I’d say all generations are affected by this.
My dad (gen X) for example, he has tiktok, Instagram and Facebook on his phone and watches YouTube shorts on his tablet. It’s everyday life for him to scroll on these platforms for over 8 hours per day. It’s like he becomes brain-dead every time he comes into contact with a glass sandwich.
For myself (gen Z), I used to scroll Instagram reels for at most 2 hours per day when I was in high school, but now I barely touch it, instead I prefer long form YouTube documentaries and sandbox games. The worst of it is my around 5 minutes or less of YouTube shorts daily and browsing lemmy for around tops 2 hours per day but effectively 1 on average.
I also believe that the stereotyping of gen Z being addicted to everything digital is a bit dubious, since we’ve lived through life as “digital natives” and are likely more able to avoid addiction. The ones I worry about are the older generations, since many fall into the trap of accidentally integrating these addictive services into their routines and get more severe health consequences such as early Alzheimer’s or putting too much faith into LLMs and for example change their medication dosages without actual approval from their doctor, and many other examples.
As a millennial it feels like we were at an apex of technology literacy. One of the major motivational factors for me was thinking the next generation was going to be more well equipped than mine. So id better keep my head down and work hard because these kids that coming up with tablets from the start are going to eat my lunch with whatever this new common core stuff is. To me we were just the youngest generation that really had tech at a young age so it seems natural that all the older kids were progressively less technologically capable. But at some point you look over your shoulder at who is coming up and it like… Oh no.
It’s interesting how quickly all generations, platforms and… well, everyone stopped shitting on TikTok as one of the worst things for your brain.
Still not installing it.
I sometimes visit TikTok like twice a year just to understand what type of media your average Joe/Jane consumes. My conclusion is that it’s mindless and overly rapid content that does not sticks in the head. I could not recall anything I’ve consumed the day after.
But honestly it’s not THAT different from watching TV/YT all night, or scrolling reddit/lemmy. I cannot recall what content I’ve consumed yesterday, maybe only small pieces here and there, despite watching “intelligent” content like documentaries & video essays or reading articles & news. To my brain it was simply entertainment just for that moment. A waste of my precious life.
We all consume, but few of us create.
But honestly it’s not THAT different from watching TV/YT all night, or scrolling reddit/lemmy.
Where credit is due, my YouTube algorithm is 90% educational, my original goal of Lemmy was to follow cybersecurity news (because for whatever reason cybersecurity experts rarely use reddit) and reddit is reddit, the reason I tell to myself “avoid TikTok, there is already too much mindless doomscrolling in your life”
I wouldn’t say the same. Almost everything I listen on a documentary or any other form of divulgation of science, philosophy or any other kind of knowledge, because I select long and dense videos over short and light ones (almost everytime, but not everytime, of course, some exceptions here and there), and I also care for the emotional and ethical impact of what I’m watching, and I try to think, and theorize, and, in general, to put such knowledge to work and to consolidate itself, even when it concerns the most mundane matters.
The involvenment with the content, and its emotional and ethical impact, is what determines if you’ll be able to later remember that content.
Those things are what lack the most in both pseudointellectual and brainrot content.
You don’t need to say “crypto rug pull”, “crypto” is sufficient.
Some crypto was designed to be useful, and some was designed to be an investment scam. But everyone is investing in all crypto so none of it makes sense.
I feel like vapes have undone all the progress against smoking and more.
i feel like you can’t have grown up in a smoking household and seriously believe this
Pretty sure that was why they were invented, cig companies made so much money
Disposables, yes, but at least where I’m from there was a big independent industry of “flavor” industries that quickly popped up around 2015, and in those years hardware had a ton of manufacturers and “DIY” aspects. You’d make your own liquids and coils using cheap specialized metal wire and cotton and you could go on for months with 20€. Then a bunch of absolute horseshit laws from both the national and EU level seemed to try and make that experience as inconvenient as possible, for example requiring you to buy half-filled bottles that you must fill yourself using nicotine bases that can be no bigger than 10ml, resulting in 3-4 small disposable plastic bottles per liquid that you buy. Several countries limited what flavors you can buy, and/or regulated the market such that there is only one or two brands of approved hardware manufacturers.
Now if you think that reducing accessibility of vapes is good, this would all be fine and dandy, but at the same time all the kids are vaping disposables, which are not subject to some of the same restrictions and you can buy online or in corner stores for the price of a pack of cigs. Of course almost all the brands are owned by old tobacco money, but I still can’t really understand how we took a perfectly good and simple system like an electronic cigarette with a decent industry behind it, made it borderline illegal, and then normalized the same thing but imported from a cartel, that works the exact same except that they refuse to put two holes for refilling and charging it. Fucking disposable lithium batteries in 2026.
Yup. When vapes and ecigs started being a thing, I kicked so many pissy whiny babies out of my store on the daily for it.
Not allowed to do that at my current job.
I once owned a very popular food shop, and I always loved telling people to knock off the vapes. Now and then, someone would try to look tough in front of their buddies, and try to argue with me, and only succeeded in getting them, and their buddies, kicked out.
I would tell them: “This shop is my kingdom, and I’m the Emperor, and what I say goes, PERIOD. Do what I say, or get out!” I would say it exactly like that, while glaring into their eyes. Few ever argued a word after that, and those that did, were tossed out, FOREVER.
B A S E D
Everybody look out, we got a couple of internet tough guys
What’s wrong with gooning, boss?
True
Opiate epidemic 🎣
When dealers start offering buy now pay later we’re done as a society
Junkies are always asking for that, but their credit ratings are zero.
see: commandment #6
Gonna be real as an old and fat and gay millennial, I’m actually pretty optimistic about Zoomers and Alphas. I think they are gonna become more anti-tech and move into a more analog kind of lifestyle. I have a ton of zoomer friends who are deleting social media accounts or even gettingh dumbphones, and my 13 year old niece was even asking me about how to burn CDs or transfer stuff to VHS tapes.
Yeah, I’m being optimistic about them. I think they’re gonna be okay.
I don’t think anti-tech should be necessarilly the way, that’s just the other extreme of the spectrum. What we neef is actually conscious, informed, nuanced and balanced use of it.
Ain’t nuthin wrong with a good ol goonfest
Yyyyyyep
one of these things is not like the others
I would put all those hooks up my ass and let them stretch me in all eleven dimensions. Thank God I grew up only with 4chan and Reddit when they had subs like spacedicks and jailbait. Fuck, you remember Ren n Stimpy? Rocko’s Modern Life? Caligula? The shit that poisoned our lil brains…
Gotta respect the honesty.
It’s wild that Rocko and Ren & Stimpy we’re considered “kids shows” lol especially Ren & Stimpy
Yea, imagine seeing Caligula when you were of the age where you were unsure if the blue mold stuff growing on your balls that tasted like pennies was a part of the new hairs you were getting down there.
Sorry, got sucked in by the gambling ads before the video. Now I’m $20,000 in debt.
FUCK SPINNIN’ RIMS
You gotta pick two, boys — which ones are you picking?
I don’t think gooning is anywhere near as harmful as everything else there. I choose gooning twice
Spoken like a true gooner 😭
What is gooning?
Masturbating for long periods of time.
I’ll just drop the urban dictionary link here. Basically it’s excessively long masturbation sessions involving excessive quantities of porn. Needless to say, it’s not very conducive to a healthy sex life
I disagree with urban dictionary on a technicality: you don’t require a penis to goon.
a lifestyle dedicated to self pleasure. It’s modern day hedonism.
Edging
The Gods gave you two hands and you use them both for your weapon. I can respect that.
Zoomers and Gen Alpha. They’ve got good heads on their shoulders.
I was feeling pretty good about my life choices until I saw the one labelled gooning.
Is gooning just making stupid faces when taking care of yourself?
Gooning is excessive masturbation, to the point where it’s addictive and disrupts your life.
If by making stupid faces you mean orgasming and “taking care of yourself” as “touching yourself”, then sure
Yes, but I didn’t want to be crude, and googling gooning yields honestly theatrically comical faceshots.
It’s essentially “taking care of yourself” but for hours at a time. Getting real close but then backing off before you finish. Repeat for hours. 2, 3, 4 hours of it sometimes.
But it’s less about exact times and more about “wanting to be sexually aroused but not wanting to finish”. Seeing how long you can go watching vids.