I think it’s like so many things. Sugar. Enjoyable on occasion or induced diabetes. Beer. One on occasion or alcoholism. Dating. Nurturing or controlling/manipulation/obsession. We’re fine until our baser natures take over.

In addition, “short” forms, right down to the trite, terrible music, mimic TV ads of yore. (Maybe current too, idk. I don’t consume ads. I don’t have a TV, and when I do watch YT it’s on a PC with uBlock on.)

Basic Psych 101: people are drawn to the familiar. Are high shorts consumption individuals more likely to consume ads?

With everything we’ve said, it wouldn’t be so bad if it was light consumption, maybe with morning coffee, left off for the rest of the day, but instead there’s an insidious pattern I see at work. Do the work, rush back to a chair to thumb swipe up on a screen for the next 30min to an hour. Work, back to the seat for more low attention span crap, rinse/repeat, for an entire shift.

I’m old. If I try to watch shorts like that my brain feels like a cross between watching TV ads and like I’ve been working on busywork/bullshit homework worksheets from school back in the day. It’s an awful sensation, so I don’t do it. I can only speculate that my crystallized wiring has a different format that isn’t so compatible with this new consumption pattern.

This, our discussion, fits more with long form discussion boards in academia, but as part of a graffiti wall. With bullshit, screaming, and bots filling in the gaps. The attention span problems aren’t so much an issue, depending on how you consume, but the dopamine bit is the same. There’s also a partial reinforcement rewards schedule there but that’s another discussion.

It’s more than that, the anxiety and lack of practice in real, that includes the awful, social encounters growing up creates an environment in which those kids, now adults, have incredible anxiety for social engagement. It’s almost like we created our own Black Mirror world by putting a screen buffer up in front of our children’s faces starting as early as 2yrs.

Helicoptering. Planning the child’s week to enrich them, scheduling play dates with no organic initiative by the child, and inadvertently dictating a script so when that ordered script and mommy umbrella are torn away at college, near panic level anxiety hits. And why wouldn’t it? No practice at deciding for oneself or engaging with real people with the full range of normal human emotions. No chaperoned play dates or protections by mommy when a bad grade happens any more.

But there is a haze right now of sorting out true ADHD from the lack of focus and attention fostered by screens. Which we do want to do, because it’s still reparable if we can start on therapeutic work no later than the early 20s.

Again, yes, with social anxiety being confused with autism. Same deal.

Of course both autism and ADHD are very real, which of course I need to spell out in no uncertain terms because this is Lemmy, but the upbringing of the latest crop of kids also, at the same time, can foster symptoms of both and that needs to be sorted through. It’s not right or healthy to assume either way on this one.

If you watched Stranger Things, the depiction of Nancy going to work and being relegated to making coffee for the boys instead of being taken seriously at an actual job is an iconic representation of women’s struggle in the workplace. Remember, women were only allowed to have their own bank accounts, credit cards, and home loans as legally protected assets, starting in the late 1970s. We were deemed more incompetent, and more wards of our husbands in those respects. Inertia of those notions remained even after the legality changed. That whole bit in Delores Claiborne, where her husband finds her “private”, “personal”, only her name on it bank account and just empties it: real. (That is what RBG had a deciding vote on btw, what gave her such credit back in the day, changing financial freedoms for women to match those of men.)

Yes, this may seem a little focused on women, but it’s a significant piece of the “things were better” push on the right. The right did grow, in part, as a reaction to the loss of the more controlled, traditional, “kept” female. It’s important to keep a full visual of what going back could mean. Roe has already fallen.

Moving away from screen time to more face to face is good. Doesn’t mean texting is bad, it’s fantastic, amazing even, how easy it is to communicate. I love it. But I still drive 10-15min to sit down in a living room face to face with people. I feel little to no stress when disagreement, argument, or even anger occurs. Facing the normal range of human emotion in another doesn’t make me want to hide.

Even just moving back to more long form media would help stop the destructive, anxiety perpetuating, focus reducing rewiring happening. YouTube statistics are now saying anything over 10 minutes is doomed to die based on viewer preference. 9 minutes or less or gtfo. Shorts are quickly taking over and perpetually rewiring people on the daily.

This all or nothing, either or bullshit needs to stop being perpetuated. It is why we have such an inured two party system that effectively makes their followers dance each election.

The tactic here is exactly the one used by Jordan Peterson, mixing truth with garbage for the sake of manipulating an audience into his way of thinking. And it works.

We did stay out in groups of friends, face to face, until it was dark out. We also used destinations like malls, pizza places, and water as an excuse to do so. Cars were a big deal, a means to get there without parents. Summertime involved backyard bonfires in states without burn bans. Uninvited friends and neighbors would randomly show up. Being occupied socially sometimes meant sitting with other people saying nothing, a little bored, doing nothing other than sitting in a room with others, sometimes listening to uninteresting people or TV. But that was ok because you were with friends, spending time.

The reality is there are brain changes due to screens and the invasive format of the “short”. Literal re-writing at the level of how neurons talk to each other. Shortened attention spans. Increased anxiety. Increased impatience. Inability to focus. Worse, inability to go all in on a single point of focus, for hours to create, produce, invent, or simply develop thinking skills. Increased anxiety and lack of coping in interpersonal, not even relationships, but interaction such that this idea of sitting around with groups of people, deliberately, as a way to use free time appears weird and fictional.

That said, the world wasn’t necessarily better. Just watching Wills mom on Stranger Things trying to make a phone call when her phone burned out was painful. It is nice to have a map with a “You Are Here” star wherever you go. No more perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke with all white walls and decor perpetually stained beige or yellow with nicotine sludge from cigarettes. Women’s lib had (past tense) made more progress away from rape culture and towards reproductive freedom. Less racism. And so on.

Articles like these, similar to political pundits, seek to muddy what is true by using truth to spread lies.

So much for “Thou shalt not steal.”

But then, the most ardent believers do the most cherry picking with The Bible.