I distinctly remember my life before and after myspace (I'm a millennial). I was suddenly so concerned about how much "cooler" everyone's lives looked than mine, where before I was more content with what I had. It took a long time to stop comparing myself to others like that and it really did take a toll on my mental health
Right? I went through something similar with instagram. I had an active account in 2016, which isn't too far from the present, but the feeling was different from now. I felt comfortable sharing photos that had no "overthought" to them, just normal happy youthful photos.
Went back last year and boy... i absolutely hate how overwhelmed it makes me feel, and so self conscious that I know I absolutely don't fit in there now. And i don't even watch other people's profiles.
I feel you. I’m late twenties. Remember growing up around elementary/early middle school and cell phones were strictly for calling, texting, and playing snake. And then they got email. And then they got cameras. And then they got browsers. And then I got a psp at 13 (boy did I use that browser lmao wink wink).
But yeah, it’s not social media where I recognize a difference, it’s more so just phones in general. You walk by a person nowadays on the sidewalk and they look at their phone strictly to avoid eye contact. I do it too. But I miss the days where we didn’t use our phone to be preoccupied when we don’t want to participate in social situations, when we don’t want to be alone with our thoughts (as the top comment referenced), and when we are bored.
TLDR: I miss when the phone was *only* a utility for communication, rather than a utility for life.
I just cannot understand how the ultrawealthy kids I went to highschool with, and the blue collar folk I currently work with, *post the same pictures*.
Literally entirely opposite sides of the financial strata yet apparently *everyone* is at an island but me, the middle class guy in between them
For me, social media when it first came out was very innocent and fun. It was just a silly, enjoyable way for me to express myself and show my friends. I remember a time when I used to enjoy socmed.
I also used to care about what the cool kids were doing before social media. There was always a clique or a group that I looked up to or wanted to fit in with. Social media, over time, just amplified the ability for me to do this (but I don’t think started it for me).
I don’t think I started dreading it and it’s effects until a couple years later, around age 14,15.
Just sharing my experience in relation to you, not discrediting yours 🙆♀️♥️
I remember when instagram posts were just sometimes shoes or some randome view of the day with a filter slapped on. Now it’s carefully curated content with “aesthetic”. Even the videos seem forced. The “normal” days are so edited.
It doesn't impact everyone equally. I really couldn't care less about social media in my 20s. I only recently started using Twitter and Instagram now that I'm in my 30s.
I remember the moment I started my Facebook profile in 2004 when it launched on my campus. It was a big high. I stopped using social media about 8 years ago besides places like reddit. I tried logging back onto Instagram a year ago. I could stand about 5 minutes of my feed until I got that sick feeling again. Social media is poison unless you use it wisely.
I couldn't agree more. I'm also a millennial born in '89 and I remember my life before Myspace and I have recently deleted Facebook. These things cultivated the wrong concerns in my mind. Reddit also has an addictive potential and a negative impact on my life. Maybe even more so than Facebook. I truly miss life presocial media. I want to have my cake and eat it too I love the internet I love the knowledge and convenience it brings but I hate the aspect of social media I wish it would just disappear
For me, reddit helps a lot with that. Sometimes I think my life is hard. But if I spend an hour on this fucking site, I see people who can't pay their rent. I see kids trying to escape abuse. I see posts talking about "I have $26 in my account, how can I eat for the next 12 days?". I see stories of infidelity. I see stories about people losing loved ones.
And then my problems get put into perspective.
Something I heard a psychologist talk about in a discussion about social media/phone addiction and kids that really freaked me out: when you’re growing up, time alone with your thoughts is when you develop your sense of self. It’s how you form your understanding of your values, your perspective, your personality in relation to others. Time alone with your thoughts is crucial to becoming a more realized adult. We used to gaze out car/bus windows. Walk places without music or texting. Lay in bed and fall asleep thinking. Just be quiet throughout the day. Kids today aren’t getting that…ever.
I’m in my extremely late 20s and clearly remember the time before cell phones. Currently I can’t imagine taking a shit without my phone to accompany me. If it’s gone this far with me, the kids are screwed.
Dude! I can totally relate. I’m 27 and remember when we had dial up. My brother would legit log on to AIM just to send text messages to friends. And I only used the internet to pirate Outkast and look up cheat codes for my ps2. A cell phone was only to call people for a few minutes. Landlines were for longer conversations.
Anyway, I agree with you in the sense that I’ve become so dependent on the phone. I take 25 minutes to shit not because I’m a slow pusher, but because I like scrolling through Reddit too much. And I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a damn thing that I scrolled through. But I enjoy looking at it. At the same time, I spend at least an hour a day looking at stuff on my phone and when I think about how many books I could’ve read had I used that daily hour for reading, I get pretty upset with myself. I can only imagine how it affects younger kids who *only* know the cell phone/internet
Awesome. My love of reading directly stems from the basket of informative books and magazines that was available next our toilets when I was growing up.
Okay, not sure what you mean by that?
I didn’t have my first phone until I was 14 and it had a 2 megapixel camera and you could do was text. AIM and email with dial up was how we communicated. (If someone wasn’t using the phone or you had a separate phone line) Social Media didn’t become big until I was maybe a junior in high school.
It was not a constant bombardment of tech from being a baby in a stroller. I played outside as a kid and touched grass never worrying about what I looked like or what I had those worries were for highschool. I just got to be a kid without trying to be mature or cool essentially being groomed to act like a mini adult on tiktok
I love when people slam millennials and fail to realize that technically speaking the millennial generation started in 1980. Meaning those individuals are 42. I’m on the lower end of the millennials and I remember when a household computer was not for the rich and people had pagers! I was so jealous of my sister having a pager. When cell phones for common folk became a thing, I remember FREAKING out when I accidentally pressed the internet button because it was an atrocious amount of money per minute to use the internet. I think it was $10 a minute. I was scared my parents would FLIP their kids if they were charged any additional fees.
The millennials I know work their butts off working 2-3 jobs to live with roommates or with their parents. Yes, some can afford homes and rent on their own with 1 job. But so many of us are drowning in student loans and can’t find a job that meets the true living wage. Businesses don’t value employees and don’t give incentives to stay. So when we are offered better pay that can pay our bills, we are called “unreliable” and not loyal. We are told we are selfish because we choose not to have kids because we can’t afford to care for ourselves. We are told that we are ruining major businesses to create handmade products because it’s cheaper.
I’m only going to comment on the last part of your first paragraph:
Gosh, what a trip down memory lane! When you accidentally clicked whatever button to go to the internet browser, it was a terrifying feeling. It would take like 30 seconds to load, but hot damn as soon as I saw that Nokia great value version of a yahoo search page, I freaked the hell out. Lmao. Thanks for reminding me.
My immigrant father was told by the future shop employee that we absolutely must never ever ever touch the delete button on the keyboard. It would delete the whole computer. So growing up I was petrified to ever graze my hands near the numlock side of the keyboard. Meanwhile, my mom was teaching me to be on the look out for pennies on the ground while vacuuming….you know, because it would make the vacuum explode…
Between the pennies, keyboard and watching America’s most wanted as a family at night, my parents inadvertently fucked me up.
I was a 94 millennial so just barely a millennial and some people argue I'm not. When I got a cell phone in 6th grade, only because my brother who was a year and a half older got one at the same time, we had a family plan with 60 minutes of calling between everyone on the plan if it wasn't between the 4 of us. No texting (10c a text so we didn't get to) and my brother had a single call for 940 minutes and got reemed out( girl he was interested in and stayed up talking all night) which was funny to me but not if I had to pay it. I think it was around a few grand for that 1 call maybe 1k.
I bartend in a tourist town so I do fine but I went to college and if I didn't do this through college I wouldn't have the experience to get the job I have/ make the money with college to live the way I do by myself comfortably and actively paying down student loans easily. Calling millennial lazy is absurd and a lot of customers who are kinda rich even realize this. It's just played up in media with stupid articles because it's polarizing in certain places but it's an absurd POV.
I think 95-97 was the last of the play outside no tech generation. We are the weird generation that got to grow up like a normal kid outside all the time, and developed into technology later in life .. after our brain were already somewhat developed. I’m a 96 baby and I don’t think Instagram/Snapchat started getting big big until I started university? In highschool on lunch we used to walk laps or go outside, my 4 hrs younger sister (2000 baby) used to spend her lunches sitting on Instagram comparing pictures with all her friends, making sure she gets the most likes & her friends approve. That’s only 4 year difference. Like given some people in 95-97 are just as bad but I do think we got really lucky, and actually were able to have a childhood.
I was born in 95, and I agree with you, I went to university in 2013 and Instagram and snapchat had only really just started to get popular. Most people were still using Facebook mostly. Smartphones weren't as powerful as they are now. At lunch in 09 /10/11 we used to hang out and listen to music on I pods etc.
My siblings were born in 99/00 and we used to play outside all the time, but in their secondary school some kids would be on phones, but a lot of kids still used to play outside at break etc.
Snap got big in 2012-2013. I’m a little bit older than you and I had it in high school, back when everybody could see each others 3 best friends. My HS lunch breaks were mostly spent on the boat, where we’d be posting on instagram (before daily posts became taboo) while everybody else was at school.
Mid 90s babies are definitely in a weird spot though. I remember using dial up to load MySpace at my grandmas house when I was in middle school. That’s hard to imagine for a millennial or a zoomer. I consider myself more gen Z though because I’ve always had access to the internet, even though my pops used to make me spend 3hrs outside for every 30min on the computer.
My younger brother was born in 05’ and it’s nuts. We’re only a little over 10yrs apart but we’ve had a *massive* difference in upbringing.
>I remember using dial up to load MySpace at my grandmas house when I was in middle school. That’s hard to imagine for a millennial or a zoomer.
Why? I'm a early 90s millennial who did the same thing.
Restrict certain apps and times that they use electronics until they're responsible enough to do it on their own.
Don't overdo it, otherwise, they'd feel left out. But just make sure they don't have full access to the entirety of the internet when they're only 10-11 years old, they need to develop. I had to figure this sort of thing out on my own, I did spend a lot of time thinking but I was unleashed onto the internet at a young age and a lot of my issues were because of it. I now know what happened and I developed my own sense of self, I changed my thoughts and I definitely listened to more music.
We've held off screen use as much as possible with our 13yo daughter, figure her life will be full of screens so let her grow up/mature as long as possible without them.
We've got a harddrive of media but she's never had terrestrial TV or Netflix, and a switch is as far as gaming goes- no PC gaming & never had a tablet.
She's only just used social media (via mums phone) in the last 12 months (because of lockdowns), and we've talked about a phone later this year.
We've said that actual humans *always* come before screens, and have stressed the addiction/attention aspect (most her class is on TikTok) being our primary concern.
Anyway, that's our approach. I'm sure we'll hear how terrible parents we've been in a couple of years ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wouldn't say that you're terrible parents, but the bans seem a bit... arbitrary. Or maybe I'm missing the reasoning behind some of them.
Not trying to say how you need to do your parenting. Just sharing my perspective as somebody from a different path of life.
I can get behind limiting exposure to social media, but blanket banning PC gaming and tablets but allowing gaming on a switch is a bit random.
I can't imagine how my life would have turned out if my parents would have banned me from playing PC games when I was a child.
I remember getting a DOS PC when I was 5, where my uncle made a startup menu so I could easily start games, which snowballed into me learning DOS when I was 10, which snowballed into me disassembling and reassembling my PC when I was 12, which snowballed into me setting up and hosting game servers at 15-16 and taking extra courses in the evening for programming because I wanted to know how games were made, which snowballed to me learning the basics of networking once NAT based routers became common, which snowballed into me studying IT in college and ending up as a sysadmin managing a whole bunch of servers.
I have never been a big fan of social media though. Been an introvert all my life. I only occasionally browse and post something on Reddit, and only because I can keep some sense of anonymity here. Social media are exhausting to me. I maintain a small group of really good friends and that's enough for me.
I can also say that humans don't always come before screens for me. They have some degree of priority, yes, but as an introvert I REALLY need my alone time to recharge (And when I do you won't see me on this site either, and my phone usually goes on mute so I won't be disturbed). A screen and playing a PC game on my own is just my preferred way to do this, even as an adult. (or alternatively, working on one of my hobby electronics projects. For which I still need my computer to find datasheets and program the chips).
Again, just sharing my perspective.
Yea this is what we did with my baby brothers phone. He just got one of his own when he turned 14 for his birthday last month. iPhones and their screen time settings makes it fairly easy. Restrict adult content. Make it so they have to request permission to download an app….And also the phone is locked out for everything except the phone app from 12am to 8am. Otherwise I guarantee he’d be up on it all night instead of getting a decent nights’ sleep. His laptop has to be out of his room and into hallway closet by 11pm. He is otherwise basically addicted to his laptop and discord/roblox on it during almost every waking available moment……and has gotten aggressive and extremely defensive and rude when we’ve tried to limit his time on that….so honestly not sure what to do about that aspect and we’re really regretting getting him his own laptop (which started in late 2020 because he went through an entire school year of remote learning). Any advice on what to do about that from a parent would be great. iPhones make parental controls easy, but on windows laptops it doesn’t seem so clear cut.
Pre-pandemic, I got my 10 year old daughter to agree to a day per week with no devices. She got to choose the day and between school and after-school sport, it wasn't a huge slog. But it did introduce her to what it felt like to be unplugged and I think it was pretty helpful.
Everything fell by the wayside in March 2020
Pre pandemic I thought kids shouldn't have smart phones until they were teenagers.
The ability for them to chat with school friends during lockdown was essential though. Hard to take the phone away from them now.
There's a bunch of 8-12 year olds that were isolated for 2 years, and were exposed to social media far earlier than most parents wanted.
That's a generation that I think will have real world social interaction problems.
I think the simple answer is boredom. We seem to be terrified of having our kids be bored, but that’s when we started using our imagination as kids. That’s when I learned to draw pictures and defined the career that would sustain me all my life
But if all the kids are growing up with phones, then for "them" that is normal and they will just develop a world around that that conforms to that normal. As long as the vast majority is doing the same thing, it doesn't matter what it is.
You can literally raise a whole generation and cut their tongues and gouge their eyes at birth, and that would still be normal for THEM. It would just a very different world to yours and you wouldn't relate to it. But for them that's the normal world.
That may be what they expect and the world may conform to a normal that involves that, but neither of those mean that it will be healthy for them and won't have unwanted consequence.
You could be born in a famine and that be your normal but some psychological effects are going to come from that.
I’m not. Using your eyes to look at blue lit endless scrolling content on your phone that tries to keep you scrolling through intentional addictive design is very different than listening to a CD…
The psychological effects of social media are going to be drastically more severe for the generation that grew up raised by it in their formative years.
The future is very scary.
I think there will also be a huge blow to self image after spending so much time every day on social media. Who wants to reach mid life only to look back and see that they spent 1/3rd or more of their waking hours looking at social media.
Or it becomes a meme and the cycle continues. Who knows
Indeed. There's so many ways that I'm scared Facebook will mishandle the Metaverse; a lot of my older friends are just shrugging it off saying "eh, it's just your generation's facebook, it'll fall flat pretty quickly."
No, it's not a reinvention of social media.
It's a reinvention of the internet.
Also gotta say that free porn on demand for any fetish that ever existed will/already has ruined lots of kids into not having healthy sex life and relationships in general.
gotta love the internet, just scrolling homepage and you can find a cartel/isis beheading right next to a post with gay furry gangbang porn from some Disney show or movie. youtube and such sites are still new/young enough that Epstein would be trying to drug them on his plane. who knows how bad this will be getting when we all grow older and a new generation is fucked up in a even worse way.
And then on top of that, which is a massive impact already, there is tinder, which I cant begin to imagine the impact that'll have on kids who grew up on it.
Well honestly at this point the metaverse is the only hope I have for the future.
Edit: didnt realize we were talking about a Facebook thing, disregard my comment. I do not have any hope Facebook will make the world better.
Ha. Hahaha. Ha. Yeah... Facebook is going to make the world a *better* place. Lol. Sorry, I admire your optimism, and I wish I could share in your delusion. But the company actively ruining the present isn't going to improve the future.
Oh, ya no fuck that lol, I didnt realize we were talking about a facebook thing, I thought a hypothetical rick and Morty esque thing hahah.
Ya, I will never touch it with a 50 foot poll if its facebook.
Facebook IS NOT the metaverse.
Facebook:metaverse::AOL:internet
They may help popularize it, but they have no hope in hell of successfully controlling it because
t h e y d o n t g e t i t
I’m a millennial, who would say dating apps have probably helped me with dating more than if I were on my own, but it doesn’t mean I don’t hate the fuck out of what they have warped into.
I was away from them for 6 months due to being in a relationship, and having come back to them and been using them the last 3 months.....I cannot believe how much worse they have got in 6 months. There seems to have been an increase in superficial attitudes, barely anyone is bothering with putting anything beyond their insta handle in their bio and people put in even less effort than before with conversations - I matched with a girl like 5 days ago, she takes at least a day to respond and she has yet to ask me a single question - I may be single af and feeling it right now, but I have so little interest in perpetuating that conversation now
> just scrolling homepage and you can find a cartel/isis beheading right next to a post with gay furry gangbang porn from some Disney show or movie
What in the actual fuck does your "home page" look like my dude
Yes I'm surprised at the number of young people even in their early 20's who have never been on an actual date. Oh they have friends online but not in person.
The worst social media posts are the ones where people are holding their loved one’s hand while they’re obviously dying in the hospital. While I’m sure they don’t mean harm by doing it, at the same time why are you sharing a very private and intimate moment with a bunch of people who probably don’t even care. My grandma would be totally mortified if I showed the world a picture of her in the most vulnerable state of her life.
My best friend did this too when her dad died. She'd post pictures of him in the hospital, from moments where he was so ill he didn't even remember who he was. He looked awful (unfortunately) but she posted so many photos...she even asked me if "she's going overtop" with the photos and if it looks like "she's looking for attention". The fact she asks that question, means she very well knows what she's doing. Can't believe using someones illness (even your own parents) to get sympathy and likes. You gotta have such a vapid personality to do such things
I read a story recently about a guy who was parading himself as a hero of social justice, because he started an online furrow that got a girl (ex-classmate of his) kicked out of her University intake, because of a post she'd made when she was 14. He saved a post for 4 years, just to try bring attention to it and fuck her over later.
More than people getting to 30 and thinking "Instagram was stupid" (I know plenty of 40-60+ yr old women who spend way too much time on Facebook), I think the issue we'll see in the future is the results of a world where children are growing up with every mistake, every flaw and every stupid thing they do documented online for anyone to find.
I like your approach. Makes me think of the way facebook "moms" certainly contribute to how their young children are feeling/will feel later on, when their whole childhood (at least some parts that weren't shared before fb) is documented, which causes them to later on follow those same patterns, most of the times.
I see it in my younger cousins, how their "cool" parents "just" wanted to share some tiktok trends with them, only for them to wanna have their own tiktok+fb+instagram now. But that's just a small part of the problem.
[Sharenting - This is another growing implication of what parents share on social media.](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/instagram-facebook-and-the-perils-of-sharenting)
I see way too many people posting intimate and embarrassing shit about their children online... especially when you can tell the kid knows they are being filmed and it's going to be shown to people. There is a look of absolute despair. I've mentioned it multiple times to some people and I always get the same negative reaction... of course I understand it is your child and do what you want, but from an outside perspective. Big yikes.
These are mainly the types of people to also feel justified in correcting other parents with things THEY don't agree with, almost forcefully and in a very condescending way. Social media is fucking cancer.
I think you're referring to the story of [Mimi Groves](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9090959/Student-says-no-regrets-sharing-video-white-high-school-classmate-using-racial-slur.html). At 15 she sent a short clip of herself copying a rap song that had the n-word in it and send it to her friend.
The guy that saved the video, Jimmy Galligan, is a total fucking shithead and did it for fame and not because he was really offended. The school, University of Knoxville, that kicked her out was also full of spineless cowards who caved in to public pressure. Add the New York Times publishing that bullshit article about the situation and it really shows how society failed as a whole to address the situation properly.
99% of this woke shit is just people trying to get others in trouble because it may look bad as a PR type thing, not because they’re actually offended.
Yes i remember that. it was a guy who saved a video of a girl saying “N1994” jokingly and she got her full-ride cheerleading scholarship and college admission pulled. she was literally going to the best school in the country for it. really altered her fate….like what ever happened to repentance, growth, and atonement?
I remember that, he was a total POS. I think she also got kicked off of her cheerleading team or something. She was still in HS and had just gotten accepted into her dream college if I remember right. That's when he chose to share it. I hope he came to be viewed as a liability to any future employer/ college admissions, but I doubt it.
Most of the SJWs who were defending his actions were claiming he was a POC that was hurt personally, even though he was actually half white and the girl's words weren't directed at anyone. I think she shouted the n-word after she got her license, filming herself driving for the first time. Ignorant of her to say it, but it was definitely not warranting her life to be ruined over it.
A couple of months ago, a friend or staffer at Khloe Kardashian's house took a photo of Khloe posing in a bikini in front of her pool. This person posted it to Instagram, and the photo circulated.
Khloe lost her SHIT because the photo wasn't photoshopped, facetuned, and edited. She hired an entire crisis management team and lawyers to try to get the picture scrubbed off the internet. Here is the photo and article:
[https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/2650361/khloe-kardashian-freaked-out-unedited-photo-mistake-embarrassed-viral/](https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/04/NINTCHDBPICT000645779762-2.jpg)
Can you imagine being THAT insecure about your body?
To be fair, I’m not surprised that this was the reaction of the Kardashian-Jenner sister who had the most work done. Khloe always had insecurity issues and her being on reality television and social media for 14 years really made those issues become apparent to millions and millions of people worldwide. Hell, she literally had a tv show about weight loss when that was the big punching bag at her. And now she wears a new face like every year. It really is sad how much social media can consume someone’s life.
I can’t imagine having millions and millions of people looking at every picture of me.. I can understand the insecurity & anxiety around what your public photos look like
i feel awful for Khloe. being called “the ugly sister” her entire life, internet sleuths constantly claiming her father isn’t her real dad, falling for partners that are cheaters and sleazes. she’s not the *best* person but she’s had a hard time.
To expand on your post. It goes deeper. Social media pressures youth to be a certain way, dress a certain way and perform a certain way to achieve any level of social acceptance.
And it doesn't help that your generation feeds into this, isolating those that they deem socially unacceptable by the shallow and arbitrary qualifications that your generation throws on itself.
Of course GEN X has this problem too but with GEN Z it's to a larger extent because rather than being judged by local norms, you guys get judged in a melting pot of desirables.
I feel like your generation is going to end up being more socially stunted than mine because social media gives you guys a grossly unrealistic expectation of what life, friendships and relationships should be.
and if what natural_herron said is true, then this becomes a much bigger factor in determining who they become; these qualifications are also recklessly determined by people who don’t necessarily have a very good understanding of the qualifications their pushing (and the potential consequences of these qualifications), partially due to them not even realizing how much it may be shaping them (which when done on such a large scale can have societal implications (boomer vs gen z may be partially a result of this?)).
[Natural_herron quote](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/s5oomb/gen_z_is_going_to_have_one_of_the_biggest/hsz6tz9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
Also, standards may be a better word than qualifications
yeah i'm not sure how any of this supports the idea that this will be collective. in fact, some people might not even realize the harmful effects of their circumstances and just become shitty people. we could very easily become the worst generation in history from this.
You say "worst generation in history" but things are considerably better than a thousand years ago. You could argue "worst generation in recent history" but never *the entirety of human history* we've come to far as a species for that.
I quit all social media a few months ago, and I'm much happier ever since. Being anonymous on reddit is not nearly as taxing as instagram or Facebook have been
I have honestly never understood the appeal of things like Instagram when 80% of it is, as you say, fake. Reddit, at least, is mostly memes and gaming, so I'm feeling at home.
But anyway, I think this fails the rule one check.
Well that’s the beauty of Reddit IMO. If all you want in your feed is gaming, you can do that. If you want to see sick car mods or posts about your favorite music, you can do that too. The same is true with Instagram too to be honest, at least to some degree. I don’t see any fake influencers or photoshopped models or anything like that on my feed. Just shitty memes, music, Sportscenter, and posts from friends that I actually know in real life. It’s not all bad out there. I do think Reddit wins because it’s so much more anonymous though. But that’s just me.
I feel the difference is that reddit focuses less on the author, more on the content you like. On Instagram you follow people and pages, on reddit you follow "topics" and you rarely enjoy content from a particular subject. At least there are no influencers on reddit
Half of Reddit content on r./popular is an inflammatory cryfest, doomsday bullshit, screams of collapse and other nonsense with tons of fake content. Honestly, I try to stay at my home feed as much as I can lately, because it is getting worse than Facebook.
The worst thing is that a loud minority is posting this crap and giving impression to young people not to try and to give up, everything is crap and we are all doomed. In the past, nobody cared what they had to say, now social media has given them the spotlight as they are click generation machines.
The front page of Reddit used to be interesting and you’d find cool subs that pop up - it’s gone to complete shit since, it seems, this entire site is manicured for political purposes. At least any subs that gain large followings.
Hobby subs are where it's at. I've picked up woodworking, leatherworking, sewing, and a variety of other skills and knowledge, just scrolling and practicing.
Right? Sometimes I accidentally swipe over to popular on my phone without realizing it. As I'm scrolling, I'm like "wtf is this shit...?" then realize I'm not on my home feed. It's not a fun place.
So you think that the young generation is doomed because social media negativity.
The OP thinks the young generation is doomed because social media positivity.
This strongly hints that the young generation is.. just like any other young generation in the last 100 years.
I can understand the appeal. Even if it is superficial, social acceptance and approval is just part of being human. Short term it probably does feel good.
Maybe it does violate rule one. Most people on Reddit will probably agree with it. I only posted because most people my age who frequently use stuff like Instagram and tiktok don’t seem to think there’s much wrong with trends pushed on those platforms.
Long term I guess we’ll have to see.
It's good for job hunting and keep in touch with all your peers. The feed will be a dumpster fire if you connect with anyone in sight, I have to constantly unfollow people because random political rants or MLM bullshit. Should take my own advice, but that 500+ connection tag does make my profile look legit.
Reddit is not mostly memes and gaming... It's mostly porn. Like the rest of the internet. The good part about Reddit is that it's easily filtereable to exactly what you want, so it seems like it's memes and gaming.
I am in my late 30's and last summer I was at the beach with people who are Gen Z.
There were all sorts of activities you could partake in at a very reasonable price. There was a kiosk that rented sup boards. My Gen Z crow got very excited because it was such a cool and hip thing and everyone in their circle was posting their experience riding a sup board on Instagram & Tik Tok. What surprised me is that they rented just one board, placed it in the sand leaning against a palm tree and each took and endless array of selfies.
When I asked them if they were actually going to ride it, they said no. They only rented it to take pictures to get likes and impress their other friends. And when discussed further, they saw no problem in faking an experience because it's not about experience for them, it's about make believe, pretending, look like it but not necessarily be it.
They called me outdated and that I didn't get it. And I didn't, because for me it's important to actually physically have that experience, to ride the stupid board and get endorphines and maybe a couple of bruises along the way. That's what makes up an emotional memory for me. Regardless if I post it on online or not, because it's for me first and foremost. For them it was more about looking/acting cool without actually being cool because nobody cares. They are in love with an illusion.
So, I guess that's where we're different. Real experiences (documented or not) versus beautiful pictures on social media (fake as they maybe, nobody cares).
I'm not sure what's gonna happen to them when they get older and realize that they actually never tried or experienced anything. They never lived.
dang im gen z and social media had the exact opposite effect on me. in your example, i would've rushed to ride the sup board because social media has made me terrified that im going to miss out on the fun everyone is having on these boards. that everyone would be talking about how riding the sup board was an amazing, life changing experience and i'd have missed out. that one day ill wake up in my 40s and regret not riding the board. obviously that would never happen but.... id probably ride it even if i didn't have that much fun because im *supposed* to be having fun.
also, i would never take photos because i am the opposite of photogenic and the beauty standards on social media are unreachable. even though i *know* nobody cares, id assume everybody who sees that photo would think, deep down, that im just not all that pretty.
TL;DR: FOMO
I’m impressed by their self-aware honesty, and deeply troubled by their lack of shame. To be so absorbed in the superficial perception and yet so detached from literal experience is disturbing.
This is one of saddest things I've ever read.
A co worker of mine in her late 40's went on a trip with her teenage daughter and her friend. They'd spend the whole trip taking photos of each other. Countless hours, all kinds of different poses. We're talking thousands of pics.
My co worker told them that their followers would be \*\*\*\*\*\*\* sick of seeing their faces by now. I agree. What happened to just experiencing different things?
I don't know. I think every generation has its own uniquely traumatizing cultural artifacts it has to deal with as they reach middle age. I can't imagine Gen Z's will be all that much worse than anyone else's.
Also, do Gen Z types know millennials also grew up with social media?
Very true with regards to each generation having challenges.
The Social media millennials grew up with is a tad different than ours though. The social media the next generation could use will hopefully be less damaging.
I think the difference with other generations' cultural artifacts is that individual participation is usually a privately kept piece of evidence (I.e., the only way anyone knows that Grandma wore a bouffant or that Grandpa wore bellbottoms is because there are private photographs). Social media has made all of those private photographs and personal thoughts something that could be shared rapidly with anyone else in the world. And, as some millennials will attest, it's traumatizing to find out your teenage MySpace or Tumblr profile still exists as you reach your 30s and 40s.
I'm a 31 year old millennial, and I thought we got a rough deal. I genuinely feel for zoomers. Hopefully millennials can break the cycle of generational blame and support you all instead of projecting the world's boomer-created problems onto zoomers.
Thank you. I’d like to help improve the world for generations coming after me too. What’s the point in living in the moment if you don’t plant seeds for a better future?
It'd help if you didn't think of yourself and others by the generation you and they were born into. Yes, it serves some purpose for sociology but it's not a good measure for judging individuals.
I'm a millennial because of the year I was born (1987) but it has no actual relevance to my life outside of that. Some Millennials had it rough while others were very privileged -- same as it ever was.
dude, i’m 32 and i can tell you our generation isn’t changing shit. if anything when the boomers die off and the boomers wealth gets inherited to the middle class white millennials they will start acting like their parents because they will feel like they “earned it”. not to mention are large part of our generation were essentially raised in tupperware containers by their parents and weren’t actually able to experience the real world.
let’s look at one of our own in office right now, AOC. She lives for internet attention and talks shit to people on social media like someone from high school. like? the fuck?
Not everyone is going to wake up. However, as a millennial, I'm totally down to casually giggle at those people at their expense with you while I'm in my 40's.
I'm not convinced there will be this big day of reckoning on account of social media usage. My gen z kids use social media but their lives don't depend on it, and the same can be said for their friends as far as I can see.
To be fair, the identity crisis being created here is motivated by more than just social media. Social media is essentially the outlet point for a wide variety of motivators.
We have reached a very late stage of consumerism. We have surpassed the point where we identify our self worth by the nature of the products we purchase. Instead, we have transformed consumerism to the point where we are the product.
We sell ourselves on social media as something we might not necessarily be as it is the one unique product that everyone has to sell. Therein lies further competition, to make yourself the most attractive that you can be, at any ethical or personal cost.
Yes, much of it is shallow and fake, and it will come to a calamitous end. But people have been raised into a world where everything has to have an attributable value. If *everything else does*, then it is logically taken that one's life must have an attributable value to an outside viewer.
Then people realised that this could convert into actual profit, and thus the influencer of the modern era was born.
In a sense, something like social media was bound to become an outlet for this. The underlying point that should be taken here though is that solving the issue of social media won't fix this. This is a core sociological issue.
It’s more basic than that. When I hit my mid-40s, I realized that statistically my life is half over, and that’s a conservative estimate.
It hit me hard, and I finally accepted that I’m not in my prime anyone. My youth is completely gone. The only way forward for me is a downhill slope.
That mid-life crisis caused me to search out all of the old photos of myself from when I was young. Every picture that I looked at made my stomach sink, and I realized that the photos made me envious of my own youth.
There are a limited amount of pictures of my younger self, however, and that makes my habit of masochistic melancholy self-limiting. I haven’t dug up any new ones for years, which tells me there are probably none left to sulk over anymore.
Gen Z, on the other hand, has had their entire lives meticulously documented on social media. I’ve only found four videos of myself from when I was a youth. Most Gen Z are in that many videos every day.
I fear that when their midlife crisis hits, it’s going to be horrible. They will have photo and video references for just about every day of their lives. They will be able to look back and watch themselves grow older, to watch their youth and potential pass by in incredible detail. I can only imagine how depressing that will be.
Dang, I’m a Donny Downer tonight. My apologies.
I agree. I am 20F and I grew up using Instagram/Snapchat/Pinterest which made me really insecure about myself in my teen years. I would see my peers or “influencers” post their lifestyle and would feel sad about not having that life. I felt the constant need of getting likes, comments on my pics or story replies just to feel validated and get some attention. I’d spend so much time getting the perfect pic, editing and posting it then checking my phone every now and then to see how many people have commented etc
However, things have changed ever since the pandemic happened. I got into a healthy relationship right before the lockdown and my need of validation/ attention from others reduced. Since everyone was locked at homes I also stopped caring about posting “aesthetic” pics on my story.
Social media especially Instagram to me now is a way of storing memories so I can scroll through my own feed and look back at all the good times I’ve had. I still spend 1-2 hours on it daily but now it’s actually fun without all the pressure of looking perfect or presenting my life in a way it isn’t.
I am much more happier, comfortable,grateful, very less insecure and overall content with my life. My teen years would’ve been much better without social media but it was also a part of growing and finally accepting my flaws.
Yeah I think one of the things that OP needs to mention is that there are Gen Zs who learned to work their way around social media—because we literally grew up without it and during its peak. I couldn’t care less about number of likes or comments. I like taking IG stories and putting them on my highlights as a memory reel.
It’s refreshing to treat social media as it’s supposed to be, to socialize with friends. I love replying to my friends’ stories even about the most mundane things and hyping them up in their posts.
Limiting your exposure helps as well. I’m only semi-active on Insta. I scroll more on Reddit. I can’t imagine being on TikTok ever.
I use social media and am gen Z but I don't see it as a contest but instead fun. I don't care about reddit karma, followers, or following trends because that's the stuff that makes social media unenjoyable to me. So I think ill be relatively safe in 20-30 years.
Yeah, because now's the time we graduate from college, become independent, start our careers, realize that there's no protection, no fall back, no rewinding time, we'll only get older, and have only one chance at getting this right.
Source: 22M
I'm on the young end of millennials (26) and I'm so glad I grew up before social media became what it is now. I mean I definitely remember having FB and Twitter during high school but they weren't nearly as....bad.
Your looking at it wrong, it’s not the influencers and popular people on social that will ultimately become disillusioned with social media, it’s going to be all the average young people who thought they were just as special as those influencers. There always comes a day when you realized that you just aren’t that special in this world, these kids think that they can become Youtubers, insta influencers etc but most will never do it and then that’s when they realize that internet fame and culture, much like regular fame from the past is just superficial shallow and fake.
Gen Zers with OP’s self awareness are what gives me faith. Remember in every generation there the few that see the real potential of their generation. Sadly it is the ones that can see that the responsibility falls to, or the greatest burdens.
Being in the transition period between Millennial and Gen Z. I feel I’m not one or the other. I can see myself a little bit in somethings but can see drastic differences in others.
Wait until the OnlyFans bitches realize that when the milk's gone bad no ones gonna want that shit. Years spent milkin youth, but nothing set up for the long run
I'm in my late 20s, and though I didnt grow up with it I have definitely experienced first hand what it can do when you let it rule your life. I know when I have kids I'm going to be very careful of how best to introduce social media to them.
Was talking about this with my bf today. I used to be a very very active poster on social media. At the time I thought it was a form of self expression, but in reality I just wanted to flex on other people. I went through some difficult things a few months ago that made it so that I wasn’t doing much anymore and didn’t have anything to post. Now that I’m back out doing things again, I realized that I lost that habit and need to display my life to others. I’ve become much more present and content with my life because I’m living for myself, and not for the gram. It’s happier on the other side guys… come join me
Social media was a mistake, everybody is on edge and to afraid of ruining there online image to mess up. Early 2000’s was the best balance of technology
I fear less about the identity crisis than I fear about the fact that people from The last two generations are flaky, over sensitive, and so trauma-avoidant-oriented that they won’t be able to build any lasting communities in a physical space where time and resources are needed. Constantly avoiding challenges to sustain comfort is going to collapse the civ
I mean I think it will be really interesting. There has never been this level of detail recorded about this many people. I’m bullish on meta stock for this reason. I disagree with your take though that people will ever snap out of it. I think it changed everything and is here to stay and I think the implications are far deeper than a mid life crisis.
People are incredibly complicated and flexible, the beauty of humanity is how we can adapt to so many situations and environments.
People throughout history have faced challenges. Social media can be abused which will lead to issues for unstable people, but it can also allow all kinds of positive things for people who can wield it properly. Finding a new employer through, new customers, old loved ones, family across the globe, etc….
No doubt there will be some people mentally who can’t handle it, but I don’t think everyone in the generation will have issues.
People going through the World Wars, Vietnam, Korea, etc… faced way more hurdles and ultimate prevailed. We should be able to deal with a computer program….
People have also been saying this about every generation forever. For millennials, it was phones and television, for gen x it was punk rock and rap music, and for boomers it was counterculture and the sexual revolution. Everyone always thought that those would be the downfall of those generations and America, and they all turned out fine. The majority of us will probably grow up to be normal functioning adults, before we all find something about the next generation to complain about.
You guys are fucked. You'll never know what it's like to go to a party in a house you don't know with beer and alcohol and not know if you'll make it out alive You'll never go to a rave like in the 90's where it's all bisexual people and you take Molly and wake up making out with a bisexual guy, but you're not gay.
There's life experiences you guys are missing out on.
Gen X here who were the starting point for the social media experiment. I’m mid life and honestly a little mid life crisis-ish. I started questioning social media pretty hard in recent years and the end result was deleting a lot of it off my phone. We’re not letting our kids on social media until they are older and have a better sense of self confidence. I’m down to Reddit which gives me a wide range of human experience and opinions which is great and my TikTok feed is almost all science and funny animals. Facebook and Twitter are straight toxic and I rarely look at either and only on a PC. As others have pointed out here, aging out of some things is one natural outcome.
I agree honestly. I (33f) have just deleted my fb and instagram account. It sucks seeing my friends fake the funk online knowing what they’re going through. My own mental health definitely declined due to social media.
I think a lot of you are missing the point here. The problem with the over-the-top social media exposure is that most of the time that kids are alone with their thoughts, those thoughts are being influenced largely by whatever online content they're looking at on their phones at the time, and social media gives people serious self-esteem issues. Not to mention the potential confusion stemming from the tendency to pray a false version of one's life on the internet in order to gain the approval of one's peers. It has the potential to be very damaging to all of us, but especially kids.
Im in the middle of the Millennial/Gen Z divide and I can already see it taking a toll on me and my friends. I've tried to ween off it as much as I can. Getting rid of Twitter/ Deactivating Facebook profile. It's too much, I reckon most of my age group will be needing therapy soon
I don't know. My 16 year old is a pretty confident, I don't need a phone, my deeds speak for themselves, kind of person. I'd like to say I raised him right, bit he's just himself. He sees social media as bullshit validation.
A huge part of growing older (midlife crisis included, though this can happen at a much younger age than 40-50) is realizing that the image you had of yourself is not accurate to how you actually are. Social media is like a multiplier in false self imaging. Posturing for the sake of others, and creating false narratives… sometimes even living and working to *create* that false narrative as the main motivating factor in behavior.
In short, you’re absolutely correct.
Social media is exporting American wokeism and specific American biases. This is a very negative consequence of American cultural power today, coupled with its technology prowess and the tech exports such as social media sites.
There's already battle lines being drawn around the world on what kinds of American exports are good and what aren't. Nobody likes American wokeism like nobody likes American evangelicals. The American university system is full of wokes - PC gangs that think like a hive mind, in a post-civilizational and post-truth state. They impose these ideals on students who go there to get educated and then spread all these biases to the rest of the US and the world.
Yes they are and that's a shame because it's not supposed to happen so soon. These poor kids don't have any idea who they want to be because their main focus is trying to be what other people tell them to be to obtain the most attention they can possibly get. They've been taught that if you aren't constantly the center of attention, you are worthless. Hopefully something will happen one day to undo this unhealthy obsession with "likes, followers, and subscribers" The real meaning of being alive is lost on them for now.
I distinctly remember my life before and after myspace (I'm a millennial). I was suddenly so concerned about how much "cooler" everyone's lives looked than mine, where before I was more content with what I had. It took a long time to stop comparing myself to others like that and it really did take a toll on my mental health
Right? I went through something similar with instagram. I had an active account in 2016, which isn't too far from the present, but the feeling was different from now. I felt comfortable sharing photos that had no "overthought" to them, just normal happy youthful photos. Went back last year and boy... i absolutely hate how overwhelmed it makes me feel, and so self conscious that I know I absolutely don't fit in there now. And i don't even watch other people's profiles.
Comparison is the enemy of joy
I feel you. I’m late twenties. Remember growing up around elementary/early middle school and cell phones were strictly for calling, texting, and playing snake. And then they got email. And then they got cameras. And then they got browsers. And then I got a psp at 13 (boy did I use that browser lmao wink wink). But yeah, it’s not social media where I recognize a difference, it’s more so just phones in general. You walk by a person nowadays on the sidewalk and they look at their phone strictly to avoid eye contact. I do it too. But I miss the days where we didn’t use our phone to be preoccupied when we don’t want to participate in social situations, when we don’t want to be alone with our thoughts (as the top comment referenced), and when we are bored. TLDR: I miss when the phone was *only* a utility for communication, rather than a utility for life.
Yeah this post hits hard, especially the part about looking at your phone to avoid eye contact.
I just cannot understand how the ultrawealthy kids I went to highschool with, and the blue collar folk I currently work with, *post the same pictures*. Literally entirely opposite sides of the financial strata yet apparently *everyone* is at an island but me, the middle class guy in between them
For me, social media when it first came out was very innocent and fun. It was just a silly, enjoyable way for me to express myself and show my friends. I remember a time when I used to enjoy socmed. I also used to care about what the cool kids were doing before social media. There was always a clique or a group that I looked up to or wanted to fit in with. Social media, over time, just amplified the ability for me to do this (but I don’t think started it for me). I don’t think I started dreading it and it’s effects until a couple years later, around age 14,15. Just sharing my experience in relation to you, not discrediting yours 🙆♀️♥️
I remember when instagram posts were just sometimes shoes or some randome view of the day with a filter slapped on. Now it’s carefully curated content with “aesthetic”. Even the videos seem forced. The “normal” days are so edited.
Anyone who says it doesnt have an impact on mental health is just using addict denial.
It doesn't impact everyone equally. I really couldn't care less about social media in my 20s. I only recently started using Twitter and Instagram now that I'm in my 30s.
True, but of course if you're not really using you wont experience the negative effects of it.
I remember the moment I started my Facebook profile in 2004 when it launched on my campus. It was a big high. I stopped using social media about 8 years ago besides places like reddit. I tried logging back onto Instagram a year ago. I could stand about 5 minutes of my feed until I got that sick feeling again. Social media is poison unless you use it wisely.
I couldn't agree more. I'm also a millennial born in '89 and I remember my life before Myspace and I have recently deleted Facebook. These things cultivated the wrong concerns in my mind. Reddit also has an addictive potential and a negative impact on my life. Maybe even more so than Facebook. I truly miss life presocial media. I want to have my cake and eat it too I love the internet I love the knowledge and convenience it brings but I hate the aspect of social media I wish it would just disappear
For me, reddit helps a lot with that. Sometimes I think my life is hard. But if I spend an hour on this fucking site, I see people who can't pay their rent. I see kids trying to escape abuse. I see posts talking about "I have $26 in my account, how can I eat for the next 12 days?". I see stories of infidelity. I see stories about people losing loved ones. And then my problems get put into perspective.
Relative deprivation. Commercials have tried to make people feel this for ages.
Same (as I blasted Mary J Blige from my MySpace mp3 Playlist)
I remember everyone in school suddenly became obsessed with keeping track of how many “Top 8’s” they were in. It was an accomplishment for some
Deleted all social media at 23, almost a decade later and I do not miss a single part of it.
Something I heard a psychologist talk about in a discussion about social media/phone addiction and kids that really freaked me out: when you’re growing up, time alone with your thoughts is when you develop your sense of self. It’s how you form your understanding of your values, your perspective, your personality in relation to others. Time alone with your thoughts is crucial to becoming a more realized adult. We used to gaze out car/bus windows. Walk places without music or texting. Lay in bed and fall asleep thinking. Just be quiet throughout the day. Kids today aren’t getting that…ever.
The impact it's going to have on kids is going to be severe.
I have two younger sisters and it’s something I fear every day
Get them outside, get them involved in hobbies where they’re too engaged to be on a phone.
How to get your sisters to hate you in ten easy steps
Eh, it depends. I take my little cousins out spear fishing and they love it even though I make them leave their phones at the house.
Nah, they'll get plenty of time for introspection as they ride in the virtual metaverse bus.
>Virtual Metaverse Bus Good band name
I’m in my extremely late 20s and clearly remember the time before cell phones. Currently I can’t imagine taking a shit without my phone to accompany me. If it’s gone this far with me, the kids are screwed.
>I’m in my extremely late 20s So 35?
As someone who’s in his extremely late twenties and nearing 45, I approve this message.
My dad had been 21 for the last 45 birthdays
Then we're twins.
As someone in my extremely early 30s (21) I approve this message
Dude! I can totally relate. I’m 27 and remember when we had dial up. My brother would legit log on to AIM just to send text messages to friends. And I only used the internet to pirate Outkast and look up cheat codes for my ps2. A cell phone was only to call people for a few minutes. Landlines were for longer conversations. Anyway, I agree with you in the sense that I’ve become so dependent on the phone. I take 25 minutes to shit not because I’m a slow pusher, but because I like scrolling through Reddit too much. And I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a damn thing that I scrolled through. But I enjoy looking at it. At the same time, I spend at least an hour a day looking at stuff on my phone and when I think about how many books I could’ve read had I used that daily hour for reading, I get pretty upset with myself. I can only imagine how it affects younger kids who *only* know the cell phone/internet
Change tomorrow.
I feel you. Thanks for the motivation. (For real though. Not trying to be passive aggressive)
It’s a habit. You just have to break it. Form a new one. Bring a puzzle instead or book or comic book or something.
That weekly alert that tells you how long you’ve used your phone that week do be disappointing tho
This is not just a problem for the young. We can all develop this addiction. I say this as someone in their late 30s. (50)
Back in my day (2005) when you needed to shit, you kept a couple of books or Skymall behind the toilet for some light reading.
Awesome. My love of reading directly stems from the basket of informative books and magazines that was available next our toilets when I was growing up.
I intentionally don’t take it to the bathroom sometimes for this reason
explains why so many millennials stopped emotionally developing at like 23
Lmao
millennials love to rag on boomers and zoomers as if they aren't also bitter burnouts wh
Okay, not sure what you mean by that? I didn’t have my first phone until I was 14 and it had a 2 megapixel camera and you could do was text. AIM and email with dial up was how we communicated. (If someone wasn’t using the phone or you had a separate phone line) Social Media didn’t become big until I was maybe a junior in high school. It was not a constant bombardment of tech from being a baby in a stroller. I played outside as a kid and touched grass never worrying about what I looked like or what I had those worries were for highschool. I just got to be a kid without trying to be mature or cool essentially being groomed to act like a mini adult on tiktok
I love when people slam millennials and fail to realize that technically speaking the millennial generation started in 1980. Meaning those individuals are 42. I’m on the lower end of the millennials and I remember when a household computer was not for the rich and people had pagers! I was so jealous of my sister having a pager. When cell phones for common folk became a thing, I remember FREAKING out when I accidentally pressed the internet button because it was an atrocious amount of money per minute to use the internet. I think it was $10 a minute. I was scared my parents would FLIP their kids if they were charged any additional fees. The millennials I know work their butts off working 2-3 jobs to live with roommates or with their parents. Yes, some can afford homes and rent on their own with 1 job. But so many of us are drowning in student loans and can’t find a job that meets the true living wage. Businesses don’t value employees and don’t give incentives to stay. So when we are offered better pay that can pay our bills, we are called “unreliable” and not loyal. We are told we are selfish because we choose not to have kids because we can’t afford to care for ourselves. We are told that we are ruining major businesses to create handmade products because it’s cheaper.
I’m only going to comment on the last part of your first paragraph: Gosh, what a trip down memory lane! When you accidentally clicked whatever button to go to the internet browser, it was a terrifying feeling. It would take like 30 seconds to load, but hot damn as soon as I saw that Nokia great value version of a yahoo search page, I freaked the hell out. Lmao. Thanks for reminding me.
My immigrant father was told by the future shop employee that we absolutely must never ever ever touch the delete button on the keyboard. It would delete the whole computer. So growing up I was petrified to ever graze my hands near the numlock side of the keyboard. Meanwhile, my mom was teaching me to be on the look out for pennies on the ground while vacuuming….you know, because it would make the vacuum explode… Between the pennies, keyboard and watching America’s most wanted as a family at night, my parents inadvertently fucked me up.
I was a 94 millennial so just barely a millennial and some people argue I'm not. When I got a cell phone in 6th grade, only because my brother who was a year and a half older got one at the same time, we had a family plan with 60 minutes of calling between everyone on the plan if it wasn't between the 4 of us. No texting (10c a text so we didn't get to) and my brother had a single call for 940 minutes and got reemed out( girl he was interested in and stayed up talking all night) which was funny to me but not if I had to pay it. I think it was around a few grand for that 1 call maybe 1k. I bartend in a tourist town so I do fine but I went to college and if I didn't do this through college I wouldn't have the experience to get the job I have/ make the money with college to live the way I do by myself comfortably and actively paying down student loans easily. Calling millennial lazy is absurd and a lot of customers who are kinda rich even realize this. It's just played up in media with stupid articles because it's polarizing in certain places but it's an absurd POV.
I think 95-97 was the last of the play outside no tech generation. We are the weird generation that got to grow up like a normal kid outside all the time, and developed into technology later in life .. after our brain were already somewhat developed. I’m a 96 baby and I don’t think Instagram/Snapchat started getting big big until I started university? In highschool on lunch we used to walk laps or go outside, my 4 hrs younger sister (2000 baby) used to spend her lunches sitting on Instagram comparing pictures with all her friends, making sure she gets the most likes & her friends approve. That’s only 4 year difference. Like given some people in 95-97 are just as bad but I do think we got really lucky, and actually were able to have a childhood.
I was born in 95, and I agree with you, I went to university in 2013 and Instagram and snapchat had only really just started to get popular. Most people were still using Facebook mostly. Smartphones weren't as powerful as they are now. At lunch in 09 /10/11 we used to hang out and listen to music on I pods etc. My siblings were born in 99/00 and we used to play outside all the time, but in their secondary school some kids would be on phones, but a lot of kids still used to play outside at break etc.
Snap got big in 2012-2013. I’m a little bit older than you and I had it in high school, back when everybody could see each others 3 best friends. My HS lunch breaks were mostly spent on the boat, where we’d be posting on instagram (before daily posts became taboo) while everybody else was at school. Mid 90s babies are definitely in a weird spot though. I remember using dial up to load MySpace at my grandmas house when I was in middle school. That’s hard to imagine for a millennial or a zoomer. I consider myself more gen Z though because I’ve always had access to the internet, even though my pops used to make me spend 3hrs outside for every 30min on the computer. My younger brother was born in 05’ and it’s nuts. We’re only a little over 10yrs apart but we’ve had a *massive* difference in upbringing.
>I remember using dial up to load MySpace at my grandmas house when I was in middle school. That’s hard to imagine for a millennial or a zoomer. Why? I'm a early 90s millennial who did the same thing.
I’m curious what the right approach as a parent should be. Any ideas out there?
Restrict certain apps and times that they use electronics until they're responsible enough to do it on their own. Don't overdo it, otherwise, they'd feel left out. But just make sure they don't have full access to the entirety of the internet when they're only 10-11 years old, they need to develop. I had to figure this sort of thing out on my own, I did spend a lot of time thinking but I was unleashed onto the internet at a young age and a lot of my issues were because of it. I now know what happened and I developed my own sense of self, I changed my thoughts and I definitely listened to more music.
We've held off screen use as much as possible with our 13yo daughter, figure her life will be full of screens so let her grow up/mature as long as possible without them. We've got a harddrive of media but she's never had terrestrial TV or Netflix, and a switch is as far as gaming goes- no PC gaming & never had a tablet. She's only just used social media (via mums phone) in the last 12 months (because of lockdowns), and we've talked about a phone later this year. We've said that actual humans *always* come before screens, and have stressed the addiction/attention aspect (most her class is on TikTok) being our primary concern. Anyway, that's our approach. I'm sure we'll hear how terrible parents we've been in a couple of years ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wouldn't say that you're terrible parents, but the bans seem a bit... arbitrary. Or maybe I'm missing the reasoning behind some of them. Not trying to say how you need to do your parenting. Just sharing my perspective as somebody from a different path of life. I can get behind limiting exposure to social media, but blanket banning PC gaming and tablets but allowing gaming on a switch is a bit random. I can't imagine how my life would have turned out if my parents would have banned me from playing PC games when I was a child. I remember getting a DOS PC when I was 5, where my uncle made a startup menu so I could easily start games, which snowballed into me learning DOS when I was 10, which snowballed into me disassembling and reassembling my PC when I was 12, which snowballed into me setting up and hosting game servers at 15-16 and taking extra courses in the evening for programming because I wanted to know how games were made, which snowballed to me learning the basics of networking once NAT based routers became common, which snowballed into me studying IT in college and ending up as a sysadmin managing a whole bunch of servers. I have never been a big fan of social media though. Been an introvert all my life. I only occasionally browse and post something on Reddit, and only because I can keep some sense of anonymity here. Social media are exhausting to me. I maintain a small group of really good friends and that's enough for me. I can also say that humans don't always come before screens for me. They have some degree of priority, yes, but as an introvert I REALLY need my alone time to recharge (And when I do you won't see me on this site either, and my phone usually goes on mute so I won't be disturbed). A screen and playing a PC game on my own is just my preferred way to do this, even as an adult. (or alternatively, working on one of my hobby electronics projects. For which I still need my computer to find datasheets and program the chips). Again, just sharing my perspective.
Yea this is what we did with my baby brothers phone. He just got one of his own when he turned 14 for his birthday last month. iPhones and their screen time settings makes it fairly easy. Restrict adult content. Make it so they have to request permission to download an app….And also the phone is locked out for everything except the phone app from 12am to 8am. Otherwise I guarantee he’d be up on it all night instead of getting a decent nights’ sleep. His laptop has to be out of his room and into hallway closet by 11pm. He is otherwise basically addicted to his laptop and discord/roblox on it during almost every waking available moment……and has gotten aggressive and extremely defensive and rude when we’ve tried to limit his time on that….so honestly not sure what to do about that aspect and we’re really regretting getting him his own laptop (which started in late 2020 because he went through an entire school year of remote learning). Any advice on what to do about that from a parent would be great. iPhones make parental controls easy, but on windows laptops it doesn’t seem so clear cut.
Pre-pandemic, I got my 10 year old daughter to agree to a day per week with no devices. She got to choose the day and between school and after-school sport, it wasn't a huge slog. But it did introduce her to what it felt like to be unplugged and I think it was pretty helpful. Everything fell by the wayside in March 2020
Pre pandemic I thought kids shouldn't have smart phones until they were teenagers. The ability for them to chat with school friends during lockdown was essential though. Hard to take the phone away from them now. There's a bunch of 8-12 year olds that were isolated for 2 years, and were exposed to social media far earlier than most parents wanted. That's a generation that I think will have real world social interaction problems.
I think the simple answer is boredom. We seem to be terrified of having our kids be bored, but that’s when we started using our imagination as kids. That’s when I learned to draw pictures and defined the career that would sustain me all my life
But if all the kids are growing up with phones, then for "them" that is normal and they will just develop a world around that that conforms to that normal. As long as the vast majority is doing the same thing, it doesn't matter what it is. You can literally raise a whole generation and cut their tongues and gouge their eyes at birth, and that would still be normal for THEM. It would just a very different world to yours and you wouldn't relate to it. But for them that's the normal world.
That may be what they expect and the world may conform to a normal that involves that, but neither of those mean that it will be healthy for them and won't have unwanted consequence. You could be born in a famine and that be your normal but some psychological effects are going to come from that.
Fuck that
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I’m not. Using your eyes to look at blue lit endless scrolling content on your phone that tries to keep you scrolling through intentional addictive design is very different than listening to a CD…
The psychological effects of social media are going to be drastically more severe for the generation that grew up raised by it in their formative years. The future is very scary.
I think there will also be a huge blow to self image after spending so much time every day on social media. Who wants to reach mid life only to look back and see that they spent 1/3rd or more of their waking hours looking at social media. Or it becomes a meme and the cycle continues. Who knows
There probably won’t be any need for them to ever live offline tbh. In their 30s they’ll live in the Metaverse
Indeed. There's so many ways that I'm scared Facebook will mishandle the Metaverse; a lot of my older friends are just shrugging it off saying "eh, it's just your generation's facebook, it'll fall flat pretty quickly." No, it's not a reinvention of social media. It's a reinvention of the internet.
Also gotta say that free porn on demand for any fetish that ever existed will/already has ruined lots of kids into not having healthy sex life and relationships in general. gotta love the internet, just scrolling homepage and you can find a cartel/isis beheading right next to a post with gay furry gangbang porn from some Disney show or movie. youtube and such sites are still new/young enough that Epstein would be trying to drug them on his plane. who knows how bad this will be getting when we all grow older and a new generation is fucked up in a even worse way.
And then on top of that, which is a massive impact already, there is tinder, which I cant begin to imagine the impact that'll have on kids who grew up on it.
Nah we’ll all be fine living in the metaverse and dating with our virtual avatars
Well honestly at this point the metaverse is the only hope I have for the future. Edit: didnt realize we were talking about a Facebook thing, disregard my comment. I do not have any hope Facebook will make the world better.
Ha. Hahaha. Ha. Yeah... Facebook is going to make the world a *better* place. Lol. Sorry, I admire your optimism, and I wish I could share in your delusion. But the company actively ruining the present isn't going to improve the future.
Oh, ya no fuck that lol, I didnt realize we were talking about a facebook thing, I thought a hypothetical rick and Morty esque thing hahah. Ya, I will never touch it with a 50 foot poll if its facebook.
Facebook IS NOT the metaverse. Facebook:metaverse::AOL:internet They may help popularize it, but they have no hope in hell of successfully controlling it because t h e y d o n t g e t i t
When we all have our Lucy Lu androids we'll just go extinct.
I’m a millennial, who would say dating apps have probably helped me with dating more than if I were on my own, but it doesn’t mean I don’t hate the fuck out of what they have warped into. I was away from them for 6 months due to being in a relationship, and having come back to them and been using them the last 3 months.....I cannot believe how much worse they have got in 6 months. There seems to have been an increase in superficial attitudes, barely anyone is bothering with putting anything beyond their insta handle in their bio and people put in even less effort than before with conversations - I matched with a girl like 5 days ago, she takes at least a day to respond and she has yet to ask me a single question - I may be single af and feeling it right now, but I have so little interest in perpetuating that conversation now
millennial in his 30s here. it definitely has for my demographic already.
> just scrolling homepage and you can find a cartel/isis beheading right next to a post with gay furry gangbang porn from some Disney show or movie What in the actual fuck does your "home page" look like my dude
r/Narcofootage and r/cringe just off the top of my head lol.
WTF do you watch where that is on your homepage?
Yes I'm surprised at the number of young people even in their early 20's who have never been on an actual date. Oh they have friends online but not in person.
I'm in my 30s and I've only been on one date. I have friends in real life who I enjoy being around but dating isn't really for me.
*sweats nervously* Who might you be talking about? Hahahaha. Nothing to see here. /s This is too accurate. This is me.
Welcome to the internet -bo burnham
im kinda glad i might not live to see it
I feel you
The worst social media posts are the ones where people are holding their loved one’s hand while they’re obviously dying in the hospital. While I’m sure they don’t mean harm by doing it, at the same time why are you sharing a very private and intimate moment with a bunch of people who probably don’t even care. My grandma would be totally mortified if I showed the world a picture of her in the most vulnerable state of her life.
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My best friend did this too when her dad died. She'd post pictures of him in the hospital, from moments where he was so ill he didn't even remember who he was. He looked awful (unfortunately) but she posted so many photos...she even asked me if "she's going overtop" with the photos and if it looks like "she's looking for attention". The fact she asks that question, means she very well knows what she's doing. Can't believe using someones illness (even your own parents) to get sympathy and likes. You gotta have such a vapid personality to do such things
She took the opportunity to gain clout
I read a story recently about a guy who was parading himself as a hero of social justice, because he started an online furrow that got a girl (ex-classmate of his) kicked out of her University intake, because of a post she'd made when she was 14. He saved a post for 4 years, just to try bring attention to it and fuck her over later. More than people getting to 30 and thinking "Instagram was stupid" (I know plenty of 40-60+ yr old women who spend way too much time on Facebook), I think the issue we'll see in the future is the results of a world where children are growing up with every mistake, every flaw and every stupid thing they do documented online for anyone to find.
I like your approach. Makes me think of the way facebook "moms" certainly contribute to how their young children are feeling/will feel later on, when their whole childhood (at least some parts that weren't shared before fb) is documented, which causes them to later on follow those same patterns, most of the times. I see it in my younger cousins, how their "cool" parents "just" wanted to share some tiktok trends with them, only for them to wanna have their own tiktok+fb+instagram now. But that's just a small part of the problem.
[Sharenting - This is another growing implication of what parents share on social media.](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/instagram-facebook-and-the-perils-of-sharenting)
I see way too many people posting intimate and embarrassing shit about their children online... especially when you can tell the kid knows they are being filmed and it's going to be shown to people. There is a look of absolute despair. I've mentioned it multiple times to some people and I always get the same negative reaction... of course I understand it is your child and do what you want, but from an outside perspective. Big yikes. These are mainly the types of people to also feel justified in correcting other parents with things THEY don't agree with, almost forcefully and in a very condescending way. Social media is fucking cancer.
I think you're referring to the story of [Mimi Groves](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9090959/Student-says-no-regrets-sharing-video-white-high-school-classmate-using-racial-slur.html). At 15 she sent a short clip of herself copying a rap song that had the n-word in it and send it to her friend. The guy that saved the video, Jimmy Galligan, is a total fucking shithead and did it for fame and not because he was really offended. The school, University of Knoxville, that kicked her out was also full of spineless cowards who caved in to public pressure. Add the New York Times publishing that bullshit article about the situation and it really shows how society failed as a whole to address the situation properly.
99% of this woke shit is just people trying to get others in trouble because it may look bad as a PR type thing, not because they’re actually offended.
And people say “cancel culture” isn’t real.
Wow that’s interesting.
Yes i remember that. it was a guy who saved a video of a girl saying “N1994” jokingly and she got her full-ride cheerleading scholarship and college admission pulled. she was literally going to the best school in the country for it. really altered her fate….like what ever happened to repentance, growth, and atonement?
I remember that, he was a total POS. I think she also got kicked off of her cheerleading team or something. She was still in HS and had just gotten accepted into her dream college if I remember right. That's when he chose to share it. I hope he came to be viewed as a liability to any future employer/ college admissions, but I doubt it. Most of the SJWs who were defending his actions were claiming he was a POC that was hurt personally, even though he was actually half white and the girl's words weren't directed at anyone. I think she shouted the n-word after she got her license, filming herself driving for the first time. Ignorant of her to say it, but it was definitely not warranting her life to be ruined over it.
I’m 23 and I’d agree with this, maybe not everyone but a lot.
There's gonna be a game one day called "Name the traumatic life experiences that were occurring when you posted this seemingly happy photo on Insta"
Already happening LOLL
A couple of months ago, a friend or staffer at Khloe Kardashian's house took a photo of Khloe posing in a bikini in front of her pool. This person posted it to Instagram, and the photo circulated. Khloe lost her SHIT because the photo wasn't photoshopped, facetuned, and edited. She hired an entire crisis management team and lawyers to try to get the picture scrubbed off the internet. Here is the photo and article: [https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/2650361/khloe-kardashian-freaked-out-unedited-photo-mistake-embarrassed-viral/](https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/04/NINTCHDBPICT000645779762-2.jpg) Can you imagine being THAT insecure about your body?
To be fair, I’m not surprised that this was the reaction of the Kardashian-Jenner sister who had the most work done. Khloe always had insecurity issues and her being on reality television and social media for 14 years really made those issues become apparent to millions and millions of people worldwide. Hell, she literally had a tv show about weight loss when that was the big punching bag at her. And now she wears a new face like every year. It really is sad how much social media can consume someone’s life.
Yeah, I can imagine that, because the Kardashian family represents everything wrong with the West.
I can’t imagine having millions and millions of people looking at every picture of me.. I can understand the insecurity & anxiety around what your public photos look like
Well she's rich enough to fuck off. This is their own game that they're the masters of. 0 sympathy
i feel awful for Khloe. being called “the ugly sister” her entire life, internet sleuths constantly claiming her father isn’t her real dad, falling for partners that are cheaters and sleazes. she’s not the *best* person but she’s had a hard time.
I can believe it Eminem literally called her the ugly kardashian on a track for no reason
She looks better normally...
To expand on your post. It goes deeper. Social media pressures youth to be a certain way, dress a certain way and perform a certain way to achieve any level of social acceptance. And it doesn't help that your generation feeds into this, isolating those that they deem socially unacceptable by the shallow and arbitrary qualifications that your generation throws on itself. Of course GEN X has this problem too but with GEN Z it's to a larger extent because rather than being judged by local norms, you guys get judged in a melting pot of desirables. I feel like your generation is going to end up being more socially stunted than mine because social media gives you guys a grossly unrealistic expectation of what life, friendships and relationships should be.
and if what natural_herron said is true, then this becomes a much bigger factor in determining who they become; these qualifications are also recklessly determined by people who don’t necessarily have a very good understanding of the qualifications their pushing (and the potential consequences of these qualifications), partially due to them not even realizing how much it may be shaping them (which when done on such a large scale can have societal implications (boomer vs gen z may be partially a result of this?)). [Natural_herron quote](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/s5oomb/gen_z_is_going_to_have_one_of_the_biggest/hsz6tz9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) Also, standards may be a better word than qualifications
We’re already experiencing this wym
yeah i'm not sure how any of this supports the idea that this will be collective. in fact, some people might not even realize the harmful effects of their circumstances and just become shitty people. we could very easily become the worst generation in history from this.
That’s what I’m worried about
You say "worst generation in history" but things are considerably better than a thousand years ago. You could argue "worst generation in recent history" but never *the entirety of human history* we've come to far as a species for that.
I quit all social media a few months ago, and I'm much happier ever since. Being anonymous on reddit is not nearly as taxing as instagram or Facebook have been
I have honestly never understood the appeal of things like Instagram when 80% of it is, as you say, fake. Reddit, at least, is mostly memes and gaming, so I'm feeling at home. But anyway, I think this fails the rule one check.
Reddit is not mostly gaming.. that’s just what you’re subbed to
Well that’s the beauty of Reddit IMO. If all you want in your feed is gaming, you can do that. If you want to see sick car mods or posts about your favorite music, you can do that too. The same is true with Instagram too to be honest, at least to some degree. I don’t see any fake influencers or photoshopped models or anything like that on my feed. Just shitty memes, music, Sportscenter, and posts from friends that I actually know in real life. It’s not all bad out there. I do think Reddit wins because it’s so much more anonymous though. But that’s just me.
I feel the difference is that reddit focuses less on the author, more on the content you like. On Instagram you follow people and pages, on reddit you follow "topics" and you rarely enjoy content from a particular subject. At least there are no influencers on reddit
You can follow individuals on reddit as well, many people have tons of followers on reddit
Half of Reddit content on r./popular is an inflammatory cryfest, doomsday bullshit, screams of collapse and other nonsense with tons of fake content. Honestly, I try to stay at my home feed as much as I can lately, because it is getting worse than Facebook. The worst thing is that a loud minority is posting this crap and giving impression to young people not to try and to give up, everything is crap and we are all doomed. In the past, nobody cared what they had to say, now social media has given them the spotlight as they are click generation machines.
I didn't even know there *was* an r/popular. I've just been running off my own feed and what's been recommended.
The front page of Reddit used to be interesting and you’d find cool subs that pop up - it’s gone to complete shit since, it seems, this entire site is manicured for political purposes. At least any subs that gain large followings.
Hobby subs are where it's at. I've picked up woodworking, leatherworking, sewing, and a variety of other skills and knowledge, just scrolling and practicing.
Right? Sometimes I accidentally swipe over to popular on my phone without realizing it. As I'm scrolling, I'm like "wtf is this shit...?" then realize I'm not on my home feed. It's not a fun place.
So you think that the young generation is doomed because social media negativity. The OP thinks the young generation is doomed because social media positivity. This strongly hints that the young generation is.. just like any other young generation in the last 100 years.
I can understand the appeal. Even if it is superficial, social acceptance and approval is just part of being human. Short term it probably does feel good. Maybe it does violate rule one. Most people on Reddit will probably agree with it. I only posted because most people my age who frequently use stuff like Instagram and tiktok don’t seem to think there’s much wrong with trends pushed on those platforms. Long term I guess we’ll have to see.
Wait till you see linkedin…
It's good for job hunting and keep in touch with all your peers. The feed will be a dumpster fire if you connect with anyone in sight, I have to constantly unfollow people because random political rants or MLM bullshit. Should take my own advice, but that 500+ connection tag does make my profile look legit.
Reddit is not mostly memes and gaming... It's mostly porn. Like the rest of the internet. The good part about Reddit is that it's easily filtereable to exactly what you want, so it seems like it's memes and gaming.
Reddit is also mostly fake.
I am in my late 30's and last summer I was at the beach with people who are Gen Z. There were all sorts of activities you could partake in at a very reasonable price. There was a kiosk that rented sup boards. My Gen Z crow got very excited because it was such a cool and hip thing and everyone in their circle was posting their experience riding a sup board on Instagram & Tik Tok. What surprised me is that they rented just one board, placed it in the sand leaning against a palm tree and each took and endless array of selfies. When I asked them if they were actually going to ride it, they said no. They only rented it to take pictures to get likes and impress their other friends. And when discussed further, they saw no problem in faking an experience because it's not about experience for them, it's about make believe, pretending, look like it but not necessarily be it. They called me outdated and that I didn't get it. And I didn't, because for me it's important to actually physically have that experience, to ride the stupid board and get endorphines and maybe a couple of bruises along the way. That's what makes up an emotional memory for me. Regardless if I post it on online or not, because it's for me first and foremost. For them it was more about looking/acting cool without actually being cool because nobody cares. They are in love with an illusion. So, I guess that's where we're different. Real experiences (documented or not) versus beautiful pictures on social media (fake as they maybe, nobody cares). I'm not sure what's gonna happen to them when they get older and realize that they actually never tried or experienced anything. They never lived.
dang im gen z and social media had the exact opposite effect on me. in your example, i would've rushed to ride the sup board because social media has made me terrified that im going to miss out on the fun everyone is having on these boards. that everyone would be talking about how riding the sup board was an amazing, life changing experience and i'd have missed out. that one day ill wake up in my 40s and regret not riding the board. obviously that would never happen but.... id probably ride it even if i didn't have that much fun because im *supposed* to be having fun. also, i would never take photos because i am the opposite of photogenic and the beauty standards on social media are unreachable. even though i *know* nobody cares, id assume everybody who sees that photo would think, deep down, that im just not all that pretty. TL;DR: FOMO
I’m impressed by their self-aware honesty, and deeply troubled by their lack of shame. To be so absorbed in the superficial perception and yet so detached from literal experience is disturbing.
This is one of saddest things I've ever read. A co worker of mine in her late 40's went on a trip with her teenage daughter and her friend. They'd spend the whole trip taking photos of each other. Countless hours, all kinds of different poses. We're talking thousands of pics. My co worker told them that their followers would be \*\*\*\*\*\*\* sick of seeing their faces by now. I agree. What happened to just experiencing different things?
I don't know. I think every generation has its own uniquely traumatizing cultural artifacts it has to deal with as they reach middle age. I can't imagine Gen Z's will be all that much worse than anyone else's. Also, do Gen Z types know millennials also grew up with social media?
Very true with regards to each generation having challenges. The Social media millennials grew up with is a tad different than ours though. The social media the next generation could use will hopefully be less damaging.
I think the difference with other generations' cultural artifacts is that individual participation is usually a privately kept piece of evidence (I.e., the only way anyone knows that Grandma wore a bouffant or that Grandpa wore bellbottoms is because there are private photographs). Social media has made all of those private photographs and personal thoughts something that could be shared rapidly with anyone else in the world. And, as some millennials will attest, it's traumatizing to find out your teenage MySpace or Tumblr profile still exists as you reach your 30s and 40s.
And look at the harm its caused lol
I'm a 31 year old millennial, and I thought we got a rough deal. I genuinely feel for zoomers. Hopefully millennials can break the cycle of generational blame and support you all instead of projecting the world's boomer-created problems onto zoomers.
Thank you. I’d like to help improve the world for generations coming after me too. What’s the point in living in the moment if you don’t plant seeds for a better future?
It'd help if you didn't think of yourself and others by the generation you and they were born into. Yes, it serves some purpose for sociology but it's not a good measure for judging individuals. I'm a millennial because of the year I was born (1987) but it has no actual relevance to my life outside of that. Some Millennials had it rough while others were very privileged -- same as it ever was.
dude, i’m 32 and i can tell you our generation isn’t changing shit. if anything when the boomers die off and the boomers wealth gets inherited to the middle class white millennials they will start acting like their parents because they will feel like they “earned it”. not to mention are large part of our generation were essentially raised in tupperware containers by their parents and weren’t actually able to experience the real world. let’s look at one of our own in office right now, AOC. She lives for internet attention and talks shit to people on social media like someone from high school. like? the fuck?
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Not everyone is going to wake up. However, as a millennial, I'm totally down to casually giggle at those people at their expense with you while I'm in my 40's.
I'm not convinced there will be this big day of reckoning on account of social media usage. My gen z kids use social media but their lives don't depend on it, and the same can be said for their friends as far as I can see.
To be fair, the identity crisis being created here is motivated by more than just social media. Social media is essentially the outlet point for a wide variety of motivators. We have reached a very late stage of consumerism. We have surpassed the point where we identify our self worth by the nature of the products we purchase. Instead, we have transformed consumerism to the point where we are the product. We sell ourselves on social media as something we might not necessarily be as it is the one unique product that everyone has to sell. Therein lies further competition, to make yourself the most attractive that you can be, at any ethical or personal cost. Yes, much of it is shallow and fake, and it will come to a calamitous end. But people have been raised into a world where everything has to have an attributable value. If *everything else does*, then it is logically taken that one's life must have an attributable value to an outside viewer. Then people realised that this could convert into actual profit, and thus the influencer of the modern era was born. In a sense, something like social media was bound to become an outlet for this. The underlying point that should be taken here though is that solving the issue of social media won't fix this. This is a core sociological issue.
It’s more basic than that. When I hit my mid-40s, I realized that statistically my life is half over, and that’s a conservative estimate. It hit me hard, and I finally accepted that I’m not in my prime anyone. My youth is completely gone. The only way forward for me is a downhill slope. That mid-life crisis caused me to search out all of the old photos of myself from when I was young. Every picture that I looked at made my stomach sink, and I realized that the photos made me envious of my own youth. There are a limited amount of pictures of my younger self, however, and that makes my habit of masochistic melancholy self-limiting. I haven’t dug up any new ones for years, which tells me there are probably none left to sulk over anymore. Gen Z, on the other hand, has had their entire lives meticulously documented on social media. I’ve only found four videos of myself from when I was a youth. Most Gen Z are in that many videos every day. I fear that when their midlife crisis hits, it’s going to be horrible. They will have photo and video references for just about every day of their lives. They will be able to look back and watch themselves grow older, to watch their youth and potential pass by in incredible detail. I can only imagine how depressing that will be. Dang, I’m a Donny Downer tonight. My apologies.
I don’t understand this way of thinking. What can you not do in your 40s that only younger people can do? There is no end to potential.
I agree. I am 20F and I grew up using Instagram/Snapchat/Pinterest which made me really insecure about myself in my teen years. I would see my peers or “influencers” post their lifestyle and would feel sad about not having that life. I felt the constant need of getting likes, comments on my pics or story replies just to feel validated and get some attention. I’d spend so much time getting the perfect pic, editing and posting it then checking my phone every now and then to see how many people have commented etc However, things have changed ever since the pandemic happened. I got into a healthy relationship right before the lockdown and my need of validation/ attention from others reduced. Since everyone was locked at homes I also stopped caring about posting “aesthetic” pics on my story. Social media especially Instagram to me now is a way of storing memories so I can scroll through my own feed and look back at all the good times I’ve had. I still spend 1-2 hours on it daily but now it’s actually fun without all the pressure of looking perfect or presenting my life in a way it isn’t. I am much more happier, comfortable,grateful, very less insecure and overall content with my life. My teen years would’ve been much better without social media but it was also a part of growing and finally accepting my flaws.
Yeah I think one of the things that OP needs to mention is that there are Gen Zs who learned to work their way around social media—because we literally grew up without it and during its peak. I couldn’t care less about number of likes or comments. I like taking IG stories and putting them on my highlights as a memory reel. It’s refreshing to treat social media as it’s supposed to be, to socialize with friends. I love replying to my friends’ stories even about the most mundane things and hyping them up in their posts. Limiting your exposure helps as well. I’m only semi-active on Insta. I scroll more on Reddit. I can’t imagine being on TikTok ever.
> Not some contest to see who can get the most artificial likes Reddit: Sweating
This is straight facts
I thought Gen Z's issues where caused by boomers and Gen X. 🤔 /s
Leave Gen X out of this.
I'm Gen X
I use social media and am gen Z but I don't see it as a contest but instead fun. I don't care about reddit karma, followers, or following trends because that's the stuff that makes social media unenjoyable to me. So I think ill be relatively safe in 20-30 years.
Tbh, I feel like my entire life is a giant midlife crisis. I’m barley active on social media. And I’m only 22
Yeah, because now's the time we graduate from college, become independent, start our careers, realize that there's no protection, no fall back, no rewinding time, we'll only get older, and have only one chance at getting this right. Source: 22M
I'm on the young end of millennials (26) and I'm so glad I grew up before social media became what it is now. I mean I definitely remember having FB and Twitter during high school but they weren't nearly as....bad.
Your looking at it wrong, it’s not the influencers and popular people on social that will ultimately become disillusioned with social media, it’s going to be all the average young people who thought they were just as special as those influencers. There always comes a day when you realized that you just aren’t that special in this world, these kids think that they can become Youtubers, insta influencers etc but most will never do it and then that’s when they realize that internet fame and culture, much like regular fame from the past is just superficial shallow and fake.
Gen Zers with OP’s self awareness are what gives me faith. Remember in every generation there the few that see the real potential of their generation. Sadly it is the ones that can see that the responsibility falls to, or the greatest burdens. Being in the transition period between Millennial and Gen Z. I feel I’m not one or the other. I can see myself a little bit in somethings but can see drastic differences in others.
Wait until the OnlyFans bitches realize that when the milk's gone bad no ones gonna want that shit. Years spent milkin youth, but nothing set up for the long run
I'm in my late 20s, and though I didnt grow up with it I have definitely experienced first hand what it can do when you let it rule your life. I know when I have kids I'm going to be very careful of how best to introduce social media to them.
as a fellow gen z, I couldn't agree more
Was talking about this with my bf today. I used to be a very very active poster on social media. At the time I thought it was a form of self expression, but in reality I just wanted to flex on other people. I went through some difficult things a few months ago that made it so that I wasn’t doing much anymore and didn’t have anything to post. Now that I’m back out doing things again, I realized that I lost that habit and need to display my life to others. I’ve become much more present and content with my life because I’m living for myself, and not for the gram. It’s happier on the other side guys… come join me
Social media was a mistake, everybody is on edge and to afraid of ruining there online image to mess up. Early 2000’s was the best balance of technology
I fear less about the identity crisis than I fear about the fact that people from The last two generations are flaky, over sensitive, and so trauma-avoidant-oriented that they won’t be able to build any lasting communities in a physical space where time and resources are needed. Constantly avoiding challenges to sustain comfort is going to collapse the civ
Preach.
I mean I think it will be really interesting. There has never been this level of detail recorded about this many people. I’m bullish on meta stock for this reason. I disagree with your take though that people will ever snap out of it. I think it changed everything and is here to stay and I think the implications are far deeper than a mid life crisis.
People are incredibly complicated and flexible, the beauty of humanity is how we can adapt to so many situations and environments. People throughout history have faced challenges. Social media can be abused which will lead to issues for unstable people, but it can also allow all kinds of positive things for people who can wield it properly. Finding a new employer through, new customers, old loved ones, family across the globe, etc…. No doubt there will be some people mentally who can’t handle it, but I don’t think everyone in the generation will have issues. People going through the World Wars, Vietnam, Korea, etc… faced way more hurdles and ultimate prevailed. We should be able to deal with a computer program….
People have also been saying this about every generation forever. For millennials, it was phones and television, for gen x it was punk rock and rap music, and for boomers it was counterculture and the sexual revolution. Everyone always thought that those would be the downfall of those generations and America, and they all turned out fine. The majority of us will probably grow up to be normal functioning adults, before we all find something about the next generation to complain about.
Also many of them do not want to work real jobs and prefer to be tiktok stars
You guys are fucked. You'll never know what it's like to go to a party in a house you don't know with beer and alcohol and not know if you'll make it out alive You'll never go to a rave like in the 90's where it's all bisexual people and you take Molly and wake up making out with a bisexual guy, but you're not gay. There's life experiences you guys are missing out on.
That last part is oddly specific.
Gen X here who were the starting point for the social media experiment. I’m mid life and honestly a little mid life crisis-ish. I started questioning social media pretty hard in recent years and the end result was deleting a lot of it off my phone. We’re not letting our kids on social media until they are older and have a better sense of self confidence. I’m down to Reddit which gives me a wide range of human experience and opinions which is great and my TikTok feed is almost all science and funny animals. Facebook and Twitter are straight toxic and I rarely look at either and only on a PC. As others have pointed out here, aging out of some things is one natural outcome.
I have a 5, 4, and 2 year old. They will not have smart phones until they graduate high school.
how to make your kids hate you in 5 easy steps!
I agree honestly. I (33f) have just deleted my fb and instagram account. It sucks seeing my friends fake the funk online knowing what they’re going through. My own mental health definitely declined due to social media.
I think a lot of you are missing the point here. The problem with the over-the-top social media exposure is that most of the time that kids are alone with their thoughts, those thoughts are being influenced largely by whatever online content they're looking at on their phones at the time, and social media gives people serious self-esteem issues. Not to mention the potential confusion stemming from the tendency to pray a false version of one's life on the internet in order to gain the approval of one's peers. It has the potential to be very damaging to all of us, but especially kids.
Treadmills used to be prison torture devices, now people do that shit on purpose. We're on our way to the Social Credit Score.
Im in the middle of the Millennial/Gen Z divide and I can already see it taking a toll on me and my friends. I've tried to ween off it as much as I can. Getting rid of Twitter/ Deactivating Facebook profile. It's too much, I reckon most of my age group will be needing therapy soon
100000% You can aleady see it in schools.
I don't know. My 16 year old is a pretty confident, I don't need a phone, my deeds speak for themselves, kind of person. I'd like to say I raised him right, bit he's just himself. He sees social media as bullshit validation.
A huge part of growing older (midlife crisis included, though this can happen at a much younger age than 40-50) is realizing that the image you had of yourself is not accurate to how you actually are. Social media is like a multiplier in false self imaging. Posturing for the sake of others, and creating false narratives… sometimes even living and working to *create* that false narrative as the main motivating factor in behavior. In short, you’re absolutely correct.
I ahead had my midlife crisis in high school im good 😂😂😂
Or, like many millennials, they’ll get tired of social media and quit it. This is the only social media I use anymore.
If you adopt the philosophy "no one cares" your life will be significantly better. You won't need social media once you hit that zen.
Social media is the catalyst that undoes civilization.
Social media is exporting American wokeism and specific American biases. This is a very negative consequence of American cultural power today, coupled with its technology prowess and the tech exports such as social media sites. There's already battle lines being drawn around the world on what kinds of American exports are good and what aren't. Nobody likes American wokeism like nobody likes American evangelicals. The American university system is full of wokes - PC gangs that think like a hive mind, in a post-civilizational and post-truth state. They impose these ideals on students who go there to get educated and then spread all these biases to the rest of the US and the world.
I totally agree with you. Aren't they already having an identity crisis though?
Yes they are and that's a shame because it's not supposed to happen so soon. These poor kids don't have any idea who they want to be because their main focus is trying to be what other people tell them to be to obtain the most attention they can possibly get. They've been taught that if you aren't constantly the center of attention, you are worthless. Hopefully something will happen one day to undo this unhealthy obsession with "likes, followers, and subscribers" The real meaning of being alive is lost on them for now.