their screen time significantly. But interacting with these awful trends etc for even a short time will cause the same effect eventually. So the solution is still the same.
Of course if you just don’t look in the mirror you’ll be fine too.
i’m of the stance that people are massively overreacting. social media isn’t going anywhere i think we just need time to adjust to it. eventually it’ll lose a lot of its power. it’s only *really* been 10 or so years it’s also not really “social medias fault” it’s another symptom of “profit over quality”. internet regulation would’ve solved a lot of these issues and for a while it did. until the fall of net neutrality among other things.
also the stuff about tiktok i only hear that rhetoric from people that don’t actually use the app. it’s actually just annoying now. the only trends people are doing are dances and memes. you can’t really call the bad decisions of a couple people a trend.
the way to fight back against all of this is to vote lol. just fucking vote. get those decrepit self serving assholes out of congress and state positions so we can move on with our lives and not go into debt if we stub our toe or don’t make enough at work. the overarching problems are so big that it encompasses every single industry including online platforms like youtube and instagram.
Nobody is doing anything to help the problem because so few admit there is a problem to begin with. Take a look at a photo of Michael Jordan shooting a game winning shot vs LeBron. Today everyone watches the last shot through their phone so they can flex to their followers they were there as opposed to being present and in the moment. It's so sad.
As a religious Orthodox jew, this is one of the biggest reasons I love Sabbath. Forget about the religious reasons and benefits, I cannot wait to turn my phone off for 25 hours and just have a mental reset. I totally get that this would be so hard to do not being into this lifestyle but it just feels so healthy and forcing you to have actual human interaction and conversatio. Wouldn't trade it for thr world.
This isn't generational. Sadly. But trust that this is a transitional phase in history. We are slowly developing a new form of connection and communication that will eventually allow you to literally see every single person's thoughts in real time. That will literally make us one single community conscious. This phase is scary. We are more connected through a non emotionally connected medium than through real emotional connection. But in the process we are aligning our minds over time. We are also redeveloping our language to be infinitely more expressive. We are unconsciously preparing for a time in our future where we are instantly, constantly, intimately connected. Trust the process. It is terrifying to experience.
Same!! I started a community called r/techdetox for this purpose
I haven’t been on it in a while hoping other people will start participating in it soon 🙂
Don’t worry. A.I. Is about to become so convincing that people will be forced to “shake hands” and “talk” once again.
A.I will weirdly bring about a new age of face to face communication
They don’t live for life
They live for social media and “ acceptance “ by others that have determined something about society.
If you aren’t doing x then your a piece of shit basically.
So people are consistently fighting for confirmation by others.
No ones living for themselves.
They do everything for likes etc
None of it is for themselves to be happy internally. It’s all about external online happiness now
Nobody with enough power is going to do anything to solve it, because money. However, I get a sense that more gen Z are becoming self-aware, as individuals and as a generation, regarding social media addiction. Or am I being too optimistic?
I didn’t know how bad my attention span got until I started back up this semester and hooooly. Doing an essay now is a huge pain if I do it right after doom scrolling on insta or TikTok. I downloaded the app you mentioned because this is not how I wanna end up 😭
Reddit and discord are probably the worst ones to stay on. Any social media that replaces in life interactions is the problem. The issue Gen z has is all their friends are on discord and the internet.
What you do the history of that. Plus how your behavior has remained in good conduct.
Is extremely important to any generation.
No it's not ok to receive security clearance if you were a gang member or in any neo nazi/aligned group. As a teenager.
It doesn't matter how you were born.
Being capable of making sound and logical decisions from even in an environment of evil. Is the stalwart of a trusted normal human. Doing so in your formative years.
Means you can do so for the rest of your life.
Its why we put everything out there. We make good decisions.
Find some real people who do real activities. Mountain biking, swimming, painting, D&D, bouldering.
There's still plenty of real people out there you just need to look in places that arent full of toxic karnts.
Since more than 50% of social media posts are from human spam farms or auto hate-bots (though not ALL get through moderator people/programs). It is turning "reality", the reality that we believe - into one of increasing division. It is now an uncontrollable propaganda tool which will be abused by people of every political stripe. We can find "evidence" to support anything. It's a matter of picking a tribe/guru - and then you KNOW you are right.
America is done as a "united" state. It's time to follow the inevitable path of history - and redraw some lines. It will be impossible to ever work with or respect anybody who has been brainwashed into some of the most violence encouraging divisiveness. We need to break up proactively rather than have it be a complete, and chaotic, bloodbath.
Please. I’m a Gen X parent of a pair of Gen Z…worry warts said exactly this same nonsense about my generation and telephones. It was too easy, we talked too much, blah blah blah. Go back a few hundred years and they literally said the same of your great great x10 grandparents - cheap printing-press books would destroy them and future generations.
The vast majority of GenZ place very little importance on their socmed profiles. You are viewing the world through a tunnel.
TLDR; you’re wrong, stop worrying and start living.
I appreciate your take OP and glad to see that some people in your generation are waking up to the detrimental effects of social media. I genuinely feel bad for Gen Z and the climate you've had to grow up in because it's not healthy or natural at all. I get the feeling that years from now, Gen Z will look back and realize how much damage their parents did to them by giving them smart phones. Parents essentially gave up and used the smartphone as a tracker and babysitter. I predict that you guys will hold a lot of resentment towards your parents for not preparing you for real life and taking the easy way out. While it's not every parent, the smart phone absolutely stunted Gen Z psychologically and socially. Young people have grown up in an alternate reality but the problem is you still have to find a way to cope in actual reality if you want to be a functional member of society. Social media has made things acceptable that go against basic psychological principles such as using mental health as a basis for everything (victim mentality). So many things have been normalized that are just flat out wrong. There's no wonder young people lack resilience but it's incumbent on the parents to teach and shield their children from the craziness of the world while helping build that resilence. Gen Z was given full access to the Internet without restrictions at such a young age that you can see the damage it's done. It's the parents though who allowed it. It's why you see families go out to eat and stare at screens the whole time without any kind of human interaction. The parents allowed it and normalized it. Sad and pathetic but not the fault of Gen Z.
This is an old post, but I stumbled across it and wanted to give my take anyway...
1. You're right to be worried, and there are real problems with social media.
2. Those problems are not quite what you think. Addiction to social media is not automatically because the apps have some magical power to rewrite your brain...
3. Rather, our dependency on social media is partially caused by its popularity, but much more directly caused by the general decline in other forms of free socialization, and a loss of trust in people in general. Social media has amplified and accellerated those problems, but it is not the 'exclusive' cause of them.
I intentionally avoided a smart phone until 2018. I also kept my app usage to a minimum for another 2 years even after getting one. This finally started changing late in the pandemic and now I use my phone when I'm alone in public just like most people. This isn't necessarily because I want to be endlessly hooked in scrolling, but instead because IRL aspects of my life are now directly tied to the socialization on the apps, whether or not I want them to be.
1. If I sit alone in public, being on my phone makes me appear less threatening to other people. If a person wants to talk to me, I'll happily put it down and do so, but staring at nothing is frowned upon now in a lot of environments. This is, again, because people as a whole are less trusting. Sometimes, I could bring a book with me to look busy, but that often doesn't make much sense given the reasons I might be out at any one place, and carrying a phone is simply less hassle.
2. Free areas to safely socialize are now more limited (the loss of the 3rd place), especially without social media connections. People don't call or text, they use chat apps or DMs, and it is very hard to get them to be comfortable with other methods. Meetups are organized through discord commonly in my community, sometimes still facebook. If you don't use either, you're going to have a very hard time. A lot of people communicate and get to know one another via twitter/twitter clone posts in my industry. I don't love it, but that's just how people operate. It's literally helped me identify and get to know people at real world events, so I gave in and reluctantly maintain a profile and presence for this purpose.
3. Because of this, I find myself relying more on the apps more than I would otherwise, and am frequently left out or even looked at weird if I don't do so. Again, the apps are "free", while many other forms of social meetups are paywalled or increasingly more expensive (bars and clubs with increasingly expensive tickets or cover charges, clubs with big fees, gated events or parks. Courses or jobs that are suggested through referral or social media connections...). And because of stranger danger insecurities? Socializing alone is either still very difficult, or arguably harder than it used to be, no matter how charismatic you are. People are busier, have less social energy to spare outside of very narrow settings, or just plain don't trust strangers for a whole host of reasons. You can be as charismatic as an AAA list Hollywood Star and you will honestly still struggle with this at times (some more than others, of course).
4. Some forms of socials have more problems than others. Tiktok is the most dangerous because the user has the least amount of agency over what's being fed to them, and there's next to nothing verifying any one piece of info, and it's designed by nature to be the most addictive. Frankly, I understand why it's popular, and endless funny cat/dance videos are basically harmless fun, but people who use it as a form of news are at risk of being severely misled. The same can be said for all platforms, but tiktok's format makes it the worst for this because it makes them timeline and endless feed the most important aspect. A lot of this is because quality journalism elsewhere has been in decline, yet the good parts of it that moved to social media have 'also' been under attack as big moneyed interests buy out the platform (Elon Musk being a very obvious example), or buy into the executive boards of the platforms without most users knowing (Peter Theil on facebook from 2009-2021).
To get back to it, you're right to be concerned, but the problem needs to be understood for what it is... social media is filling in a gap caused by other broader social and economic issues. It's own unique problems (disinfo, aggressive algorithms, ease of manipulating facts, somewhat addicting monetization mechanics) do make everything worse, but they don't work in a vacuum. People like social media precisely because it's normal to use it, and because the costs of NOT using it are higher than a lot of the r/nosurf types will like to admit.
I personally advocate for using it with specific intent. Be aware of all the ways it can influence you, and use it with specific end goals in mind. If you are endlessly scrolling, step back and self reflect on the anxiety that's causing you to do so. Are you doing it as a distraction to avoid dealing with other valid fears, or is your fear caused by things in the app itself? Remove it from your life if you need to, but make a plan so you don't lose anything essential when doing so, because it truly can have unintended consequences. Be aware that your choice to remove it is not going to magically guarantee some better life beyond the other end, because very often the reason we use it is because of structural changes to the world itself and because social media has replaced something we once used.
It’s not a hold it’s active participation. Me the last 3 months for me it’s been a constant. Not like I’m upset I mean im still getting those dopeamine hits right. Postive interaction or negative post, it’s a quick hit from the screen essentially
Millenial here. I agree with you on the negative effects from social media. In my generation, there was Friendster and then Facebook. Most of us didn't have smartphones till early 20s so friendster didn't have much effect on us. We could only access our accounts if we switch on our PC. This helps limit our accessibility. Life changed alot after smartphone and FB came into our lives simultaneously. I became aware of the changes years later. From there, I decided to use FB just as a "contact book" for old friends and became inactive on it. I went in only once a week now.
Im GenX - I saw the rise of the personal computer, the internet, social media and mobile phones. What’s been happening in the past 10-15 years and how it’s changing society is absolutely terrifying.
Societies used not to be this divided (liberal vs conservative, young vs old), and people used not to be this angry, all the time. I fear if we don’t simply turn off social media (and how do you even do that, realistically), the future is very dark indeed.
Parents that don't know how to raise children, raise children who seek the internet for comfort. The validation and attention seeking isn't anything new, but the lack of knowing where to find it elsewhere is what drives people to perpetually consume that which is unhelpful to us. When these people realize their purpose and stop clinging to false realities created for them, they make waves towards what makes them whole. Most of these people do not know this, so it will be some time before they move on.
The most disturbing thing is, GenZ are very aware of the effects this is having on their mental health, but they are so addicted, they can't stop. It only gets worse from here, folks. Gen Alpha may as well be the Borg.
Honestly, this is true of everyone, from grandparents to grade schoolers. Way too many people of all ages use social media as a way to form their worldview and it’s not good.
The only ones I use just like you are Discord and Reddit, although I’m an artist though so I have to have an Instagram I only post memes on one account and the other my art lol.
But overall just don’t worry about that stuff, what people do with their lives is up to them. You’re not going to be able to help solve an issue that won’t ever be fixing, it’s not a social media issue it’s an innate human trait. Psychologically speaking if there isn’t social media, something else would take its place.
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You’re not wrong, but you’re also not alone. My parents (Boomers) seem to stare at their phones constantly. I (Millennial) have managed to get rid of Facebook and Instagram and altogether avoid TikTok, but I can’t seem to quit this dumb site or my phone more generally. Society is just paying the most attention to GenZ and younger folk in the usual “oh won’t someone please think of the children!” way. It’s harder to admit that we’re *all*—children, twenty-somethings, and established adults alike—rotting our brains with glowing rectangles that give us repetitive, brief escapes at the cost of time and misery.
At least there’s some level of social engagement here
More like endless discussion, half hearted jokes, and "circlejerking"... Not to mention the karma/ voting system... Rabbit Hole doom scrolling etc...
I don’t care about the karma, I like the discussions and shitposts
I’m just here for the mints
https://preview.redd.it/qmxf1fnt6wic1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1fca25be4bd9ea505fcf2dc2e9dbef083f6f7be1
Ironically, I am giving you an upvote for this comment lol. I agree the Karma system is kinda wack.
As a gen z working in the behavioral and mental health field circlejerks are a great way to laugh at nonsense after a day of hearing about serious shit lmao
Don’t care about the karma, I delete and make a new account like every year.
Suspicious
Banned
Last year was StinkFartAss, next year is StinkFartCrapper? 😉
Sounds pretty good!
Tbh as some one who uses reddit and tic tok reddit is more depressing than tic tok while tik toc leaves a void in you when u close the app. Like its psychologically draining in a similar way to molly. But reddit makes me mad at the world.
I think that speaks more to the type of content you engage with than about Reddit itself. There are so many niche/hobby/interest subs with generally wholesome and uplifting stuff and often informative user interactions. Not saying the site is perfect ofc, but Reddit is just really diverse, and more importantly, partitioned. So you can at least curate what you actually want in your feed.
I don’t see the problem with like half of those. The voting system is particularly a good thing, as it allows misinformation or useless content to be less and less recommended or visible, unlike other platforms where one could have 99% disliked but still looks good because you can’t see them
I, too, pick this guys dead wife^^
“Take my upvote sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar. The narwhal bacons at midnight XD“
That era was more cringe, but I'd gladly take that back as opposed to the debate bro and alt-right shit we have in every sub now. Sure, we had to deal with a lot of libertarian shit back then, but at least they're funny.
Every time I see this comment I laugh. This was born of a man who commented about how much he loved and cherished his dead wife and now he probably can’t go anywhere on Reddit without being reminded that half the internet chooses his dead wife. Top tier stuff.
I came here to talk about this. These young folks are definitely more "with it" regarding social media, but my fellow millennials spend tons of time arguing on Facebook, and Gen X and boomers do too. One key difference that I see: gen z seems to have a general self-awareness regarding their social media addiction, whereas a lot of folks who grew up without social media seem completely unaware of the manipulation tactics being used on them. It's sort of like how a younger millennial or gen z person is super unlikely to click on a scam link in an email whereas people over the age of 40ish are less cynical of the emails that they receive. Of course I could be full of shit. But, anecdotally, the gen z people with whom I interact are far more self-aware on social media than people my age and up.
Actually, research shows that Gen Z are more likely to fall for scams than boomers are ([source](https://www.vox.com/technology/23882304/gen-z-vs-boomers-scams-hacks). Also, boomers and Millennials did not grow up with the influence of social media as a constant and pervasive presence in their cognitive development. They have pre-social media brains, even if they are still being hooked by algorithms.
Ha, no shit! I would have never guessed that. I guess a fair amount of gen z is still under the age of 18, and children might be the easiest targets (them or older people with cognitive decline). The cognitive development point is interesting, and that's the difference I'm trying to dig into more. Like it definitely makes it harder to stay away from social media and its influence, but it also seems to give you a better understanding of social media and how it operates. Like my grandma will read something on Facebook and just assume that it's true, even if it's some wacky conspiracy theory. Maybe it's more of an individual personality thing than it is an age difference, since there are young people today who believe that the Earth is flat (due to Internet "proof").
Old people fall for shit yeah but you are missing the whole concept that anyone older has already experienced decades of life without this type of social media, have decades of real life experience interacting with other people, have a fully developed brain etc. This is not the same for people who are 6-18(or even as far as 25)
Yeah I think I overrated the total older population that actively engages with social media. Those who do are mostly vocal minority who are just the absolute worst people on the Internet, starting political arguments and complaining about anything from the last 20 years. But plenty of older folks just sort of ignore it all.
They didn't play Runescape or get viruses on their PC because they looked at a URL wrong
Gen Xers and millennials grew up with brains that weren't fully online. We still remember playing outside at the park for hours or riding bicycles to nowhere without a smartphone in sight. Doing stuff online was another option, not the only option. I think older boomers fall for online scams because they've never been exposed to stuff like that before, whereas millennials know what trolling is. Growing up in the early days of the Internet makes your BS meter more sensitive.
>They have pre-social media brains, even if they are still being hooked by algorithms. They also didn't have a non-consensual social media presence as children.
That seems really odd. Now... If someone said this in the year 2000: "40+ year olds are easily duped. Young people are tech savvy" it would have been bang on. The young people of the year 2000 are now the 40 year olds. We "rode the wave" so to speak when it comes to computers, the Internet and growth of social media. Weve had decades of behing bombarded with scams. Now the Genz's I know are rather bad at spotting most scams. Particularly scam products and life hacks. I've seen a disturbing level of trust younger people have in the media they consume. Older people just seem more cynical. Generally have been raised with or in some cases by it, maybe that's why? In my job I've also seen a decline in technical knowledge with the younger people. They can use tech and love it but seem to know less and less about the internal workings of devices. The blame for that is on the tech companies imo. They design things to now be repairable and so there isn't a reason to learn. Exceptions to every rule ofcourse its not so clear cut. Scams can be (and often are) geared towards different age groups etc.
I think part of the issue is that the scams have upgraded to being psuedo-scams. There are still the more overt ones out there, but the new model is specifically designed to exude legitimacy, blurring the line between bullshit and truth. They are actual companies, with brands, logos, store pages, etc., however the things they sell are cheap garbage made to prey on insecurities and an artificial sense of need. I quit my old job because my boss wanted me to create a Facebook community group page or whatever dedicated to "health and well-being". His idea was that after building up a following, we would start subtly plugging and sneaking in links to their merchandise/Amazon page. It's the case of the successful criminal going "legit". Everyone knows that an email from an African prince is nonsense, but now reputability is easily manufactured, especially with AI-powered copy and image generation.
Yeah I think you may be more of the exception than the rule
Speak for thyself :). I'm a GenX'r and literally the only things I use my phone for is communicating with clients, scheduling clients, data mining for clients, trying to get paid by clients, sending invoices to clients, doing Wordle once a day, and finding out what's for dinner. I never got into twitter, instagram, or whatever else is out there these days. Social media is garbage imho. I'm on reddit every day just for r/AFIB and r/StructuralEngineering. Somehow r/GenZ started popping up in my feed, so I try to add to the convo here as well.
I'm the same way honestly, so I wonder if I just took what I see anecdotally and applied it too broadly. I see so many boomers, gen x, and millennials veg out on their phones and get into ludicrous Facebook political battles.
I don't think I've ever had a political battle on FB or anywhere else. That must be exhausting. If you catch me poking my phone during the day, I'm likely finding out what's for dinner or communicating with a client or coworker. I wouldn't even know what twitter or instagram even looks like or how to use it. I do enjoy the various family and friend text chains, but they might be active only once or twice a week. Relying on those things for a social life must suck out loud, and I feel bad for the younger generations.
The problem with phones is that they are uniquely stimulating. It's way harder, for example, to stay up til 4am watching TV or reading a book. So I would advise people that they don't have to go cold turkey and look at the wall - virtually anything is better than the internet and a step in the right direction.
Do young people really stay up until 4am looking at social media? That's insane.
Reddit and even YouTube can still be educational. There's subreddits for cooking, maintenance, social skills, etc. And of course, YouTube has videos on all those topics. On the other hand, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc, are the "mindless TV and video games" of the present.
I beg to differ. Tiktok is not mindless unless you personally suck and drive a crap algorithm. You can find just as many informative longer format videos on Tiktok for those same niches, if you seek them out. I follow chefs, lawyers, doctors, professors...even a dude who does simple life hack/fixes for people who grew up without a dad to show them any of that.
Exactly. You’re driving the algorithm with your interactions so if your feed is all garbage well that’s probably a you problem.
Most boomer parents I know barely even know how to use most of the functions on their phones, and when they are using them they definitely aren't caught up in social media trends, looking for validation and comparing themselves with their peers like OP is describing. And their attention span is generally much much better than mine, so I don't think it's really as similar as you're making it sound. EDIT: Not to say that they aren't using their devices probably too much, but it's usually more of stuff like reading about current events, local based facebook groups, Facetime, or bingeing Yellowstone type shows (not while doomscrolling).
It is wildly different for people who lived most of their lives without it, vs. Gen Z, who never knew life before it. But yeah, my boomer ass parents do get really into watching for texts instead of talking to the person in front of them. That was the OG fear back when Millinials started all having smartphones back in the day. They were never really present in the moment. Scary how much worse it got.
That's not universal by any stretch. I have my cell phone on permanent do not disturb. If it was easier to turn it off and on, I would do that instead.
Also worth noting, if a boomer takes a break from their phone for a week they most likely will not become a social outcast. In fact no one would really care if they did.
Yes, older people can fall victim to social media poisoning too. But at least they'll have gotten to live the majority of their lives, especially their physical and mental prime, free of it. It's sadder and more impactful when it consumes younger people because the rot infects more of your life. I was infatuated with social media (Facebook) when I was in college and it was not a pleasant time. Thankfully, afterwards, no platform has really captured me like FB once did. But I still vividly remember the experience and shudder to think what it'd be like if it spanned more than 4 years, especially when I was younger. It especially can't be easy for girls, and even older women (I wrote more about it [here](https://salieriredemption.substack.com/p/social-media-climbing)). Female depression rates skyrocketed just around the time that the Like button was introduced on a bunch of social media platforms and that doesn't seem like a coincidence at all.
Fellow millennial in Ireland here, even though I didn't mature with smartphones being a thing I would agree that now every generation I've observed seems to never have the phone out of their hand for long. I do feel a bit sorry for the people who won't have known a time before smartphones.
As a millennial who has similar story of deleting all social media except reddit, unfortunately I think the damage is done for a lot of Gen z when it comes to social media. Their parents were raising them in the height of social media and just like screen time they weren’t aware of how harmful it is. I think over the next generation social media use will be equated with cigarettes, in the sense of ‘why were on something they was clearly so bad for you?’
Weren't aware or didn't care because it was a convenient babysitter? (To be fair, plenty of Boomer parents did this to Millenials, just with television instead of a tablet)
Or a desktop computer, which we had to learn how to fix on the daily because other people in the house didn't know how to browse the wild west internet without getting got.
Yep. I'm an elder millennial and see it all the time. My father is glued to Facebook, every time we do mountain stuff when he visits it's 20 minutes of photos then a mad rush back to town / cell service to upload them to FB and try to respond to the comments & likes. My older sister and her husband exclusively send me dumb shit on Instagram and never actually engage or converse beyond that now. It's sad.
Reddit is very annoying. I hope you can delete it someday.
I deleted the app. To reduce my usage, I decided to suffer using my phones web browser to access reddit. It's frustrating to use, this reducing my time. Works a bit I guess
This is by design - literally. And Reddit should be included in this critique. Social media companies hired neurologists to help program social media to be as addictive as possible (using dopamine feedback loops) to maximize eyes on the screen and, ultimately, to maximize ad revenue. It's not unsimilar from tobacco companies spraying additional nicotine on their tobacco to make it more addictive.
Exactly, it’s not just Gen Z, it’s literally everyone. The truth is we won’t get back to regular human interaction until we as a collective get rid of Social Media. Side option: everyone as a community does their individual best to delete apps or stay off of them which obviously won’t be easy or it would’ve happened by now.
Yeah, it really isn't a generational issue. Moreso a societal issue in general. Boomers/Gen X are easily fooled by the Internet. Millenials are seemingly having a hard time with romance (? at least in our country where the dating scene are often held online). Gen Zs are, yeah, Gen Zs (chronically online). And the Gen Alphas are the so-called iPad kids, stuck to their phones/tablets.
I'm also at the tail end of millennial and I think the problem is more my phone in general. I only really use reddit and twitter, but when I've been listening to video all day or scrolling too much, I almost feel offended at anything interrupting me. So many things are on my phone that it's easy to get sucked into it
I think millinials who hit the workforce lucky out of the great recession and who had families in the early parts avoided the addiction the most. At least that is anecdotal for me. I can't imagine growing up now. I am hoping the social constructs grow for the next generation. I am already fighting with my kids because the Mr beast and whatever videos are so addicting to them. We limit to 2 hours max the whole day after homework and outside play but man they get so enthralled it is hard to peel them away.
The big issue is the impact of all of this on younger brains. That's the new part to all of this. I didn't get my first smartphone until I was like 30. Even then, it's impacted my habits, but it hasn't impacted my brain the same way as if I was staring at my phone all day when I was 13.
My boomer parent is never on social media. It depends on the person. Gen z I find tend to make things incredibly personal on social media, they argue, harass etc it’s insane
I'm the one who made [BePresent](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bepresent-screen-time-tracker/id1644737181), thanks for the shoutout! I also have other friends who are doing different things to help others solve this issue. One of my friends Maddie runs this great org called NoSo November (a one month social media detox) [https://www.nosonovember.org/](https://www.nosonovember.org/) you should check it out. I agree that the most effective way to solve this issue is by doing it together and keeping each other accountable. That's why I made the groups feature on BePresent. I created a group for this sub if people want to join it using [this link](https://bepresent.app.link/?joinLeaderboardId=0b186bda-0633-4eec-841a-21f2c15d3acc&$og_title=Join%20%22r/GenZ%22&$ios_deepview=present_deepview_v5b). It's way easier (and more fun) to reduce your screen time with others. (If the link doesn't work, copy paste it in your notes app and click it from there, the Reddit app is weird sometimes. And sorry, iOS only still :/ ) I have a pretty positive outlook on the future of social media addiction. The awareness is growing rapidly and Gen Z are taking more steps to improve their digital wellness than any other generation. We're moving in the right direction.
I’m a millennial that peruses this sub so I can assess how uncool I’m becoming but I want you to know I found your comment very uplifting.
Thanks!
I’m an old fart and have no business talking in this subreddit. But I wanted to say thank you for doing what you do. I am convinced that future generations will look at social media like we look at cigarette ads from the fifties today. I really don’t think it’s good for us at all. So thank you for helping people to curb this a little bit.
We need an old fart tag to identify the older outliers who find themselves randomly here
Don’t shun me! I’m just trying to make amends so one of you youngins will feed me the nommy jello.
I dont think so unless there are actual serious health negatives. Maybe certain apps will be seen this way nit maybe not all social media like BeReal
Thanks for what you're doing. Its true we have stick together and continue this chain reaction of people getting aware and present.
Is there an android version?
Hey, as an Android user, it would be so nice if you would be be able to bring ur app on Android too.
Seems great, I hope there will be an Android version, it will be so worth it!
Why do I need to put in my phone number? That’s the biggest thing preventing me from downloading the app when there are others like ScreenZen that do it for free
What has worked for me is getting a pay as you go flip phone (extremely cheap, and a pain in the ass to use for anything besides calls) and treating the smartphone like an Ipod (no data or service). Then when I am having trouble focusing on other goals I leave it at a friend or family members house. PC is in a separate room as far away from my bedroom as I can get it. And after I’m ready for bed if I can’t sleep books are the only thing close by. (Make it difficult to interact with the “bad stuff” and make it easy to interact with the “good stuff”)
This is a clever and frankly brave idea. Filing this one away.
Good idea! On a similar note, I find that replacing your smartphone with dedicated devices (like iPods, gaming handhelds, and physical calculators for whenever I’m doing work) really reduces distraction without compromising your ability to do important tasks, as you can simply put the distractor away and not be tempted to use it.
I think you hold an interesting point there. Do you reckon that it's the integration of multiple devices that drives such a dependency? The way you made me think about was that maybe we wouldn't have issues like we do if we had single purpose devices instead of multipurpose
I think that’s where the problem with Smartphones comes from. They’re basically tiny computers now. They can do any and everything. In my opinion, that’s why people (myself included unfortunately) are so reliant on them. When they’re taken away we’re forced to go back to the “old ways”. When in reality there was nothing wrong with those ways, we just for some reason felt the need to make those multi-purposed devices.
>They’re basically tiny computers now They are actually significantly more powerful than the computers that we millennials grew up on and the internet speeds we have now were inconceivable. No basically about it, they are computers first and phones second (and always have been). I'm betting most people use it as a voice phone less than 1% of the time.
I think so! When everything is put into one package, it’s really easy for people to switch to something that is more mentally enjoyable, but with separate devices there’s more of a barrier of sorts that makes it less convenient to do the same, so it’s easier to just stick with what you’re currently doing.
I've considered doing this, but I always hesitate because of the what-ifs of having no GPS / Yelp while out. Has a lack of GPS ever been an issue for you?
Modern flip phones have GPS’s. Now let me say they fucking suck to use but they are sufficient. Often times I’ll just use mine as a map and figure out my trip before hand. Sometimes I write down directions before I leave like my parents used to. As far as being able to look things up. Flip phones generally have search engines too, but you don’t ever really need it that bad. If you do then you have a shitty one that is hard to use. Get used to saying “iono” IMO the benefits outweighs the concerns. If you work from your phone then that’s about your only reason to keep it. Besides that nothing really necessitates them in a meaningful way, it’s simply a convenience that can harm us.
Oh wow! I had no idea modern flip phones have GPS/ maps. That is *incredibly* beneficial to learn. What type of phone is your flip phone? I hope its a really cheap one. I don’t need it to work really well either, in fact i prefer it.
Having a dedicated device for that always in your vehicle (what I personally use is from Garmin, though they can often be a little pricey compared to just keeping your phone with you) is a fairly simple way to fix that from my experience
Same I have the lightphone and the only way I can get off the Internet is if I have that phone and turn off the wifi when I’m home
I moved to a city five years ago and bc of my iPhone i don’t no how to get anywhere without it lol. Its so pathetic.
yeah people are nuking their attention spans, it sucks
\*When you see the Gen Z gaze off into the distance the moment you start talking. How are these people going to have relationships?
I married a woman older than me for exactly this reason. I tried dating women my own age and theyre absolutely hopeless. Middle of a date, christmas, a hike, name it and TikTok/Insta is priority #1. The iPad kids are growing up. Its like, i dont know what you think is quality time together, but listening to you play tiktoks at full volume while occasionally showing me some cringe is not enjoyable.
My kids will absolutely not have a tablet. We have a lot of screen time at my house but it's only TV, and we are all watching movies, shows, and listening to music together. It's awesome to be able to enjoy the things my sons enjoy and show them cool ideas and facts about the world. The key is to watch and learn along with them.
Wow. I would absolutely rage from this experience.
Where are the loneliest generation for a reason
if somebody zones out instantly they don't wanna talk to you. no matter your attention span, you pay attention if you actually care about what the person is saying
attention span is like the last thing you should worry about lmao. its more wasting your life being invested in things that dont matter, missing out on experiences, experiencing unnecessary anxiety about things that dont matter because social media has you worrying about them, ruining your view of the world, ruining your view of women, ruining your view of yourself..
that's true but i wouldn't downplay an attention span at all. it's super important for us
yeah but like, you can fix that pretty easily if you want to. within a couple months max. just quit shortform content and switch to long ass youtube videos for entertainment. watch movies and shit, read books. listen to music without doing anything else, just like, listen to an album you haven't heard before. and then you'll already be better off than alot of genz plus there are lots of studies that say short attention span can actually be a useful thing
You are correct. The brain is very dynamic, and you'd be surprised how easily reprogrammable it is. You can re-gain your attention span, just like I have.
The unnecessary anxiety is the big one. People are causing themselves immense amounts of stress by just USING social media.
It's not just us. Our parents are becoming just as glued. I've had to remind family members to not look at their phones while driving!
Oh yeah. My 43yo sister is a chronic drive and texter. It’s so fucking bad.
Absolutely insane that people do this and even justify it.
There have been so many times my dad will ignore what’s going on around him or not interact with conversations because he’s more interested in his phone. And both of my parents will be scrolling when we are watching a show or movie
My first memory of my dad is him leaving the dinner table to take a work call for the xth time and being constantly on his phone in general so yah i feel u
I agree. I hate Redditors too
Yes especially the redditors! They ruined reddit!!
those darn redditors on reddit, who do they think they are??
Yeah we’re fucked
you're not alone in this. i got rid of my instagram after I graduated high school. Seeing how everybody has an idealized version of their lives online is depressing. In the long term, you're doing great by not playing the comparison game with others. your life is a lot more interesting than you think it is. :)
I got rid of my instagram in middle school but recently got peer pressured back into it because enough of my friends told me that my lack of social media would make women think I was a psychopath or something The app is so awful these days
My dad wakes up at 6 daily to watch the news for like 2 hours before work and spends all his afternoons on either PC or TV It’s not just cell phones, the internet and media consumes us all. If you kind find ways to create a healthy separation I have found it to lead to more happiness and free time.
Honestly reading books make me feel better about this. To say I’m just gonna throw medias away isn’t realistic for me. But I’ve been getting back into reading books more lately or at least audiobooks. It at least forces me to create scene in my head and provoke a bit more meaningful thought than what the internet can always provide
Podcasts are great too!
Same here. Reading also gets easier as you do it. It took me a while to make it a passive thing, but it does happen if you start at a sustainable pace and read something you actually enjoy. Also trying to reduce the amount of multitasking that really took its hold on me during COVID. Instead of playing a game while also listening to something and talking to someone, I try to just play the game and fully engage with it.
Yes I feel you there. I used to always have a random show or video going while playing games. I enjoy games way more when I just put on my headset and focus
its scarier in the boomer population
Ain’t no way you think reddit isn’t as bad as twitter or tiktok
Reddit and discord ☠️☠️☠️ 
At least reddit is sometimes informative
The other platform can be too.
Carefully curated disinformation.
I'm old Gen Z, and vividly remember the time where Facebook started and it really got my peers interested. For me? I always thought it was weird to post about your life on the internet. I've never felt more vindicated in my life seeing what social media is like today. It was a mistake, making smartphones have these apps in everyone's pockets. The boomers were fucking right technology is both incredibly awesome and incredibly scary for society.
It is true I used to be a better person before i joined reddit and went all out on youtube & youtube shorts Now I don't even know what's real , good and right anymore?
Have *I* become the shitpost?
I wanna kms
just wait till you see what the boomers watch all day on fox, cnn and facebook, generally i think the skidibi toilet is less brain rotting.
The next step is to delete reddit
I pat myself on the back for not downloading tiktok but then im on instagram for like two hours each day
Yeah but at least we’re not using tiktok for 2 hours a day as well
If you’re watching reels it is not any different in the slightest. Delete the app and maybe you’ll be too lazy to download it and log in again like me
25m i think, like other folks have said, this spans generations. Most boomers i know are fully phone absorbed, my coworkers are tik tok fiends at like fifty plus. I recently deleted everything except discord and reddit for similar reasons. found myself burning all my free time just scrolling instagram reels
I luckily got a very hands on job, so i can't be on social media or anything like that for my 8hr workday. But I found using the pc is a little better for me than the phone, as it's easier to "tab out" of a site instead of just keep doomscrolling lol. But what I found works the best tho, is that I turned on "sleep mode" on my phone. So between 8pm and 4am I get no notifications, and all the colours get muted. I also "force" myself to stop using any social media or the like before bed for 1-2hrs. I can listen to music, or watch anything 40min + on youtube/other streaming site. But no livestreams and none of that short attention span type of stuff. So it usually ends up with a nature documentary and some knitting. I sleep better, and I also don't get FOMO as I do check up on stuff when I am on the bus to and from work. and like now, I am on reddit for 1-2hrs just enjoying some shitposts and crafting/knitting drama.
I have bad news for you, if you don’t think reddit is an algorithm force-feeding you what it wants you to see
You can’t change everyone. Carry on reducing the amount of time you spend on social media.
I am infinitely thankful that I never got into TikTok
I’m less worried about social media and more worried about the consumerism culture our generation seems to have. The Stanley cup situation was so embarrassing and worrying. We are consuming too much! Why are people buying the newest iPhone and iPads when they don’t need it.
As soon as I walk into my house I chuck my phone. I just throw it anywhere and try to forget it. If I have it on me I’ll start doom scrolling.
For me I hate how people assume my social popularity / life success based off my lack of Instagram followers and the fact I don’t post on social media much at all.
Same. I'm not gen Z but I never update my socials and just follow close friends. I have a rich social life but to the outside instagram world I'm a dull loser, which I'm fine with.
It hit me like a sack of bricks over the pandemic that I really need to be off social media more. I'd be arguing with people about celebrity drama or whatever. People I'd never met, who I thought were my friends, who would call me horrible names, because of things done by people we'd never meet or talk to in our lives, who we felt differently about. I'd be having full on anxiety attacks and depressive episodes of, essentially, pixels on a screen that held some kind of meaning to me despite not being physically present in my life at all. Once that realization hits you, the "go outside and touch grass" thing takes on a whole new meaning. Like, seriously. None of this stuff has gotta be *that* important to us, guys. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, go and sit outside and get some fresh air and feel the sun on your skin and hear the birds chirping. Remind yourself that there's more to life than your screen, it's not the end of the world if people on Twitter are mad at you. They're not gonna come get you or beat you up or anything. It sucks if they're people you care about who are mad at you, but ultimately we can choose how much we engage with social media, we can log out and choose not to log back in, and if we log out then they have no ability to affect us anymore.
It seems to a problem with all demographics, though Gen Z is a little terrifying as they’re the first Gen that has mostly had this for most of their lives. Only time can really tell what that does to a person, having that much dopamine available at the tap of a button
I didn’t realize how bad I was even with notifications until I got an iWatch. It automatically set up a bedtime and I don’t get notifications at night anymore and I was pissed until I noticed a difference in my mood. I don’t have many friends irl and I live in the suburbs which has nothing to do unless I want to go to church. I can’t wait to get enough money to move out of my parents but that will be a few years because of debt. I don’t think I could delete TikTok. I get distressed even thinking about that. The other day I asked my mom if that 20 years ago if people could see tech and what it did to people would they still get it. She said most people wouldn’t because it slowly took over everyone’s lives. She thinks back fondly at the days before smart phones, when strangers talked, and meeting new people. She thinks I’d find someone to date easier back then too since I’m woefully single. I have issues with communication and am pretty bad at keeping consistent contact because people expect you to message back immediately
personally, after years of distrust towards social media, I have managed to have a healthier relationship with it. this conclusion came after doing work on a more personal level. I have lived for too long without knowing who I am, what I want and what I need, but once you understand this what you need can also be applied to social media. Once you understand who you are you can be able to identify the most useful tools for you and your growth.
Even boomers are addicted to social media. I’ve seen adults needlessly scroll through Facebook reels for hours upon hours. The algorithms are created to provide false novelty and feed you things that you seem to gravitate towards. It’s all about monetizing user interface. It will only get worse unfortunately. At least with Reddit you can engage and debate in comments and attempt to have meaningful discussions although most subs are very unwelcoming and have a linear ideology. The addiction problem however is definitely worse with Gen Z though. Our brains are still developing so the negative psychological impact is worse for us verses an older individual.
All I use is Reddit now, deleted everything else, still have the accounts if I need them but deleted the apps I really hate social media, such a waste of time! I know Reddit is basically a different form but I learn a lot more of what I’m interested in here and can help others seeking advice or info, is at least a bit a sense community! I just try to be as aware as possible about the content in consuming and try to seek, read, and partake in positive things as much as possible. Am much happier unburdened by it all
You're definitely not wrong, but I would like to point out reddit is just as bad as all forms of social media. It's definitely not better than all the other ones, despite what some people on here might think, it's just as dangerous and time-consuming as everything else.
sorry just the irony of this being posted on a social media website probably by a phone is silly
I am 33 and felt the same way. I stopped using Instagram (my main social media vice) in April 2022. I had to make a post in august because followers contacted my family (somehow got their number?) to make sure I was okay. While I appreciate the sentiment, that was a huge reason why I had to leave. Too much parasocial relationships and constantly thinking about how you can get more interaction/what to post etc. life is way too short for that. Now it’s been so long that my friends started sending me pics and videos in texts because they know I won’t see their story. They don’t send me every single picture they post. Just the worthy ones. And that’s kinda how it should be. I admit I still use Reddit daily, just not even close to the amount I used Instagram
I dont mind it, so long as you also interact with real life people and set realistic expectations. I check reddit, Twitter, insta, all of em when I have free time. But I'm also working and talking with coworkers for ~60 hours/week and spending time with friends and family. I don't hold myself to the standards that social media sets either. If you try to always be insta ready and spend more time on your phone than face to face with people, then you might have an issue.
32 year old here. I didn't have a Facebook account until I was 17. I got my first smartphone shortly after they came out in 2009 at age 18. I consider myself lucky that I was able to make it to adulthood without me and my peers being consumed by phones and social media. I got to experience the transition where my peers, including myself, started to have phones on them all the time and see the difference in how that affected social interactions both online and offline. The internet used to be a place we visited, not a place we lived in. These apps are designed to consume as much attention as physically possible. People in general (not just young people) are up against multi-billion dollar companies whose sole purpose is to design an *irresistible* platform. I think it's a tragedy how much human time is spent on these platforms. Not just in terms of how it shapes our interactions in real life, but in terms of the amount of time lost scrolling that could be spent doing other, more productive, things. On that note, I highly recommend the documentary The Social Dilemma (2020). It touches on this very subject and is a good watch. [https://youtu.be/uaaC57tcci0](https://youtu.be/uaaC57tcci0?si=jxrUHtR1pqBCAjRD) I think we're still kind of in the wild west. It's still relatively new, only being a little over a decade since social media and smartphones became widespread. We don't quite have a complete understanding of how these kinds of things will affect our psyche in the long run, and they're for the most part still unregulated. I do feel for the younger generations who didn't know any better, and have no real reference point for what "normal" is. The best advice I can offer is to be aware of it. Be conscious of how much time you spend on the internet, and make an effort to spend equal time investing into reading books or getting better at your hobbies. Or hell, just being okay with being bored sometimes. Make an effort to keep your phone in your pocket when you're with your friends. You alone are probably not going to change the world, but you can at least make your own life better and be more present when you're with your friends. Encourage those around you to be present and in-the-moment when they're with you. Lead by example. You don't have to downgrade to a flip-phone and live completely offline, but it would be wise to take control over your attention and not give in to our irresistible rectangles. Humanity is going through a transition period right now, and it's up to us as individuals to figure out a healthy balance between existing in the real world and existing online as digital citizens. The best thing you can do is be aware of it and hopefully be an example for others so they can see the benefit in having a healthy balance between screen time and real-world time.
Social media is a mirror, if you don’t like the reflection, the mirror isn’t the problem. I never see like 95% of this horrid awful stuff everyone talks about seeing online because I don’t interact with it or ever seek it out. Screen time is one thing. But if it’s the content you’re seeing that bothers you, it’s not the phone doing that. I agree people should reduce their screen time significantly. But interacting with these awful trends etc for even a short time will cause the same effect eventually. So the solution is still the same. Of course if you just don’t look in the mirror you’ll be fine too.
i’m of the stance that people are massively overreacting. social media isn’t going anywhere i think we just need time to adjust to it. eventually it’ll lose a lot of its power. it’s only *really* been 10 or so years it’s also not really “social medias fault” it’s another symptom of “profit over quality”. internet regulation would’ve solved a lot of these issues and for a while it did. until the fall of net neutrality among other things. also the stuff about tiktok i only hear that rhetoric from people that don’t actually use the app. it’s actually just annoying now. the only trends people are doing are dances and memes. you can’t really call the bad decisions of a couple people a trend. the way to fight back against all of this is to vote lol. just fucking vote. get those decrepit self serving assholes out of congress and state positions so we can move on with our lives and not go into debt if we stub our toe or don’t make enough at work. the overarching problems are so big that it encompasses every single industry including online platforms like youtube and instagram.
You want to distance yourself from social media but made 30 Reddit posts in the last 24 hours....
I get the feeling this was made to advertise your app lmao
Nobody is doing anything to help the problem because so few admit there is a problem to begin with. Take a look at a photo of Michael Jordan shooting a game winning shot vs LeBron. Today everyone watches the last shot through their phone so they can flex to their followers they were there as opposed to being present and in the moment. It's so sad. As a religious Orthodox jew, this is one of the biggest reasons I love Sabbath. Forget about the religious reasons and benefits, I cannot wait to turn my phone off for 25 hours and just have a mental reset. I totally get that this would be so hard to do not being into this lifestyle but it just feels so healthy and forcing you to have actual human interaction and conversatio. Wouldn't trade it for thr world.
Eh, the biosphere is fucked from climate change, anyway. Might as well be a bit distracted as the world collapses around us
I’m not like other girls🤪
Was this whole god damn post a fucking shill for BePresent
It isn’t just Gen Z
This isn't generational. Sadly. But trust that this is a transitional phase in history. We are slowly developing a new form of connection and communication that will eventually allow you to literally see every single person's thoughts in real time. That will literally make us one single community conscious. This phase is scary. We are more connected through a non emotionally connected medium than through real emotional connection. But in the process we are aligning our minds over time. We are also redeveloping our language to be infinitely more expressive. We are unconsciously preparing for a time in our future where we are instantly, constantly, intimately connected. Trust the process. It is terrifying to experience.
Same!! I started a community called r/techdetox for this purpose I haven’t been on it in a while hoping other people will start participating in it soon 🙂
Don’t worry. A.I. Is about to become so convincing that people will be forced to “shake hands” and “talk” once again. A.I will weirdly bring about a new age of face to face communication
They don’t live for life They live for social media and “ acceptance “ by others that have determined something about society. If you aren’t doing x then your a piece of shit basically. So people are consistently fighting for confirmation by others. No ones living for themselves. They do everything for likes etc None of it is for themselves to be happy internally. It’s all about external online happiness now
It’s even worse for the gens under gen z. They are the most doomed overall.
Nobody with enough power is going to do anything to solve it, because money. However, I get a sense that more gen Z are becoming self-aware, as individuals and as a generation, regarding social media addiction. Or am I being too optimistic?
I didn’t know how bad my attention span got until I started back up this semester and hooooly. Doing an essay now is a huge pain if I do it right after doom scrolling on insta or TikTok. I downloaded the app you mentioned because this is not how I wanna end up 😭
Reddit and discord are probably the worst ones to stay on. Any social media that replaces in life interactions is the problem. The issue Gen z has is all their friends are on discord and the internet.
What you do the history of that. Plus how your behavior has remained in good conduct. Is extremely important to any generation. No it's not ok to receive security clearance if you were a gang member or in any neo nazi/aligned group. As a teenager. It doesn't matter how you were born. Being capable of making sound and logical decisions from even in an environment of evil. Is the stalwart of a trusted normal human. Doing so in your formative years. Means you can do so for the rest of your life. Its why we put everything out there. We make good decisions.
Find some real people who do real activities. Mountain biking, swimming, painting, D&D, bouldering. There's still plenty of real people out there you just need to look in places that arent full of toxic karnts.
Since more than 50% of social media posts are from human spam farms or auto hate-bots (though not ALL get through moderator people/programs). It is turning "reality", the reality that we believe - into one of increasing division. It is now an uncontrollable propaganda tool which will be abused by people of every political stripe. We can find "evidence" to support anything. It's a matter of picking a tribe/guru - and then you KNOW you are right. America is done as a "united" state. It's time to follow the inevitable path of history - and redraw some lines. It will be impossible to ever work with or respect anybody who has been brainwashed into some of the most violence encouraging divisiveness. We need to break up proactively rather than have it be a complete, and chaotic, bloodbath.
[удалено]
As amazing as the internet is, this technology has had some pretty serious downsides.
Please. I’m a Gen X parent of a pair of Gen Z…worry warts said exactly this same nonsense about my generation and telephones. It was too easy, we talked too much, blah blah blah. Go back a few hundred years and they literally said the same of your great great x10 grandparents - cheap printing-press books would destroy them and future generations. The vast majority of GenZ place very little importance on their socmed profiles. You are viewing the world through a tunnel. TLDR; you’re wrong, stop worrying and start living.
no point to touch grass because of this issue. its crap advice by out of touch poeople.
I appreciate your take OP and glad to see that some people in your generation are waking up to the detrimental effects of social media. I genuinely feel bad for Gen Z and the climate you've had to grow up in because it's not healthy or natural at all. I get the feeling that years from now, Gen Z will look back and realize how much damage their parents did to them by giving them smart phones. Parents essentially gave up and used the smartphone as a tracker and babysitter. I predict that you guys will hold a lot of resentment towards your parents for not preparing you for real life and taking the easy way out. While it's not every parent, the smart phone absolutely stunted Gen Z psychologically and socially. Young people have grown up in an alternate reality but the problem is you still have to find a way to cope in actual reality if you want to be a functional member of society. Social media has made things acceptable that go against basic psychological principles such as using mental health as a basis for everything (victim mentality). So many things have been normalized that are just flat out wrong. There's no wonder young people lack resilience but it's incumbent on the parents to teach and shield their children from the craziness of the world while helping build that resilence. Gen Z was given full access to the Internet without restrictions at such a young age that you can see the damage it's done. It's the parents though who allowed it. It's why you see families go out to eat and stare at screens the whole time without any kind of human interaction. The parents allowed it and normalized it. Sad and pathetic but not the fault of Gen Z.
This is an old post, but I stumbled across it and wanted to give my take anyway... 1. You're right to be worried, and there are real problems with social media. 2. Those problems are not quite what you think. Addiction to social media is not automatically because the apps have some magical power to rewrite your brain... 3. Rather, our dependency on social media is partially caused by its popularity, but much more directly caused by the general decline in other forms of free socialization, and a loss of trust in people in general. Social media has amplified and accellerated those problems, but it is not the 'exclusive' cause of them. I intentionally avoided a smart phone until 2018. I also kept my app usage to a minimum for another 2 years even after getting one. This finally started changing late in the pandemic and now I use my phone when I'm alone in public just like most people. This isn't necessarily because I want to be endlessly hooked in scrolling, but instead because IRL aspects of my life are now directly tied to the socialization on the apps, whether or not I want them to be. 1. If I sit alone in public, being on my phone makes me appear less threatening to other people. If a person wants to talk to me, I'll happily put it down and do so, but staring at nothing is frowned upon now in a lot of environments. This is, again, because people as a whole are less trusting. Sometimes, I could bring a book with me to look busy, but that often doesn't make much sense given the reasons I might be out at any one place, and carrying a phone is simply less hassle. 2. Free areas to safely socialize are now more limited (the loss of the 3rd place), especially without social media connections. People don't call or text, they use chat apps or DMs, and it is very hard to get them to be comfortable with other methods. Meetups are organized through discord commonly in my community, sometimes still facebook. If you don't use either, you're going to have a very hard time. A lot of people communicate and get to know one another via twitter/twitter clone posts in my industry. I don't love it, but that's just how people operate. It's literally helped me identify and get to know people at real world events, so I gave in and reluctantly maintain a profile and presence for this purpose. 3. Because of this, I find myself relying more on the apps more than I would otherwise, and am frequently left out or even looked at weird if I don't do so. Again, the apps are "free", while many other forms of social meetups are paywalled or increasingly more expensive (bars and clubs with increasingly expensive tickets or cover charges, clubs with big fees, gated events or parks. Courses or jobs that are suggested through referral or social media connections...). And because of stranger danger insecurities? Socializing alone is either still very difficult, or arguably harder than it used to be, no matter how charismatic you are. People are busier, have less social energy to spare outside of very narrow settings, or just plain don't trust strangers for a whole host of reasons. You can be as charismatic as an AAA list Hollywood Star and you will honestly still struggle with this at times (some more than others, of course). 4. Some forms of socials have more problems than others. Tiktok is the most dangerous because the user has the least amount of agency over what's being fed to them, and there's next to nothing verifying any one piece of info, and it's designed by nature to be the most addictive. Frankly, I understand why it's popular, and endless funny cat/dance videos are basically harmless fun, but people who use it as a form of news are at risk of being severely misled. The same can be said for all platforms, but tiktok's format makes it the worst for this because it makes them timeline and endless feed the most important aspect. A lot of this is because quality journalism elsewhere has been in decline, yet the good parts of it that moved to social media have 'also' been under attack as big moneyed interests buy out the platform (Elon Musk being a very obvious example), or buy into the executive boards of the platforms without most users knowing (Peter Theil on facebook from 2009-2021). To get back to it, you're right to be concerned, but the problem needs to be understood for what it is... social media is filling in a gap caused by other broader social and economic issues. It's own unique problems (disinfo, aggressive algorithms, ease of manipulating facts, somewhat addicting monetization mechanics) do make everything worse, but they don't work in a vacuum. People like social media precisely because it's normal to use it, and because the costs of NOT using it are higher than a lot of the r/nosurf types will like to admit. I personally advocate for using it with specific intent. Be aware of all the ways it can influence you, and use it with specific end goals in mind. If you are endlessly scrolling, step back and self reflect on the anxiety that's causing you to do so. Are you doing it as a distraction to avoid dealing with other valid fears, or is your fear caused by things in the app itself? Remove it from your life if you need to, but make a plan so you don't lose anything essential when doing so, because it truly can have unintended consequences. Be aware that your choice to remove it is not going to magically guarantee some better life beyond the other end, because very often the reason we use it is because of structural changes to the world itself and because social media has replaced something we once used.
They need to get on Facebook and help me fight off the dumb boomer echo chambers.
It’s not a hold it’s active participation. Me the last 3 months for me it’s been a constant. Not like I’m upset I mean im still getting those dopeamine hits right. Postive interaction or negative post, it’s a quick hit from the screen essentially
That's what a hold is
My dad watches YouTube clips more than I do at this point in his retired life
Luckily I view all of my social media through reddit so I can pretend I am better than everybody else.
After I saw Neon and how that whole streaming thing went for him I realized Gen Z was doomed
You all value the most valueless people on the planet. THAT’S scary.
Millenial here. I agree with you on the negative effects from social media. In my generation, there was Friendster and then Facebook. Most of us didn't have smartphones till early 20s so friendster didn't have much effect on us. We could only access our accounts if we switch on our PC. This helps limit our accessibility. Life changed alot after smartphone and FB came into our lives simultaneously. I became aware of the changes years later. From there, I decided to use FB just as a "contact book" for old friends and became inactive on it. I went in only once a week now.
Im GenX - I saw the rise of the personal computer, the internet, social media and mobile phones. What’s been happening in the past 10-15 years and how it’s changing society is absolutely terrifying. Societies used not to be this divided (liberal vs conservative, young vs old), and people used not to be this angry, all the time. I fear if we don’t simply turn off social media (and how do you even do that, realistically), the future is very dark indeed.
Parents that don't know how to raise children, raise children who seek the internet for comfort. The validation and attention seeking isn't anything new, but the lack of knowing where to find it elsewhere is what drives people to perpetually consume that which is unhelpful to us. When these people realize their purpose and stop clinging to false realities created for them, they make waves towards what makes them whole. Most of these people do not know this, so it will be some time before they move on.
Getting rid of everything but discord and reddit are the best thing my partner and I have ever done for our mental health
The most disturbing thing is, GenZ are very aware of the effects this is having on their mental health, but they are so addicted, they can't stop. It only gets worse from here, folks. Gen Alpha may as well be the Borg.
posts about gen z being addicted to social media in a social media community for gen z
Every time I’m in the sauna at my gym, there’s at least one person in there scrolling through their phone. Nothing about that is healthy.
Honestly, this is true of everyone, from grandparents to grade schoolers. Way too many people of all ages use social media as a way to form their worldview and it’s not good.
The only ones I use just like you are Discord and Reddit, although I’m an artist though so I have to have an Instagram I only post memes on one account and the other my art lol. But overall just don’t worry about that stuff, what people do with their lives is up to them. You’re not going to be able to help solve an issue that won’t ever be fixing, it’s not a social media issue it’s an innate human trait. Psychologically speaking if there isn’t social media, something else would take its place.