‘Brain rot’ is the Oxford word of the year – a fitting choice, given the startling impact the internet is having on our grey matter, says journalist Siân Boyle
“they just forget they were children once” said every generation of kids.
Myself included.
We saw what was coming in the 90’s, and discussed the inevitable shitshow that social media was going to be (we didn’t know Facebook itself was coming, but we had MySpace, etc, which was also something we studiously avoided using because it was clearly problematic).
I highly recommend reading about Las Vegas and the research the gambling companies have done to get people addicted to slots, etc.
Vegas is designed to entrap you. Social media companies are using the same research to the same ends.
I’m half a year from 40 myself, and I’m quite concerned. We were fortunate enough that social media never really took off in popularity until we were adults. We’re basically the last ones who can claim that. Sure, our parents wrung their hands and got upset about too much garbage TV and video games, but there is something legitimately different and more alarming here. Even when social media was first coming onto the scene, the technology was different and any algorithms that existed weren’t nearly as fine-tuned as they are now. You basically just got a feed of whatever the people you included as your friends were up to or wanted to share, and efforts to profile you or curate that content in order to keep you glued to their site were not nearly as sophisticated. Smartphones were a brand new tech, so most people still had a “dumb” cell phone that could just present a super stripped-down mobile version of a website, and most apps for them came directly from the manufacturer or service provider. All of that technology has exploded in the last 10-15 years, faster than even the rapid rise of the Internet itself in the '90s. All the goofy Flash games and stuff back then, or skibidi toilet today, aren’t really the problem, I will agree on that (even if I think the stupidity of that stuff has only continued to go downhill). The danger is in that rapidly increasing sophistication of the algorithms and other psychological patterns that social media companies, advertisers and other big tech moguls have been using to ensure we never put our smartphones down, and all the data we give them just makes those algorithms stronger by the day. TV broadcasters and game developers could utilize some techniques to keep you watching or playing, but they could never fine-tune an experience tailor made for the individual user like these tech and social media companies can. The stupid nature of so much of the stuff that’s out there is certainly not helping, but that’s also a matter of “garbage in, garbage out”. But the user would never know exactly how garbage the content they’re consuming is if they never break out of the bubble these companies contain them in.
“they just forget they were children once” said every generation of kids.
Myself included.
We saw what was coming in the 90’s, and discussed the inevitable shitshow that social media was going to be (we didn’t know Facebook itself was coming, but we had MySpace, etc, which was also something we studiously avoided using because it was clearly problematic).
I highly recommend reading about Las Vegas and the research the gambling companies have done to get people addicted to slots, etc.
Vegas is designed to entrap you. Social media companies are using the same research to the same ends.
I’m 40, I’m reflecting on how my own generation is becoming dumb like boomers.
Who discussed social media in the 90s?
I’m half a year from 40 myself, and I’m quite concerned. We were fortunate enough that social media never really took off in popularity until we were adults. We’re basically the last ones who can claim that. Sure, our parents wrung their hands and got upset about too much garbage TV and video games, but there is something legitimately different and more alarming here. Even when social media was first coming onto the scene, the technology was different and any algorithms that existed weren’t nearly as fine-tuned as they are now. You basically just got a feed of whatever the people you included as your friends were up to or wanted to share, and efforts to profile you or curate that content in order to keep you glued to their site were not nearly as sophisticated. Smartphones were a brand new tech, so most people still had a “dumb” cell phone that could just present a super stripped-down mobile version of a website, and most apps for them came directly from the manufacturer or service provider. All of that technology has exploded in the last 10-15 years, faster than even the rapid rise of the Internet itself in the '90s. All the goofy Flash games and stuff back then, or skibidi toilet today, aren’t really the problem, I will agree on that (even if I think the stupidity of that stuff has only continued to go downhill). The danger is in that rapidly increasing sophistication of the algorithms and other psychological patterns that social media companies, advertisers and other big tech moguls have been using to ensure we never put our smartphones down, and all the data we give them just makes those algorithms stronger by the day. TV broadcasters and game developers could utilize some techniques to keep you watching or playing, but they could never fine-tune an experience tailor made for the individual user like these tech and social media companies can. The stupid nature of so much of the stuff that’s out there is certainly not helping, but that’s also a matter of “garbage in, garbage out”. But the user would never know exactly how garbage the content they’re consuming is if they never break out of the bubble these companies contain them in.