Billions must die?

choranegovei

What do you think of this current new era? Do you think Zoomers who spend all day on TikTok are the future of humanity?

malmon

choranegovei I'm afraid I don't know enough about TikTok specifically or the content it provides to be able to predict the ramifications with any accuracy. It is worrying though, seeing so many kids just staring at their phones all the time. Granted, I'm kinda guilty of this to some degree to, but not when I'm out on a walk or with other people.

choquet

choranegovei Pleasure-seeking behaviour has become more routinized, and social media probably incubated those dependencies early on. Whether or not that's a bad thing is a value judgement. Who knows? Maybe it's better to be spreadsheet-minded in calibrating for efficiency, including personal reward and self-regulation. There's something to me profoundly sad about funneling spiritual feeling through microtargeted entertainment––but that just comes with the flow cost of choice. They are better off than I am.

choranegovei

I've never used Tiktok, but with technology advancing I feel that these children are both rotting their brains with quick content and sometimes misinformation and absorbing knowledge with the educational content out there, I can only imagine. I have good expectations as much as I don't think we can evolve beyond that.
malmon

choranegovei

malmon I feel like I'm getting old, despite this I feel that the zoomers have to rise up if they want a better world, we've had many wars to acquire peace, now we only have our spiritual war.

malmon

In terms of the world becoming worse, I'm not if things like TikTok would really make that much of a difference. There are many problems out there that I won't really go into, because this isn't the sort of forum for that (or rather, I don't wish to stir controversy in such a small community), but it would take a real uprooting of social media in general to have any real impact.

E36_fiend

zoomers sounds like zombies

malmon

E36_fiend Not all of them, but I have noticed this in quite a few of them. As if they're still partly stuck in that moody teenager phase.

COUPLED

i also have mixed feelings. It makes me feel old lol

tomadoi

I mean, they are the future whether we like that or not. I personally think they'll do fine, let's not forget that they're mostly in their teens and early 20s and we're all stupid as hell at that point of our lives.
I feel kind of weird saying this though, because I'm an early zoomer myself (25 yo). But I feel so disconnected from everyone. I don't feel like I fit in with either the millenials or the zoomers.

malmon

tomadoi I feel kind of weird saying this though, because I'm an early zoomer myself (25 yo). But I feel so disconnected from everyone. I don't feel like I fit in with either the millenials or the zoomers.

We might fit more into the Zennial category, even though these categories are a little silly.

WorstFriend

Senseless juvenoia. Zoomers are very quick learners, they're insanely clever and perceptive, and what's interesting, they are very dedicated to whatever they set their mind to. This is of course a massive generalisation, there are gonna be zoomers who are dumb as a brick, but on average they are more inteligent and passionate, and will achieve more than any other generation before them, as it almost always is with any generation.

malmon

WorstFriend Hmm, I wonder what you're basing your assessment on. Not that I think zoomers are thick, but I can't really say I've seen much to suggest that they're any more intelligent than previous generations. Rather, seeing how people's diets have gotten progressively worse over time, I would have expected the opposite.

WorstFriend

malmon

Personal expierience.

jojo123

i've used tiktok. the way it's structerd is how you interact with content on there shapes the algorithm and what is shown to you. so pretty much like other big tech sites

malmon

jojo123 Something to consider, however, is that these algorithms may not always be showing you just what they think you'll like (or, more accurately, stay on the app longer for), but also what they want you to see. The massive corporations that run the likes of TikTok are run by technically very powerful people, some of which will have their own political or social agendas.

Much like how propaganda was traditionally distributed through newspapers, the radio, and TV, social media is not all that different.

hitsugi

I do agree with a lot of what people have said here....despite being the oldest in that age group, people aren't very intelligent. I've used tiktok maybe once not even logged in, and it just felt a little overwhelming to me. People have used it for what's about to be 5-6 years now, and it does make me a little sad that there's a whole age bracket raised on that app when it didn't even exist until I was nearly out of highschool. There's also not much that I could personally do to make others stop using it, people are gonna just keep using social media even if it's clearly just a really bad choice.

malmon

hitsugi I doubt you're the oldest one here~ The only time I've used TT is when someone would send me a link to a video on there. Never really tried to use it at all beyond that - just seemed like a copycat of Vine, which I didn't really use either ^^'7

One rather sad thing about social media, is that a lot of the people in charge of these platforms don't even allow their kids to have smartphones. They know that shit is bad for you.

ricecake

I've done some teaching and looking at students (13-15 years old mostly) their differences in personality, virtues and flaws seem more pronounced than when I was in school. The "good ones" are more ambitious, resourceful, and good-hearted than anyone I can remember from my time in school, and the bad ones ... are really really dumb.

I think technology acts as an amplifier pushing kids towards extremes. Some will get all the good without the bad, and others the other way around. I don't see how anyone other than the kids' parents can help them here. Remember the median age in the United States is 38.5, so the extent to which we're experiencing cultural decline, internet insanity, tiktok brain, etc. is still the fault of previous generations.

In the end, we have to believe in the zoomers.

Saoru_Sotiri

Typically it has been up to the parents to teach values, and it was even still present in earlier forms of the modern education system. Classical education is a good example of this in my opinion. I agree that technology amplifies both sides of the spectrum, but I can't help to think that it become a little harder to navigate what we might consider "good and evil" when we've mostly abandoned consistency in morals. I have a gripe with subjectivism when it comes to morals. I wouldn't say that technology and modern advancements is to blame at all, but mostly what we may have abandoned on the way. I'm not a pessimist about it though.