From what I have seen on the Internet, it seems that people that didn't grow up with social media tend to have a more positive opinion regarding life in general.
Americans tend to date the start of the current "dark age" as the day 9/11 happened, but as a Canadian who grew up in a post 9/11 world, I think this date is just a convenient scapegoat. This event obviously affected many things such as American politics, but I don't think that all the positivity disappeared at this date.
During my childhood, I noticed some kind of paradigm shift around the year 2014 - the year when social media and mobile phones became mainstream where I live.
During my late teenage year, I regularly partook in a writing contest. As a teenager, I was really into dystopian works like 1984, Brave New World etc. The judges of this contest were older folks (around 30+). They thought that the stories I wrote were really dark and very nihilistic. This came as a surprise to me because I wanted the stories to feel as real and grounded as possible.
This made me think, could the existence of social media have lifted some veil of ignorance and exposed the "true state of reality" ?
Everyone on this forum are probably aware that social media is designed with dark patterns in mind. That being said, at the end of the day, all we see is knowledge and information. Social media created a phenomenon where all modern knowledge and communication of human beings are centralized in a few spots.
One could make the assumption that more knowledge, no matter how presented, reflects the state of the world to some degree. They say that knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss.
This makes me wonder if people were generally happier due to a lack of information. Most people on this forum have deleted or blocked their social media site and feel relief as a result. There are obviously more way to acquire knowledge than using social media, but I think the crux of the issue is how the information is presented.
On social media, we generally don't get to choose what the algorithms show us. The same could be said for TV, which obviously existed before social media. News broadcasts shares a similar trait to social media, as it is generally designed to evoke fear, disgust or anger as this makes money. Yet, I personally don't know of any story about people getting depressed just by watching TV news (although I suppose I could simply be too young).
People see more information on the internet than on the TV as it moves faster, so perhaps the issue is the quantity of information.
This begs the questions, is social media the core of the issue or just the enhancer? Could raw knowledge en-masse be what drives us mad?
What do you guys think? Do you believe are simply unhappy due to being exposed how the world truly works? Is social media really the only problem in this equation?
Americans tend to date the start of the current "dark age" as the day 9/11 happened, but as a Canadian who grew up in a post 9/11 world, I think this date is just a convenient scapegoat. This event obviously affected many things such as American politics, but I don't think that all the positivity disappeared at this date.
During my childhood, I noticed some kind of paradigm shift around the year 2014 - the year when social media and mobile phones became mainstream where I live.
During my late teenage year, I regularly partook in a writing contest. As a teenager, I was really into dystopian works like 1984, Brave New World etc. The judges of this contest were older folks (around 30+). They thought that the stories I wrote were really dark and very nihilistic. This came as a surprise to me because I wanted the stories to feel as real and grounded as possible.
This made me think, could the existence of social media have lifted some veil of ignorance and exposed the "true state of reality" ?
Everyone on this forum are probably aware that social media is designed with dark patterns in mind. That being said, at the end of the day, all we see is knowledge and information. Social media created a phenomenon where all modern knowledge and communication of human beings are centralized in a few spots.
One could make the assumption that more knowledge, no matter how presented, reflects the state of the world to some degree. They say that knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss.
This makes me wonder if people were generally happier due to a lack of information. Most people on this forum have deleted or blocked their social media site and feel relief as a result. There are obviously more way to acquire knowledge than using social media, but I think the crux of the issue is how the information is presented.
On social media, we generally don't get to choose what the algorithms show us. The same could be said for TV, which obviously existed before social media. News broadcasts shares a similar trait to social media, as it is generally designed to evoke fear, disgust or anger as this makes money. Yet, I personally don't know of any story about people getting depressed just by watching TV news (although I suppose I could simply be too young).
People see more information on the internet than on the TV as it moves faster, so perhaps the issue is the quantity of information.
This begs the questions, is social media the core of the issue or just the enhancer? Could raw knowledge en-masse be what drives us mad?
What do you guys think? Do you believe are simply unhappy due to being exposed how the world truly works? Is social media really the only problem in this equation?