I think our distaste for this obvious misdirection of human attention goes beyond mere "kids these days" prejudice. SV startups,"social," "interconnectedness," this nonsense is creating an asinine, infantilized generation: easily manipulated, desperate for social acceptance, incapable of independent thought, and entirely beholden to the whims of mainstream society. This cutesy "adult finds himself going with the flow" motif just further normalizes this endless, pathetic pattern of adults emulating children. Barack Obama and Matt Lauer are taking selfies!? Enough.
Every generation presents the symptoms you list. The newest generations are no more asinine than the Silent Generation, the Boomers, the Greatest or their parents before.
Protesting child labor in beginning of the 20th century? How beholden to the whims of mainstream society, how desperate those people must have been for social acceptance that they protested such a common and accepted practice.
How were the older generations so incapable of independent thought to be easily conned into warring in the Middle East? The Drug Wars? Vietnam? Korea? Prohibition? Wars in Texas/Mexico and with pre-existing indigenous peoples?
How on earth did massive, completely non-functional flares in the legs of pants, or oversized suitcoats, or cravats ever make sense?
When we learn to love the awareness and consciousnesses around us we can love the change for simply being, instead of decrying it for being different from what we've previously experienced.
I think no generation has really seen their criticism of the new generation as "kids these days" prejudice. If they did think that, they wouldn't say the words with such conviction. But, that is kinda what it looks like, right?
Perhaps this line of thinking is why many adults of today let the kids run rampage while matters of immediate importance to them go unattended. It is often difficult for a thinking person to admit to a sense of certainty, but at the risk of seeming to exclude myself from that group, I have to say that I believe this is a sheer waste of time, and almost certainly an intellectually destructive one. It is not necessarily that the kids ought to find another form of leisure, but that the amount of time and energy dedicated to this activity is unreasonable. And unlike some forms of leisure, this one bears no fruit. In the years to come, I think there will be few able to say that much of their time devoted to SnapChat and other such platforms was well spent.
Its probably fair to say that intellectual skepticism could be leading to doubt here. However, couldn't it also be that the historical understanding that every generation has fears about the state of the next and how they spend their time leads to reasonable skepticism? Video games, Dungeons and Dragons, Rock music, Jazz music etc. etc. etc.
First off - when did any of those lead to harm, considering they don't really concretely "bear fruit"?
Secondly - how is the time spent on social media "really really" the one we are being reasonable about this time?
"And unlike some forms of leisure, this one bears no fruit."
Increased connection with peers, for one. It's incredibly easy to network now. I'm young, and wasn't around for what you're looking back on as the good old days, but I disagree that there is no value to being able to send a one off "look what I'm doing" to a friend.
"Increased connection with peers, for one. It's incredibly easy to network now."
Is it, really? The girl in this article basically doesn't even LOOK at the pictures. The "conversation" is effectively: "Look at what I'm doing" "I don't care what you're doing" "Look at what I'm doing" "I don't care what you're doing" That doesn't seem like "increased connection".
But, this is also what I expect from a 13 year old.
Replace "SnapChat" with "Television" or "Video Games" in your comments, and the meaning is no different. Do you feel the same way about all diversionary forms of leisure?
Its easy to dismiss as more of the same, just different fads.
But 'kids these days' are actually threatened this time. With inactivity, sugar, constant media bombardment, record-short attention spans. The list goes on. They're being raised in an environment that no animal was ever exposed to before in history.
And they keep making more frantic devices, and the kids keep buying them. And we'll run off the cliff like lemmings and wonder what happened.
Sure, just like the previous generation, and the one before it, and ...
The majority of people in any country are basically useless idiots w.r.t making policy decisions or creating something beneficial for society. That said, we can't discount the social benefit of the subset who are basically idiots but empathetic care-givers.
The shame is the number of resources being consumed by useless idiots in developed countries and elites vs. say useless idiots in Afghanistan or Bangladesh.
I agree that the fact that apps are becoming Skinner boxes is problematic.
> this nonsense is creating an asinine, infantilized generation: easily manipulated, desperate for social acceptance, incapable of independent thought, and entirely beholden to the whims of mainstream society.
As far as I can tell, most people in any time period have been like this.
Desperate for social acceptance: There's that "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. Nothing new.
Incapable of independent thought: If most people in the past had been capable, mass movements like Christianity, Islam, Nazism, Communism etc. would never have caught on like they did.
Easily manipulated: Didn't aristocrats etc. manipulate peasants/serfs back in the Middle Ages?
So fantastic that the amount of time and energy this girl and her peers dedicate to its use is well directed? And here I'd thought it only enables one to send photographs to one's friends, with a scoring system to encourage the development of addictive behavior.
You could say the same of nearly any fad that resonates with teenagers. My point was plenty of people I know, across various ages, use Snapchat as a replacement for MMS. I would hardly classify that as an obvious misdirection of human attention.
