Children of the future - No more lively in the normal sense?

[Shady]

For you all's information, I'm currently tutoring some kids English in my hometown. They are either of late gen z or early gen alpha. Coincidentally, this also lead to me figuring out a common trait that most of them have: they all show signs of mental issues. I'm currently taking 12 of them, including primary schoolers, middle schoolers and high schoolers, and like only two of them behaves normally. The other ones either have difficult reading, adhd, autism or depression. I have mental issues of my own so I tried my best to help them catch up with school, but I can't help but feeling wary about the future kids. On one side their brain are fried by technology and brainrot, on the other side their parents and schools force them to process knowledges that is beyond their limitation. I even knew a girl who was force to attend two different extra classes of English, because her parents think learning twice would allow more exposure to material. Wake up people, you're killing your kids!

Anyway this is just a rant of mine. As someone who see myself in kids (I was forced to learn a lot as a kid by abusive parents and teachers), I couldn't shake off the guilt of not being able to help them. We're truly failing as a society.

If I yap too much about non pedo issues, please forgive me. It's my adhd acting up.

[stalker]

Crazy is going to be new normal, let me tell you...

[on the rocks]

I'm hearing a LOT of alarm bells about a growing mental health crisis among a huge chunk of young people, so you're observation isn't a fluke, Shady.  And really it does mostly come back to the phones.  The omnipresent attention monster bombarding them with tons of insane bullshit all day every day.  We've been running this incredibly dangerous, uncontrolled psychological experiment on an entire generation with these devices and it should be a surprise to NO ONE that it is fucking up their growing brains.

The Unabomber was famously subjected to a dubious psychology experiment as a teenager and it more than likely helped him to become the dangerous eccentric he did.  And now we're doing even worse things to millions of children by plopping an attention-whore screen in front of them.

The consequences are already being manifested; sometimes violently.  And it's definitely going to get worse.  Doesn't matter how much parents and schools try and control their access to phones and such; the genie is out the bottle and their eyeballs are way too valuable to the tech oligarchs.  I am extremely pessimistic about the future for many reasons, but this global child brain fucking is chief among them.

[stalker]

Yeah, smartphones and all these addictive apps (TikTok is the number one now I think, maybe with Instagram as close second?).

I remember when I was in my early teens. I was so fucking lonely. Internet wasn't widespread yet (I didn't have access to it), smartphones weren't invented yet, and of course social networks as we know them now didn't exist.

I was reading a book about Internet and I dreamed of being connected to this magical network. To be able to chat with people. To write emails to people across the globe. I wondered how it feels to be connected. How do websites really look like? My classmate had access to the Internet and was constantly online. I knew if I had access to it, I wouldn't feel so lonely anymore.

Internet, to me, was a promised cure.

Looking back, I'm so happy I grew up when the world was still normal. No, I wasn't connected. Yes, I was a lonely child, and it messed me up somewhat. But I wouldn't trade it for the crap we have now. Fortunately I'm old enough to use my smartphone and Internet (quite) responsibly. I'm connected, but I'm not hooked. I already know what's good and what's bad for me, and I steer clear from the bad. But kids... they're the victims. Hooked and addicted by people who abuse their vulnerable brains for their profit. Miserable victims of megacorporations. This, plus Covid and social isolation that fucked up their brains even more. I don't envy them. They're connected, but they're more lonely than I ever was.

And it will get worse.

[johnsmithson23]

u dont think its less related to tehcnology, but parents drug and alcohol abuse?

[Lillab]

First off, to address the OP, kids that get tutoring are more likely to have mental illness than ones that don't. It's a common reason why the parents want more help for their child in the first place, both because of the struggle of the child and the frustration of the parent. It's not a great sample of the full population. Second, people are way more sensitive to being able to recognize mental illnesses than in the past.

For the past 200 years at least, maybe since forever, every single generation has made this complaint. That the latest technology is performing this giant social experiment that's going to fuck everyone up. It's never been tested, we don't know the consequences, and it's affecting everyone in pretty drastic ways. Over and over, people think the newest technology from the previous generation was fine, but this time it won't be. There is a strong human tendency to look on the past with rose colored glasses, exaggerating the good of the past and the bad of the present. It is very rare for someone to think they had too much technology as a kid, and I expect this trend to just keep going. The next generation is not going to resent the gadgets we gave them. They, like every generation, are going to resent our morals. They are going to feel over-controlled and oppressed. Here you are talking about taking their toys away, when in the end they will feel like you are already taking too much away from them.

Children are people too. Too often they are treated like subhuman, that they can't be allowed to make their own decisions. But to them, they feel like people. Treating them this way makes them feel lonely and isolated, and it causes problems. Of course, you still need to control them when protecting them from serious dangers, but they will learn better in situations where they can experiment. Usually things that cause long term harm also cause short term harm. So if you see problems showing up, then yes you should make adjustments. Many kids do have a harder time controlling their emotions after spending long periods in front of screen, and that's a pretty good reason to make them reduce their usage. It really depends on the kid and the situation though.

Yes, the frequent technology use is shaping their brains. Children are adapting to the technology, and will be much better suited to it than our generation. We keep changing to better fit our technology, just as our technology keeps changing to better fit us. They will be able to do things that we can't, just as we can do things they can't. We have skills they won't develop because technology will do it for them. You lose skills because you don't use them, but that usually means you also really don't need them. They will have different brains for sure, which is what happens every generation. We are becoming more cyborg all the time. If you don't, you get left behind. Mostly, I think this is a good thing. Technology is getting more intense all the time, and we need to keep up with it. Unless you want AI to pass us up and take over. We need specialists in order to keep up and continue to guide it. Using AI changes your brain. But I see this as necessary. They are constantly connected, and are being better wired to work within the hive mind. Embrace the hive. It controls them, but they also control it. Symbiosis.

In summary, 6-7

[on the rocks]

I think the techno boogie man is fundamentally different this time because of how the algorithms in all these apps function to maximize user engagement.  In a young person with still-developing executive function, they don't have the same ability to recognize how they are being manipulated.
To put it bluntly, big tech is grooming children to become cyborgs because it's profitable.

If it has the unfortunate side effect of more adolescents killing themselves, that's just the cost of doing business to these fucks.

No one was suiciding because of a video game or TV show or rock album in those past moral panics (despite the vain attempt to connect the two).  But kids are definitely killing themselves because of the mind-fucking they're getting from the constant barrage of FOMO and digital bullying from the damn phone.
There are real consequences here, not just hypothetical.
Hell, just today, Denmark banned anyone under age 15 from social media.  Not sure how effective that'll be, but it shows just how serious some people are taking this.

[Shady]

u dont think its less related to tehcnology, but parents drug and alcohol abuse?

Read my post carefully and slowly. I mention technology as ONE of the FACTORS, alongside parent and school pressures. But I do think that technology makes it worse. When life is rough, children tend to drown themselves in fantasy, and technology encourage that. I was born in a generation that enjoy childhood without technology, and teenhood and adulthood completely in technology, and I have witnessed how it further deteriorate my already damaged and fragile mentality. Now all I see is kids having their mentality fried from the get go, which is not normal, man.

First off, to address the OP, kids that get tutoring are more likely to have mental illness than ones that don't. It's a common reason why the parents want more help for their child in the first place, both because of the struggle of the child and the frustration of the parent. It's not a great sample of the full population. Second, people are way more sensitive to being able to recognize mental illnesses than in the past.

For the past 200 years at least, maybe since forever, every single generation has made this complaint. That the latest technology is performing this giant social experiment that's going to fuck everyone up. It's never been tested, we don't know the consequences, and it's affecting everyone in pretty drastic ways. Over and over, people think the newest technology from the previous generation was fine, but this time it won't be. There is a strong human tendency to look on the past with rose colored glasses, exaggerating the good of the past and the bad of the present. It is very rare for someone to think they had too much technology as a kid, and I expect this trend to just keep going. The next generation is not going to resent the gadgets we gave them. They, like every generation, are going to resent our morals. They are going to feel over-controlled and oppressed. Here you are talking about taking their toys away, when in the end they will feel like you are already taking too much away from them.

Children are people too. Too often they are treated like subhuman, that they can't be allowed to make their own decisions. But to them, they feel like people. Treating them this way makes them feel lonely and isolated, and it causes problems. Of course, you still need to control them when protecting them from serious dangers, but they will learn better in situations where they can experiment. Usually things that cause long term harm also cause short term harm. So if you see problems showing up, then yes you should make adjustments. Many kids do have a harder time controlling their emotions after spending long periods in front of screen, and that's a pretty good reason to make them reduce their usage. It really depends on the kid and the situation though.

Yes, the frequent technology use is shaping their brains. Children are adapting to the technology, and will be much better suited to it than our generation. We keep changing to better fit our technology, just as our technology keeps changing to better fit us. They will be able to do things that we can't, just as we can do things they can't. We have skills they won't develop because technology will do it for them. You lose skills because you don't use them, but that usually means you also really don't need them. They will have different brains for sure, which is what happens every generation. We are becoming more cyborg all the time. If you don't, you get left behind. Mostly, I think this is a good thing. Technology is getting more intense all the time, and we need to keep up with it. Unless you want AI to pass us up and take over. We need specialists in order to keep up and continue to guide it. Using AI changes your brain. But I see this as necessary. They are constantly connected, and are being better wired to work within the hive mind. Embrace the hive. It controls them, but they also control it. Symbiosis.

In summary, 6-7

I respect this perspective, and nice reference at the end lmao. I guess I'm being overdramatic with this issue.

[And I Love Her]

I'm going to try and take both Lillab and OTR's sides.

Kids are adapting to modern circumstances, and they will be well-adjusted for the world to come (because that world will be made up of kids like them). At the same time, what do modern circumstances call for?
- Minimal physical activity
- Elite digital skills
- Low-Moderate in-person skills

There must be a reason that teenage sex and young adult sex rates are down (while we're probably in the most sexually liberal time in history). There must be a reason that childhood obesity rates are through the roof. My hypothesis is that in-person skills have been a casuality of the digital age. Kids lack physical stamina because they don't need it. They lack social charisma because their world is mostly online. Naturally, this means that dating is outside of their normal skillset. Add that to the warped messaging they get online, and this is the result.

Edit: I forgot to tie everything back to the discussion. When you think about the above, it's no wonder they seem socially inept to us. That doesn't mean kids are suffering en masse from clinical conditions. Instead, it means that they're losing they in-person social skills we believe to be indispensible.

But with that said: Every bad thing with kids is OUR fault. We are the generation that's raising them. If we wanted them to develop different skills, we should have put them in a different environment.

[TooLittleTime]

"(while we're probably in the most sexually liberal time in history)."

Probably not. But that is another discussion possibly not worth having, as many definitions would need clarification and it would certainly not apply to all classes of people within a culture. But I would still say, nope.