chapotraphouse

I've heard from a lot of teachers saying the same thing. The newer cohorts of students are performing far lower academically and have a lot of behavioral issues.

It's really hard to parse out what's actually happening and what's sensationalism.

My material analysis pet theory is that we're increasingly seeing that dual incomes are necessary to survive. The state does not provide access to childcare. Overworked parents don't have the time to spend and socialize their children. Then kids spend way too much of their developmental years on devices. To me, the devices alone wouldn't be so bad if economic conditions made it easier to actually raise children.

Regardless of what people say about new tech every generation, what we're seeing now is an order of magnitude higher than what we've seen before. The devices and the apps on them are engineered to keep people on them as long as possible. China has recognized this and attempted to limit screen time for young people. Anyone who says that these devices are having no effect on how we process information is unserious.

I teach teens. I approach it with the perspective that apps are supposed to be addictive. And have a bit of empathy for the kids, it's not their fault they're addicted.

Also we were saying four years ago that repeated COVID infections would mess kids up cognitively. Kids today are on their 8th infection now?

I think it's bad, but the stuff listed in the thread you linked isn't all that wild. A twelve year old girl said a really hurtful thing about someone's appearance? Lmao tune in at seven for some real news.

If I could ban smartphones for kids below a certain age I would (really, I would much rather ban social media/algorithms/never-ending feeds, but I digress) but as a millenial, kids my age were watching hours of TV after school, staying up literally all night playing video games, and consuming absolutely horrifying content on the internet way younger than they should have been.

None of this is new. It's just getting faster and more intense. I also worked with a lot of Gen Alpha last summer in a context mostly devoid of phones and internet access, and while COVID has been fucking rough on them, many are quite bright and empathetic, and if you can get them outside and touching grass for an extended period of time, it's a whole different ball game. I don't give a shit that every other sentence is skibidi or rizz or fanum taxes.

The growing gender divide is almost a bigger concern IMO, but that extends up through people in their early twenties at the least. Most young straight cis people are nowhere near ready to be in any kind of long term relationship with each other. Again, probably not a new thing, but damn is it dire out there.

Little edit: the young twenty-somethings I am with are currently watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. I can promise you with all my heart that the toxicity in that show is astronomical and engenders a kind of brainrot that is far, far darker than any effect a skibidi toilet might have on a young, impressionable mind.

As soon as we could measure attention, capitalism decided to sell it to the lowest bidder. It really shouldn't surprise anybody that kids growing up in an ever less-functional, less-rational world might get some weird ideas about how to survive within it. Things are changing and deteriorating at an ever faster pace, of course this is going to have an influence on people, and especially on younger people and kids.

I'm gen z when I was 12, smartphones were kinda shit and most people in my country couldn't afford it, so everything was on desktops. I think that worked as a good control.

Social media only became widespread by 2016 and most had phones by then, everyone was on Facebook, Instagram and all that. I don't think it was too damaging. But then again, short form content wasn't much of a thing.

I think short form video content is especially damaging, I have many times fallen for it myself with tiktok and shorts. You end up watching hundreds of videos on very different topics, it's a time suck. There needs to be tight controls on these for everyone, adults and minors, max 30 minutes a day or something.

Not many are watching Andrew Tate's long form videos, they watch short 1 minute clips.

In my experience (as a teacher) even the kids are aware of how bad this is for them. The term "brainrot" is a kind of "joking, but not really" piece of jargon that they use among themselves. The see their peers' and their own attention span being ruined by social media, and their peers falling into the fash pipeline. I think it's hard for a lot of them to muster much in the way of concern, though, because they also see that they're living in the last stages of a decaying empire and collapsing environment. It's hard to motivate someone to care about the future and their ability to succeed in it when it's apparent that the best case scenario for most of them is life as a peasant in a techo-feudal dystopia. If they don't die in the coming water wars, they're going to live as indentured servants to Peter Thiel; they have no chance of owning a home, affording a family, or achieving anything beyond living to die another day under the bootheel of the most ruthless capitalism the world has seen in over a century. Why not just watch TikTok all day?

Frankly I find myself taking the anarchist position on this, is it really "brainrot" or is it simply the inevitable collapse of a stifling system of indoctrination and systematic miseduction?

Sure functional literacy has decreased and tech has become addicting FOR SOME, but is this the fault of covid or kids, or the fault of a system that has been slowly starved and malformed for decades finally entering its death rattles

The fact the complaints are coming from reddit, a place filled to bursting with the ideological fanatics of the liberal order tells me this development is necessary, the kids are revolting and I believe the crux of the situation is more THIS than covid brain damage

The longitudinal data doesn't really suggest significant impacts (beyond mental health diagnosis, which is also contributed to by diagnostic creep and greater accessibility and acceptability)

Social media and the algorithm are awful but at least we're not still covering everything in leaded gasoline residue

never believe anything written on . it's a creative writing forum for the weirdest assholes on the planet

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