Or, you know, any of the 50 billion other things that have changed in the past 20 years.
Plus it's questionable how much the issue is social media versus just that some things suck and we don't have the option to put our fingers in our ears and go 'la la la everything is fine' anymore. I used to be deeply depressed and angry over climate change; is social media to blame since that's part of what kept it in my head for so long, or maybe it's just a normal response to be depressed and mourn when you learn a bunch of things are dying?
Likewise, 20 years ago I would have been SURPRISED to wake up to news about a school shooting in my state, but now it was just 'yup, we were due.'
Tech and social media are definitely entwined with these changes, but I side eye the recent attempts to put all the responsibility on tech. It's shared responsibility in my opinion: Tech and its incentives are a problem, but there's also a lot of social rot that we can't ignore and that does tend to make people unhappy.
Plus it's questionable how much the issue is social media versus just that some things suck and we don't have the option to put our fingers in our ears and go 'la la la everything is fine' anymore. I used to be deeply depressed and angry over climate change; is social media to blame since that's part of what kept it in my head for so long, or maybe it's just a normal response to be depressed and mourn when you learn a bunch of things are dying?
Likewise, 20 years ago I would have been SURPRISED to wake up to news about a school shooting in my state, but now it was just 'yup, we were due.'
Tech and social media are definitely entwined with these changes, but I side eye the recent attempts to put all the responsibility on tech. It's shared responsibility in my opinion: Tech and its incentives are a problem, but there's also a lot of social rot that we can't ignore and that does tend to make people unhappy.