Instead, I look at the reality of 14yo today who can't carry a conversation beyond a grunt, has their eyes stuck to their social media devices, and their tech skills extend to creating tik-tok videos and swiping left.
I think that's down to how you see it. There will be 14 year olds out there doing those things. You just aren't 14 so your perspective is biased towards your own stage in life and level of development and current state of awareness. There has to be 14 years old out there doing those things otherwise we aint going to see anymore productivity in the world and that means the modern society we live in will disappear pretty fast. I think also the reality is that even back a few decades ago, the actual percentage of the young population doing those things were not the majority. I mean, how many teens did you know that could speak programming languages and their free time was spent running massive online fansite communities? How many people do you hear of who are wiz-kids who don't just match a stereotype but actually are engaged in complex advanced level hobbies at 14 years old? The number of those people was always lower than the majority of the population.
I get what you mean though. Society has been compromised by the push towards a digital world that eventually will overcome and eradicate the necessity of physical human contact and complex human relationships that have blessed past generations and created avenues for expression, individuality, development and potential. It also defined localized culture and the ability to have your own circle that was separate to the outside world. People had their own local cultures, norms and patterns of daily life that were relatively unaffected by the outside world and so this enabled the independent development of these communities with minimal influence from external cultural influences, particularly globalization and the global village effect that has over the last decade or so began to slowly dominate localized culture and nuanced unique cultures. This is because globalization and the onset of digital tech that enabled it to accelerate these processes didn't exist like it did today. The social marketplace has been taken over and everyone is being shaped by the same homogeneous mold. Kids don't do know how to be different because they are conditioned to see no difference beyond the realities they are provided by the mediums they chose to access these realities. This is great for the complex machinery at work and those behind it because it means future generations conditioned to see things differently than past generations who had more freedoms and more connection to a sense of community and localized culture that they were taught to preserve, appreciate and cultivate. It's not so great for humanity because eventually these groups of people you talk about will eventually be the majority of the population on this planet.
I see once more isolated parts of the world now looking like Westerners and I get a little upset. They might not know what they are helping to drive home for their country and culture but I see it and it is pretty disturbing. It doesn't matter whether you live in the Amazon rain-forest or America, everyone knows what a selfie is and everyone knows the dynamic behind likes, subscribers, followers, amassing friends and social exposure, acceptance and validation on social media. Essentially everyone is being conditioned to consider that FAR MORE IMPORTANT than actually being separate to it all, being unique and having something to belong to beyond the homogeneous goop we are all slowly melding into. It's pretty crazy and people are selling themselves out in order to become a shell of themselves that only their online profiles gain recognition for and not who they truly are, who they truly represent and what they are truly about. You wonder why we have the highest rates of mental illness in the Western world and on top of that, statistics from the last several years show a huge uptick in suicides among children as young as f*cking 14 years old! All because they want to look like their fave celebs on YouTube and are gaslighted everyday that they don't look right, they aren't famous, they have to play these narcissistic empty and unwholesome games in order to fit. It's pretty obvious what is happening isn't healthy but hey, who mentions it? You hear of an article here and there talking about putting your smartphone down once in a while, taking a break, going for a walk, deactivating your social media account etc. But this isn't mainstream health advice nor is it in our current curriculum. It's fringe not-so-important-optional stuff that people kinda grin at and think shouldn't be taken seriously. Meanwhile, they are found hanged a few weeks later or overdosed. Life became too fucking difficult because the world they live in doesn't listen to them and promotes all these behaviours that DO NOT serve them.
Rest in peace those people, all of those people.
I am speaking for you though you may never know I did.
Indeed. The teens of the 70's and 80's are not the teens of today. Family dynamics were much stronger then in the absence of social media. Teens were hungry for stimulation and created many ideas totally on their own. They had solid real life friends that hung out and tried to outdo each other with their creativity. Now I'm lucky if they even grunt, let alone give me any eye contact. Quite frankly I'm not even sure they have a grasp on reality. Since I am older and have seen the shift, it makes me very sad.
Yes, exactly this.
These kids were holding up the house for thousands of other kids in every conceivable area needed to hold it all up and doing a better job than most adults could do today managing a forum like this. Just imagine your admin being a 14 year old who knows phpBB, php, MySQL, HTML, CSS Javascript, forum administration, server administration, system administration.
