This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I disagree a lot.
Two ideas:
I saw a study recently that claimed that it's quite literally healthier to be a pack a day smoker with an active social life than a wellness guru who has no friends.
my parents did this to me as a child/teenager (now ~20 years ago, yikes!). Even back then, not having a blackberry/dumb cellphone was rapidly causing social issues as adoption pumped. And finally at the end of grade 9 my parents, realizing this, started listening to my pleading and got me a phone.
Would I be better off if I AND ALL MY PEERS never interacted with the Internet or social media until age 18 or 25? Sure.
Was I better off after I got a phone, so I could stop being "that guy with no phone" amongst my peers? 1,000%. Being othered is no joke, especially for kids/teens who are WAY more sensitive to this.
I mean define “better”, because I’m generally social media negative and I don’t see it making life better in any sense that I can consider “the good life” as it existed in the before times. Kids don’t seem to spend as much time really socializing offline, playing pickup games, having healthy hobbies, and so on. Even adults, a lot of times they don’t spend time talking to other adults in work downtime, they are generally in their phones doing some form of social media or games. How is that a better life? How is a loneliness epidemic good for American society? How is it good for kids or adults to get less exercise, spend less time socializing, etc?
To me the good life is one that’s fairly simple and balanced. A person should be spending time with others, spend time being active, have creative hobbies, and have a good enough job to live on. The phone seems to eat most of the non-working hours for a good number of people around me.
I agree with everything you said
The ideal solution is we RETVRN and tech is a side enabler of what you described, and screen time is much lower across the board.
But that requires collective action and minimal defection (especially in the context of kids and teens).
100 teenagers with no social media all doing 1990s activities (spraypainting the train tracks? Whatever) are clearly all better off
100 teenagers all addicted to social media? Clearly worse off than the above group.
95 teenagers addicted to social media, and 5 teenagers who aren't allowed on social media and are thus cut out from participating in many shared experiences with their peers? Of all three scenarios, those 5 teens are by far the worst off.
I can look for it later, but teenagers literally say this. They wish they could leave social media but because the supermajority of their friends and peers do not, they are stuck participating, lest they be left behind socially.
I think this is true, and honestly I think the best thing is to simply pick a level of technology use that fits. I mean honestly other than this place and I’m trying to learn to blog, I mostly limit my internet to radio and podcasts. It’s actually an improvement over indiscriminate of the internet. And it started from reading about live in the 1940s and following a few video blogs about people trying to live life for a week or a month as if it were 1942 (in Britain). I tried it out because I thought I was using the internet too much, and tbh it is an interesting experiment because it has improved my life in ways I didn’t expect.
If you don’t want that, I suppose you could go more modern. But even simple things like having one TV and one tower style computer where you do all the internet stuff and keep it in a public place in the home would probably work. It’s what happened in 1990. It was pretty good.
If anyone here wants the complete story I’d be willing to do an effort post on the experience and the things that it changed.
I remember hearing about this!
I read and enjoy basically every effort post on this site. So very interested
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, please!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I seriously doubt that is true (the study's claim, not that you saw it). I would need a lot of evidence to be convinced of such an incredible claim, like years of studies repeatedly finding that to be true.
I mean I'm the same age or very similar, and I experienced no such issues. I think that part of growing up is learning to shrug off people who are jerks and who mistreat you for petty reasons. Yes, kids are super sensitive to being shut out of things, but they need to learn to ignore that to be well-adjusted adults.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK595227/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK595227.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28880099/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38824784/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37337095/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39836319/
While I agree with you overall, in this case being quite literally the singular only person in homeroom without a cellphone was not "shrug off a bully", it was incredibly other-ing. I think my parents made the right call.
This is why I am generally rather (classical) liberal but for youth social media bans, I am much more in favor. It's a situation where even the teenagers today say social media makes their lives worse, but they can't leave if everyone else is still on it. The solution requires coordinated action.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link