Looksmaxxx autism

[canIgetsomeHgG]

Ok,
serious question because all the zoomers are mentally ill.

Is there any science approved stuff that works or should we cleanse mentally ill zoomers for good?

Every generation in modern history believes the generation after them is stupid, partly because wisdom comes from experience, partly for other reasons. Unrealistic expectations are normal when you've haven't lived very long. Each generation invents their own slang that others find weird. Also online forums tend to form like-minded communities, leading to things like 4chan.

As for science, there definitely is some scattered among the forum, although looking for science in open discussion forums is rather counterproductive. Even on meso most threads have more broscience than anything. Just from a quick look of the .org forum, the most common advice seems to be weight loss, muscle building, and "heightmaxxing", which is decent(ish) advice. Granted, the last one completely ignores the cardioprotective and brain developing effects of estrogen in favor of gaining several inches.

 

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It’s so crazy when I was younger I always thought of the older generation who were very critical of the next generations as delusional about their own culture and inflated egos. I never thought I would see what the youth is doing, and think what the fuck is going on with these kids while entering my 30s. To be honest though 10 years ago we were also doing cringy weird shit and internet culture was pretty close to how bad it is today, it just wasn’t seeping into MSM, and every day life and culture the way it is today by replacing TV, radio and IRL subculture as pervasively as it is now

Millennials were the first to start really growing up in the internet/social media era, and we got off lightly because it was still early. All the engagement algorithms were in their infancy, all the advertising and tracking were way lower tech, and our attention spans weren't as cooked - Vine was just TikTok a decade early, but most people still wanted longer form content.

It did impact us. But coupled with the fact it all wasn't as weaponized and that it came to us later in our development period meant the impact was less.

Now that shit is hyper optimized to put us all in a dozen skinner boxes, and it's shoved in kid's faces way earlier. Before, you were at worst comparing yourself to the popular kids at your school, and maybe jealous of the number of facebook friends they had. Maybe celebrities or models, but you could understand that these people were the exception. But now there are 10 million instagram celebrities with a billion followers, and there's this idea that all it takes is your phone and your own good looks or whatever to become the same - you don't need to be scouted by hollywood or a magazine, you just need to get yourself out there on social media. And now that includes short-form videos where everyone is scrolling infinitely searching for some sort of new stimulus for their already over-stimulated brains.

And everybody making it was just a regular person until they made it, so if you can't, that means it's your own personal failing, right?

So we've got everyone chasing their own tail in an environment built to monitor all of their habits just so it can further drive their engagement, all while driving their insecurities deeper and deeper, all while dealing with all the standard bullshit of growing up.

Basically every metric on mental health for teenagers has been getting worse and worse over the past decade. And, of course, no matter how you feel about COVID, the lockdowns, vaccines, etc., you'd have to be insane to not recognize that that was also a major blow to the mental health of millions of kids.

Objectively, measurably, the kids aren't alright.

 

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We can blame society and the tech capitalists as much as we want or how culture is developing with these kinds of technology that prey on attention, and time spent engaging with them— but at some point responsibility has to fall squarely on parents for allowing the children access. Maybe it’s unfair to say they shouldve been more aware of the risks, but for parents now it should be super obvious. I don’t give my kid the key to my car for the same reason i don’t let them play on the internet— it’s dangerous and not productive or healthy considering their current age.

This is the right move, but it's not without it's own issues.

When all of their friends and social circle are using the internet constantly, it is socially isolating for people that aren't. You're not in contact with them as frequently, you're not seeing the same things they're discussing, you're missing out on the in-jokes related to all of it, etc.

It's the best option. It's still not really a good one. We don't have good ones, at current.

Every generation in modern history believes the generation after them is stupid, partly because wisdom comes from experience, partly for other reasons. Unrealistic expectations are normal when you've haven't lived very long. Each generation invents their own slang that others find weird. Also online forums tend to form like-minded communities, leading to things like 4chan.

As for science, there definitely is some scattered among the forum, although looking for science in open discussion forums is rather counterproductive. Even on meso most threads have more broscience than anything. Just from a quick look of the .org forum, the most common advice seems to be weight loss, muscle building, and "heightmaxxing", which is decent(ish) advice. Granted, the last one completely ignores the cardioprotective and brain developing effects of estrogen in favor of gaining several inches.

I don't think the generations after me are stupid, but I do think the game is rigged against them in a way that is demonstrably wrecking their mental health at a scale we've not seen before.

I don't know that we need to go the China route and legislate the amount of access kids have to the internet, but I do think it would be totally fair to make it illegal to do all of the tracking and engagement algorithm bullshit on people under the age of 18. It's a tough line to walk - a lot of the same mechanisms used for all of that are fundamentally required for even basic recommendation systems, etc., but I think we need to figure out some sort of line.