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Not meaning to be rude with this phrasing, but uh, I am significantly younger than you, born around the time you graduated HS… and yep, I have the same, gut, “this seems weird” reaction.

I was a terribly bashful nerd in the early/mid 2000s, and even I lost my v-card as either a 16 or 17 yo.

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cdc.gov/…/YRBS-2023-Data-Summary-Trend-Report.pdf

Thats a drop from half of kids literally fucking around in HS, to just a third, in only the last 10ish years.

I dunno if such data exists going back to when you were in HS, I’d imagine it would have been closer to around 6/10 back then (though thats just a spitball guess), but yeah, the decline has been shocking to me as well.

…

IMO, what is going on that is destroying mental health, and again, I say this as an early tech adopter, tech nerd, had a mySpace account, was one of the first with a Favebook account…

The cause of this is mutlifactorial, general economic decline and precarity are huge factors, but so is our modern social media based digital environment, and how it trains people to act.

Brainrot is a real thing, short form video content reduces attentions spans, makes you more anxious, less confident / have lower self esteem, rapidly propagates mis and disinformation, promotes narcissism and just literally retards rhe development of functional social behaviors.

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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

IMO, what is going on that is destroying mental health, and again, I say this as an early tech adopter

i think you forgot a word or more in that sentence

[the internet / social media] literally retards the development of functional social behaviors

I have the same opinion, and i say that the internet takes attention away from functioning social forms of behavior. in other words, the internet feeds off people’s attention, but that reduces inter-human contact too.

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- sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Ok, sorry to double post, I’ve fixed up the original comment more, to hopefully make more sense.
  
  But uh, yeah.
  
  It is really weird to be in the position of having grown up as an awkward tech dork… and now like, I have uncommonly good interpersonal social skills by the standards of many Gen Z, and a lot of Gen A.
  
  It is just a mindfuck.
  
  I realized in about the mid 2010s that algorithmic based content platforms just were pushing the most extreme and outrageous and infuriating kinds of content, because that is the content that best results in user retention…
  
  And when I realized this, I swore off much of it, deleted a bunch of accounts, and highly constrained and curated what was left.
  
  Most other people did not realize this and allowed it to normalize, and now, at least in the US, the result is a largely illiterate, immature, and anti-intellectual society that is highly conspiratorial, and treats all of reality … as if it was a reality tv show.
  
  People call me crazy, but I say that our society has been mass brainwashed, basically mentally neutered, acting increasingly neurotic and violent and irrational.
  
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    People call me crazy, but I say that our society has been mass brainwashed, basically mentally neutered, acting increasingly neurotic and violent and irrational.
    
    No i’m not calling you crazy, i actually see it the same way. Social Media is a mass brainwashing tool.
    
    The reason why elon musk acquired twitter is because he saw it as an “social engineering” challenge, after having already taken up classical engineering challenges (tesla). the reason is because the rich see it as exactly that: society is a system that can be manipulated and twisted into shape.
    
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    sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Oh I didn’t think you were calling me crazy.
    
    I’ve just been told that by many Americans who are actively losing their minds trying to balance their car payment, insurance, recent medical disaster, loss of income, etc, all while spending 6+ hours a day on whatever particular algorithically designed and manicured for them slop content app telling them who to be angry at and what items to buy to give them the desired personality.
    
    I very much agree the fediverse is very important…
    
    But I think that Elon actually primarily bought Twitter out of a massive, massive sense of insecurity.
    
    He needs to be widely loved and adored and seen as ‘a cool guy’, so he just bought the platform so that he could be in control of his own personal adulation/worship machine.
    
    In my opinion at least, everything else is secondary to, is an outgrowth of, is a cynical tactic that may shift at any time… all to primarily prevent his own ego from collapsing.
    
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- sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Derp, I did, I am also editing and expanding more to this in realtime, hold please lol.
  
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