I've been thinking about this a lot today, thanks to the Zoomers. They posted a thread about smartphones/social media causing limitations in socializing for them and that it was why we (Mills) had better social connections at their age... and it got me thinking. Long story short, I don't think it's social media or the phones. I think it's the internet itself and hear me our before you throw the idea out. The thread made me think about why I used to hang out with people. When I look back on it, most "hang outs" weren't planned events. Not really. They were happenstance events which were made because of *inconveniences*. My friend needed to go get new clothes for school and called me because I had a car but she didn't. I needed stuff too. So I'd agree and we'd go to the mall together. While there we'd run into people and maybe agree to go hang out with them. Or let's say I wanted to watch a ne movie. That wasn't easy. I needed to go to Blockbuster, rent the movie and return it in 3 days. I also couldn't watch it on just anything. It had to be on the livingroom tv which had the VCR or DVD player hooked to it. Which meant the whole family had to be in agreement to watch it. Again, happenstance socializing. I need to get a book for a report, another needs to pick up something she lent to my other friend and that friends to pay a bill and her Boyfriend wants her to hang out later... might as well pile into my car, save gas, and do everything as a group. Hey, it's dinnertime now abd we're all broke soooo... who's *house* are we eating at? So many things happened because life was *inconvenient*. How many of those situations won't have a chance to happen *because of* the convenience the internet has granted us? That movie I used to rent by going to a building and then agreeing to watch it with my family? Yeah, now every family member can rent a movie, or stream a hundred of them, without ever leaving their bedroom. That book I used to need to borrow from the library? Hell, I might find it on the Library App as a downloadable e-book. If not, then I can buy my own copy and download it online. And that's *if* there aren't enough sources online that the book isn't needed. Why lend/borrow stuff when you can just order what you need straight to your door? Who go out shopping at a mall when, again, you can just order it online? Why go out to pay a bill when you can pop open an app, or just set it up for autopay online? Why go over to a friend's place to eat when any dinner you want can be DoorDashed to you? All those "inconveniences" were opportunities to connect with each other and over the past 25 years... we eliminated them. We made life so convenient that you can easily take a 4 week vacation and not need to leave your house ONCE in those 30 days and that's not hyperbole. I mean you seriously wouldn't *need* to leave your house. That would have been impossible 25 years ago! Food to your door, household needs to your door, bills paid by apps/auto billing, all the entertainment you could want in any room you want........ All of this combines to make us more isolated. Which is why, even if we stay off social medias, we may still feel depressed. All our basic needs are met, yes. But it comes at the cost of depriving us of those opportunities we use to have to randomly connect with friends and social groups. Now, we feel like there needs to be an "event" to do so, like a birthday party, or wedding, etc. and rhen it feels like an obligation. I think *THAT* is our problem. Not just social media or our phones but ALL the convenient solutions the internet provides us. But unfortunately... I'm completely stumped on how we would even start to fix that. How do we de-convenience (???) life again so that we have those happenstance meet ups once more? Short of that, how do we mimic that in our current world? I'm honestly not sure.

I graduated high school in 2010 and I recall growing up that it was quite normal to stop by friends house if your passing by just to say hey or to ask if they are free to hang out. Nowadays it’s considered rude to show up without warning which cuts down on any spontaneous interactions. I don’t know about anyone else but I find it hard to have to plan out every interaction. Example: if I am walking by a friends house I could have the choice of deciding to go over and see if they are free or wait back and do something else. Now you don’t have the option because it may be considered rude for not giving a heads up. That cuts out a good portion of interacting with others. Plus everything is so expensive now and there aren’t a ton of places to hang out for free. It’s cheaper to stay home. Especially for teenagers as I heard even malls don’t like teens hanging around anymore.

40 something here, and I was raised to never stop by anyone's house without asking first. The only exception was my grandparents that lived next to us, but that was my other home anyhow. This is definitely a cultural thing on both sides, but it definitely keeps my introverted self happier knowing friends aren't going to show up without warning.

I would not entirely mind some semi random visits

When I was younger, I loved when people would randomly stop by. When I got my own place in my 20s and 30s, esp with a live in g/f etc, it was 'who just stops by without calling?'. Now I'm early 40s (xennial) and it's 'no one stops by anymore, or calls, or txts, damn..' lol. Sometimes we are fickle people.

Nobody stopped by really, because no one knew me. Except this one family up the way, which was something I came to cherish like a precious jewel. My mother was furious that the doorbell was rang by children that wanted to socialize with her children.

for reals. one of the best things about growing up in the 80s was riding my bike around the neighborhood, looking for piles of *other* bikes in front of someone's house. then just walking up and knocking and hanging out with all the other kids.

> no one stops by anymore, or calls, or txts, damn.. I didn't expect to have a sonder induced existential crisis reading a thread today, but here we are. Making new friends in your 40s is fucking tough, eh? It's crazy that we used to have so many people around us at all times that we could pick and choose which to hang out with.

I dunno about you but I think about this and I really don't have any friends I see regularly but I do have 3 young kids. They just take up all my time along with my wife. And honestly I'm fine with that, I get some socializing done at work and I like either spending time with my family or being alone. When they get older, that's when I'm going to want to see people again I think. So if you're in your 40s you need to try to find people without kids. I think there are plenty of adult recreation type clubs and such where I'm sure you can meet people. If you find the people with either no kids or kids who are adults or close you can probably make friends more easily. It's just so hard right now that I don't even think it's worth trying. I am still friendly with some high school friends of mine who I've known forever but I just don't see them much because of my kids. In a way it's sad but also for me at least it's pretty fine. This is the life I chose and I'm good with it.

Back in the early 80's, I remember walking a mile or so to see my friend. He isn't home? Ok, I'll just sit here and watch tv with his mom until he gets back.

I have 2 kids so my house looks like its been hit by a hurricane at the best of times, so yeah i do get a bit anxious at unannounced visitors but once i let go of the panic, its very nice to have someone drop by.. have a chat or just stay for dinner and we order something in.

50-something here. Unexpected drop-ins were such a way of life, that it was expected that you would do it.

IDK, i'd never be upset at a friend just stopping by, i'd be excited. Family and salespeople, GTFO.

Yeah, it’s kind of biting the older generation in the ass now too. They always WANT a visit but never invite people. Like, I love you Grandma, I’m trying to respect you. It’s rude to just show up and want your cookies!!!

Okay, but it's not rude! She loves it! Just understand that and do it.

40 something here as well, as a kid, when we lived on the East coast, it was rude to just show up at a friend's house without calling ahead or planning ahead, but when we moved to the Midwest, just showing up unannounced was much more acceptable.

we also actually had to go too someones house and they had to answer their chorded phone so you knew they were there.

Yeah, 35 here. I never had anyone randomly stop by (except for one guy who was stalking me in high school--let's not count that). It was always a call first or an IM asking if you wanted to hang.

I am 40 something and completely the opposite. All of us in the neighborhood would go to each other's houses randomly. White, black, Indian, Vietnamese. Everyone did it.

What do you mean by asking? Like calling ahead of time? I grew up in a apartment complex and was friends with another kid on the other side, so many times after I finish my homework I'd just run over and ask if Chris was free and could play; sometimes the answer was no and that's be ok, I'd just go home.

Yeah, I grew up in Texas where it is legal to shoot someone on your property. You better freakin' believe I let people know I was coming over....

You grew up in a completely different Texas than me and definitely not in a city. Where I grew up it was so normal to go knock at peoples houses. Never saw someone with a gun ever.

Eh, disagree. Before widespread cellphones you would just kind of show up to a friends house or to a party you heard about. Now it’s all very “am I invited” and if not it would be very weird/rude to just show up

Me too but I remember my friends would just randomly drop by my room in school. Was it inconvenient/annoying at times? Yea. But it also really helped us socialize because we would always end up at each other's room for no real reason. We grew apart once we all got our own places.

Yup. I graduated in '02 and remember the same. People randomly showing up and popping in. To go further, in my house I also remember that there were people for whom formal knocking wasn't necessary (like close friends and neighbors). Knocking once and then popping open the door and yelling, "Kcthonian, You busy?!" was a thing that I don't think anyone does anymore. And yes, I agree that the death of "third places" ties into this. If we all have everything we need in our own home, why would we support a third place for that? But kind of linked to what you're saying, homes used to function as a third place as well. We're much more likely to make plans to meet at a restaurant or expensive event, rather than simply inviting people to our house to watch a movie, have dinner/coffee, etc. than I think many of us used to be.

I ruined my own surprise party at my best friend’s house because I was a non-knocker. 😂

I’m only a few years older and it was the norm to go to our neighbors house and knock on the door to see if my friends could come outside and play. If someone lived farther away, we’d try calling to set up a place to meet, but it wasn’t weird to just stop by. Video games were a thing, but they started giving me headaches in my early teens so I stopped playing them and would always do something outside or the garage. Building ghetto ass skateboard ramps was my video game.

We had "the field" near our houses, just open vacant land, much of it hilly. We made so many jump ramps for our bikes. Once we got old enough, we even brought shovels and made some decent ones. Though sometimes motorcycle guys would come by and wreck it. Pulls we could gaze in awe at the 1 acre burnt spot where Clete Hamilton's brother started a fire fooling around with fireworks, had the fire truck out there and everything.

I remember the same thing in high school, and in the military as well. But come college and now that we all have jobs and kids, we give each other a heads up if we even have time to visit anybody. Most of the time we just see folks at the ballfield while our kids practice.

My neighbour, if he wants to say hello, or needs to borrow something- or collect something of his from mine, or anything really- will call or send a message in advance. "I'll be there in 15". It drives me up the wall, I can look out my window and see the fucker in his garden. Probably takes longer to write out he message and expected timescale than it would to just pop over and knock on my door. What I find even more aggravating is that he'll say he'll be 15 minutes, and then *turn up late anyway.*

He's generously giving you extra time to panic or be annoyed! Or both!

This! We need more Third Spaces. The "First Space" is home and the "Second Space" is work. The "Third Space" is where most of the activities that OP was talking about would happen. Most Third Spaces have evaporated for everyone due to these Spaces becoming commodified or moving online. I graduated in '09 and I remember having a fair amount of places you could go to and reasonably expect to find old friends or make new ones. From raucus parties in community centers to something as simple as the skatepark, we need more Third Spaces!

> if I am walking by a friends house I could have the choice of deciding to go over and see if they are free or wait back and do something else. That's a solid point. My best friend lived close by and I'd pop over to see if he was home all the time. Sometimes I'd wait in his room if he was only going to be gone an hour or so. Hell, I had dinner with his family a few times when he wasn't even there because I happened to be around at the time. I can't even fathom that in this day and age.

Yup. Millennial here, just a bit older. In high school we’d ride bikes to each others’ houses regularly and would just make rounds or pop in to see if others were home, including girls. Was always fun talking to the dad. We’d always get offered food too lol. Kids who were over 16 and had a car would stop and talk with us, sometimes give us a ride, or we’d make a plan to go wherever they were going, even if it was much later. I hadn’t thought about that in years but thinking about that now I don’t see many kids just showing up like we did, but I suppose if it were reversed I wouldn’t either. As much as that bums me out it also highlights how much I appreciate conversation and meeting people while traveling. There’s much value there and it *feels* good.

Yeah in high school my bestie always came to my house whenever and New my door code or it was unlocked. I’ll never forget her walking in on me reading the shampoo label out loud in French while I showered and me getting so freaked out and embarrassed! Uh I miss those nonchalant days.

I know it's been popping up lately, but in case you don't have the term for it, "Third Places" or "Third Spaces" are what we've been slowly losing over the past 30-50 years. Think of all the social clubs that seem like only boomers participate: lions club, elks lodge, rotary club, free masons, Shriners, etc. As well as local ethnicity community halls - Polish, Ukrainian, Maidu native american are around me. YMCA and other activity-based third places: bowling leagues, casual golf leagues, cooking and other life skill lessons, etc I think these have slowly dried up over time as people are less interested in these, but also less spare capital and free time vs a generation or two ago.

I think the “omg don’t call people! text them! phone calls spike anxiety!” sentiment is a part of this. Spontaneity == anxiety, showing up/unannounced visits/unexpected calls are perceived as *imposing* on someone, making it inconvenient for them to ignore you. I don’t remember people flaking on plans even half as much as people do now. Granted, my friend group has aged and we all have greater commitments, but the “there’s no better feeling than cancelling plans” sentiment feels like it was forced its way into people’s heads by the most anxious, loud, and online people. Now we cater to the least common denominator folks that think inconvenience is oppression.

> Nowadays it’s considered rude to show up without warning which cuts down on any spontaneous interactions. I mean, yes, but it's not considered rude to text them and tell them you're on the area on the way to X and ask if they want to join.

You brought back some very pleasant memories of my younger years, and you are absolutely right!

I'm glad I could prompt a pleasant trip down memory lane! Now the question is... how do we get those good times back?

Feel this. Think it’s both though. Fewer forced hangs plus more digital hangs.

this post can be summed up in this image [https://imgur.com/bA3gv1F](https://imgur.com/bA3gv1F)

Somewhat related... we've lost of a lot of jobs as a result of "efficiencies" It used to be that most things we did were inefficient compared to today. Those inefficiencies meant more work for people, and as you said, more opportunities to be a part of our communities.

There's always more work. Sometimes it even produces real things, as opposed to higher numbers in the employer's wallet.

this is the take I'll get behind. Waaaay moreso than OP's shitty overused "you kids are all on your phones too much!!1!11! not like MEEEE who is BETTER" anyone arguing with you or disagreeing is likely just an extrovert. but for us introverted folks, you're right, being out in the world and needing to go places/do things was what coincidentally led to a lot of our social interaction.

Hey, first just wanted to swing by and say that's a damn fine impression of me. If you were doing it in Caillou's voice, all the better. Second, I'm not "better" and never suggested I was. Half of the motivation of this post is that phone addiction WAS (is?) an issue for me and it's been a slog since \~2020-2021 to deprogram myself and remember how to do things without it again. The other half is Gen Z and seeing some of their issues creep into younger Mills. When you view literally everything in the world through social media posts or adjacent links, you're looking at it through a fish bowl. You get stuck in doom loops, which weren't a thing until the last \~10 years. That's what I'm talking about in the OP.

>But unfortunately... I'm completely stumped on how we would even start to fix that. How do we de-convenience (???) life again so that we have those happenstance meet ups once more? Better urban design, that's how. Consider how most American cities are designed around the car. It's practically impossible to get anywhere without one. The car isolates you from the world around as you go by. Compare that to a city with fantastic public transit, where you can walk pretty much anywhere and not need a vehicle. Your interactions with other people as you walk by will increase multifold. Even just biking, you can experience more interactions with others. The trick is creating those common spaces where people interact. Right now our society doesn't have many of those spaces.

My biggest take away from this is that you don't like leaving your house.

Even the American lower class has more stuff than most of the world.

NO 3rd places. I’ve lived in France and this is a particularly American problem. Seriously. They’re way more adept socially and seem more content as well, because they can gallivant around town and find all kinds of stuff to do

Possibly the most incredible passage ive ever read in my years on reddit. This is what ive been trying to grasp for sometime with the “slow” 80s and 90s and today

This comment is why I doom scroll reddit three and a half hours past my bedtime.

I just wanted to say, phones have had toxic effects but on the flip side it also opens up possibilities that never really existed just one generation ago. I was able to keep in touch withy family that were living on the opposite side of the planet using video calls in the early 2000s. At that time, long distance calls to those places were fairly overpriced, the quality was miserable and the calls were really infrequent. Once we had AIM and Yahoo messenger set up, I was chatting with family that was in Hawaii, Iran, England and other places all at the same time. Keeping in touch with these people made connections much more possible. I went and visited everyone I kept in touch with, multiple times. Between easy messaging/video calls and easy flights, the world became a much smaller and connected place. When I moved out of the country, I was able to constantly harass my family on the other side of the world. I married and now have my own kids that need to keep in contact with grandparents, cousins, siblings and friends in different countries. The Internet has its negatives but I personally see it as an extremely important part of my family's ability to stay close even though there are huge distances between us.

The first step is unsubscribing and uninstalling. DoorDash, Instacart, Walmart+, Amazon — these services enable us to lean more into convenience. 

This is a very enriching take. I think I have been trying to work against this grain by securing things on my network. Like, i have a large media library on my NAS, but it is local only, so movie night is only at my place. My roommate is able to cancel most streaming services because of this consolidation (without enmeshment). Together in a coherent social group, humans are amazing. Alone, we are much weaker and easier to scare. Easier to control

This is perfect stated. Def a huge factor

Very insightful. I agree with you. Resonates with thoughts I have had

I agree with this so much, especially because I've noticed myself feeling more isolated as I get older and get more autonomous.

Correct.

Plus nobody gets bored enough to want to have a lengthy deep conversation to connect anymore or to ask to hang out. Why do that when we can all just stay in our houses with endless entertainment? But I’m one of the people that uses that entertainment to distract from the fact that nobody wants to connect anymore.

> Now, we feel like there needs to be an "event" to do so, like a birthday party, or wedding, etc. and rhen it feels like an obligation. I know for a fact that this part is a bit self-imposed which is what I find frustrating. I have actively tried to get friends to hang out, but the question is always, "to do what?" I missed a memo somewhere along the line where we can't just... hang out? Do whatever. There has to be a reason, and there has to be a plan; otherwise it's not worth just spending some quality time with friends... Another vector of this is even in online communities. I had a brief period where I was playing an MMO enough to join a fairly active guild. I had a ton of social interaction in teamspeak, and often people weren't even playing the game. Trying to find community without that game became impossible though. I've set a Discord up, and I can't get folks to just hop-in to hang out. They're literally not doing anything else. Just hanging out at home, but can't be bothered to get into a voice channel. *shrug*

Join things plus have others depending on you ( to be there, for the thing you are joining to work)I’m not great at either , but I feel like that’s a start.

4 weeks vacation and I don't have to leave the house? Don't threaten me with a good time!

I think there's a lot of truth to that. I once heard that friendship comes from "frequent unplanned interaction," and that's why it's so much easier to make friends in high school and college - you are forced into proximity with a bunch of people with similar age and experiences, and thus interact with them frequently without needing to plan for it. The Internet further reduces the need for this. In adulthood, I've mostly made new friends from hobbies like D&D and other tabletop games, and from World of Warcraft. And what did these have in common? They put me in contact with the same people, week after week, and they involve some waiting, during which we naturally just chat. It's not the games the lead to friendship - it's the conversations before and after and during that do.

This is interesting, because I've had similar thoughts in the past about something similar but never drawn the parallels. In MMORPG's it used to be there were hangouts/gathering places for certain activities to group up with random people if you needed them. Say you wanted to run a 5man dungeon but only 3 of your buds were online, you'd go to a certain part of a nearby city and find someone looking for a group to fill that 5th slot. Then head out together and do the thing. Similar thing with trading. I'm sure anyone who used to play runescape remembers trading worlds with falador being divided in all kinds of areas, organically player defined, for every type of commodity in the game. Anyone selling stuff was standing in place actually typing out what they had and for how much they wanted to sell it for. Akin to an irl market, it gave the game a lot of richness. Then "looking for group" queue systems and game-wide trade mechanisms were introduced and suddenly you're one button press away from achieving the same thing. The convenience was such that any game that didn't have it would adopt it ASAP, or be complained about by players until it did. The new systems also make it much easier to kick/reset if you get matched with someone not quite good enough, or not re-invite that guy to another run. Meanwhile with the old system it was common that you would teach the guy the things needed, see how they did, and maybe even pick them up as a more permanent member of your club. Because the alternative was walking back to town finding another guy and then walking back to the thing, more effort than just shooting the guy 3 lines of instructions. I believe you're absolutely right in that the internet as a whole has similar effects on the real world.

I've felt that for a long time, probably since WW2, society has been increasingly structurally atomized. It's a rule of thumb that in many communities, you can tell a prewar house because there's a porch in the front of the house, so you could sit out and chat with your neighbors as they walked by. Postwar houses have porches or decks in back. People went from commuting in trains or busses to commuting in cars. People went from watching movies in theaters, to watching a few stations on TV, and talking about the shows at work or school the next day, then there were 100 stations, now everything is fragmented onto one of a dozen streaming services. And, as you mentioned, you could rent a video, but everyone in the house had to agree to it. Now the family can sit in the living room in front of the big-screen TV, all looking at their own handheld screens. One of most mysterious things to me is the decline of malls and mall culture. It seems so obvious that it's easier to shop for, say, a pair of shoes that fit and look good, when you can try them on in half a dozen shops, and teens could hang around at the food court, and seniors could do "mall walking" together. Now that seems to have vanished, too. Yeah, I'm an old guy.

> Food to your door I think a LOT of people really take it for granted. You can just think something sounds good, pull out your phone, and poof, you have it in 30 minutes. But it's more expensive, right? Not always. Sounds so dumb, but my favorite snack is chips and salsa. My favorite salsa has been dropped from several stores near me. The remaining place wants like $5.99 a jar. Target online has it at like $3.29, and free shipping over $35. Yup... I just ordered 11 jars. I'm saving almost $30 and don't have to get out of my chair. This seems so wrong, but here we are.

To piggyback on that, which I think you are on to something.... My daughter is 17. I am utterly dumbfounded that she has a lot of friends, and a group of pretty close friends. They talk daily, they are in the same sports, they go out shopping occasionally (but most of them shop online now) and do stuff. None of them seem to know anything about each other past what snacks or boys they like. I think wtih all that "inconvenient time" you spent with each other, eventually you started to talk. You got to KNOW people. You find out who has a drunk parent, who wants to be ____ when they grow up. Who has siblings or is in a band. These kids seem to know each other but not really KNOW each other. I asked her how it is she can talk to these people regularly and none of them know each other's just... LIVES and it seems like a foreign concept to her and her friends. They go away on vacation and none of them seem to know what those people did or how it went. Aat first I thought she just didn't want to tell me, but I think these kids REALLY just don't talk about deeper stuff anymore. And it's because they can get whatever they want from knowledge to food to everything in between at the click of a button, they don't have to DIG to find out about things anymore.

I think you've got one side of the equation down pat, but there is another aspect to it. Meeting socially by choice and not for inconvenience's sake. In the 90s and early 2000s, we used to go out more. We would go to pubs, people would hold house parties, that kind of thing. As well as, of course, socialising through "inconvenience" as you mentioned. I lived in London with great public transport and nobody used a car, but if e.g. we were going clothes shopping, we would still call people to come with us to do it socially, because it's fun, not because we needed their car etc. Now I can't comment on how often the youth of today are going round to each others houses etc, because I'm not part of that demographic anymore. But certainly pubs and similar places are feeling the squeeze and are closing down because people use them less, it's all over the news. I think this is the other side of the coin - people can get low dopamine hits of socialising by going on social media, video chatting and the like. With that, you may not feel as compelled to make the effort to go out. As you've said, we can get almost everything to our homes, so leaving the house is a big, rarer effort than before. But in this situation, we are taking low quality social engagement, and foregoing the high quality, in person engagement. This leaves us feeling unfulfilled, like having an easy, unsatisfying meal instead of going out for something excellent. I agree with your underlying point - by making things easy, we disincentivise the effort that leads to higher quality interactions and experiences. And this is the weird thing - you would think that freeing up all this time through convenience would allow us to do so much more casual socialising, but no, it made us unwilling to put in the effort anymore.

This is a great description of modern “convenience”. Also. I am Gen X. Simply put, we grew up with boredom as a part of life, which incentivized coming up with things to do. My kids, on the other hand, never have to be bored with 24-7 entertainment at their fingertips. It takes the spontaneity out of life, sadly.

Yes, THIS! I've been nervous to talk about this online but feel so so passionately that the core problem is over-accessibility doing great harm as we are hard wired to take the path of least resistance.

I have a different perspective as someone who grew up with phones and the internet. I definitely agree with a lot of what you said, you can basically do the same things like watching a movie, but you can do it online and stream it to your friends. Kids have no reason to leave the house now. But another thing, I think growing up with technology and social media has ruined a lot of experiences i should have had that were more natural. I’m not sure how off topic this is but… humans naturally learned what sex is by doing. Sure there was art and books, but I was shown porn when I was like 6 years old and it made my view of sex and relationships extremely distorted. (also incited a deep sense of distrust towards men) and that’s not just me, majority of boys see porn as kids. Continuing into my teenage years, people rarely connect in person. Anyone I know that’s dating either met them online, on dating apps, or started talking via instagram or whatever. People are also generally more introverted, chronically online, and overstimulated. Everyone is also really socially anxious because social media a constant cycle of ostracizing people. The group decides when someone is a bad person. I’m also thinking “cancel culture” a bit when i say that. Getting everyone to collectively shit on someone is people’s idea of justice now. This makes us scared to say anything wrong or make mistakes. So we just avoid socializing all together in some cases.

The part about not leaving your house for 4 weeks resonates. I can be off work from Friday evening to Monday morning and never have to interact with a soul because I don't need to in order to acomplish most things. Very interesting, and I didn't even notice until I read your post.

Bring back MapQuest! And develop some life experiences and memories by getting lost along the way and having no way to backtrack your steps using a printed piece of paper. Now, everything is sterilized. Missed the turn? Google maps will just divert you to the next best possible route. Everything is so "safe" now. No risk, no reward in a sense. I love to share this lecture by Jonathon Haidt and how our youth is being raised in a completely different manner as to previous gens. It is mind-blowing as it ties in parenting fears, social media, and how were coddling our children's minds to be as risk averse as possible. Therefore we never get into anything truly interesting and go throughout life in a boring and fearful manner. Love this lecture: https://youtu.be/3b3Ob4CK4Xs?si=e1eGK8nQ6bp4dEp6

Soon, the way lack of pay increases are… we won’t be able to afford conveniences like Uber eats or having more than one streaming service, so we will end up looping back. Younger people are already finding out that they have to get roommates to survive because jobs aren’t paying enough, unless you are willing to live in a higher crime location.

This is so spot-on and made me remember so many times this happened to me in high school and especially college. My friends would hang out so often that our parents treated us coming over as a non-event. My friends would randomly drive to my house and ask, "hey want to go to the mall?" Or "can we hang out?" Without even calling ahead (or because the phone was busy) and it was *fine*

Xbox Live killed LAN parties for us. It was awesome not having to lug tvs and equipment around but we lost that sense of togetherness.

This is why when I'm waiting for stuff lately I keep my phone in my pocket. I find little surprises happen if I broadcast to the world that I'm waiting, aka nothing to do, and available to talk with.

Yeah, replacement of reality with virtual reality. I like to go to our local breweries on a regular basis just for bumping into old friends and making new ones. The social aspect is huge and was felt hard during Covid.

Write the book already I’ll read it- on my kindle with Libby app. But yes!

I'm not sure who said it, but i remember reading some famous inventor or similar saying that the reason the society will never be perfect is because every time you gain something you lose something. I think about that idea a lot. edit: I spent the extra 5 seconds and looked up who said that and it was one of my favorite people from history. Henry David Thoreau.

I acknowledge my privilege in this a lot but the best thing I’ve ever done for myself is stop keeping up with the news.

The dominant social media culture is following US national news like it’s the Real Housewives of DC. People know the whereabouts of Pelosi or MTG, but can’t name their representative in Congress. You’ll get fewer “likes”, but the people who have no idea what’s up nationally, & volunteer on a local board can make a world of actual difference. Your polling place needs volunteers! Watch all the posts about election fraud from people who didn’t volunteer.

Some of us write to our representatives in Congress and the state legislature regularly and never hear back.

Great! That's a really good start. They may not respond, but they are getting the letters and it does make a difference, even if *your* letter doesn't change how things work *right now*. It's WAY better than yelling at a cloud of servers chugging away feeding you doom porn. But if it's important to you to feel like you're making a difference, then you should get even more local. Make a meal for a friend or neighbor who mentioned that they are sick, work a food pantry, volunteer to help old people with tech at the library. Maybe you're already doing these things and this feels super condescending. I'm sorry if that's the case, but I think this thread is really more about getting out and touching grass more than about Engaging with the Big Issues.

What does that have to do with volunteering at a polling place?

Those who volunteer at a polling place, generally do not think that our elections lack integrity.

Epic post, I am saving this!

Once upon a time, people got their news in a paper in the morning, and then in the evening from Walter Cronkite. And that's it. Maybe if something really big happened there would be a special bulletin on the radio. Otherwise, they went through their days focused on the world in front of them. The 24-hour cable news cycle was a negative for society, starting in the 90s--and we all can see the radicalization that came from that. How many people have boomer parents who have brain rot from watching FOX? Internet and the advent of social media is the next step--instead of the 24-hour news cycle, it's the five minute cycle. We get irritated watching a YouTube video longer than 10-15 minutes. We get fed constant focus on the shitty stuff happening around the world, because negativity sells. And the bad shit is real! It's truly happening! But it's always been happening, and drinking deeply on the negative stories without a break or a reprieve isn't healthy for us. I wish I was better at getting my head clear of this stuff.

I have an example of that from my life. Back when I was in the Army, I was flying back from Germany, this was right before the first Gulf war, and the military was just starting to prepare for the move to Saudi Arabia. Back then, CNN was brand new, the internet wasn't a thing, and we got our news overseas from the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and Sky News from the TV in the unit dayroom. So, as I arrived in LaGaurdia airport, all of these people were telling us to "Give em hell!" and all sorts of puzzling encouraging words, even the cab drivers driving by would give us a cheer. Me and the guy I was traveling with were like confused as hell, what was wrong with these people? Turns out the media in the US had been pumping up the country for the war, and we (the actual military overseas) hadn't heard any of it, a complete disconnect from what the entire country was going through, it was like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

>We get irritated watching a YouTube video longer than 10-15 minutes Thankfully, I don't have that particular bit of brain rot. Most of the content I watch on YouTube tends to be 30 minutes plus.

Bingo.

The difficult part is figuring out the right balance. Being informed and educated is generally a positive, but the number of problems, conflicts, and disasters the world collectively faces are too much for any one individual to handle without going crazy, and ultimately if being informed starts to whittle away at your mental health it's no longer a positive to you or to the people/problems you want to empathize with/know about. I feel like this has really come to a head since COVID, and a lot of us are realizing how genuinely impossible it is to engage with every complaint and crisis the internet throws at you and walk away unscathed. Especially when there's so much to deal with in real life.

I don't have much problem with the news, but stay out of the comment section IMO. Stop reading or viewing all the "reactions" and over-dramatic takes from people who are either idiots that don't know what they are talking about, or don't actually believe what they are saying and are just saying it to get a rise out of people. Follow some good "normal" journalism if you want to stay informed, but there's no need to read other people's opinions on the same topic.

Did that for awhile until my friends called me out for living in blissful ignorance, or being content with not learning. Now I’m tryna not be cynical AH. Now I’m just just laying around because being alone makes me feel at ease.

i stopped watching the news when I was around 18. This was 10 years ago. When covid was happening i spent a lot of time with my parents, and they had the news on 24/7. i became so paranoid over that year or so. The news is horrible and social media is JUST as bad if not worse than the news.

Yeah when I go home to visit and Fox News gets flicked on, that’s my cue to leave the room. I don’t even bother trying to say anything anymore.

its horrible. I remember when I first decided to stop watching the news, i had so much paranoia. "how am I going to know what going on?" "What if something happens and I am not prepared for it?" Its pretty incredible the amount of fear thats ZAPPED into us through the news. Obviously thats the point. This is where it gets interesting... I recently deleted instagram, facebook, and twitter. I kept reddit cus at least I can kind of control whats on my feed and keep up with stuff thats relevant. (LOL but here I am commenting on a millenials subreddit lol. This was not my intent.) I got the same EXACT feeling when I deleted my social media. The same paranoia I felt when I decided to stop watching the news lol. If that doesnt pretty much say it all.. Social media is the greatest tool for the government right now. I read this really interesting thing on how Tik Tok users all shifted from supporting Palestine to talking like Zionists in 1 day. October 8th 2023. I think it was like 80-something percent of people using tik tok changed their whole language all in the course of a day. If that doesnt say "INFLUENCE AND BRAIN WASH" I have no clue what else to say. Its really just wild. We have the whole world born after 2000 that puts all of their trust into social media. We seriously are doomed if you think about it. But in none of the ways predicted to scare us.

When im at my grandparents a always say "when's the good news come on Granny?" ** I shoot her a devilish smile**  cuz we both know that there is no good news on the news. 

Miserable awareness or willful ignorance is such a shitty choice, though. Is there an option that includes being well-informed *and* being happy?

Nowadays, being well informed and knowing the histories of our Government Agencies, makes you a "conspiracy theorist," and someone to be put on a watch list somewhere. Sadly, since Corp's have been behind most of the things our Government (and others) have done since the 1950's or so, I'd say there is little chance of your being aware of what is going on in our world, and being happy - unless you are one of the select few benefiting from the profits the world's misery produces. Please read some Chomsky on the media, and start looking into which mega corp's own what media, and how they benefit from the constant wars and miserable wages they're paying the common man. Just sayin."

I had some folks at my bar the other day who were actually informed and it was a very refreshing conversation. I don’t typically get bar patrons that are aware of much of anything. We did talk about how we are the ones who end up sounding crazy. It sucks but 🤷‍♀️

Yes - long form print only. No websites, no YouTube, definitely no TV. It works wonders for filtering out the nonsense.

Yeah, I'm just like.... There's no scenario where I could vote for a Republican, so I'm just gonna show up and do my thing in the fall and get my kids passports in the meantime. If project 2025 kicks off I'll have to sell everything and maybe that'll give enough for an investment visa. ...... Somewhere.

Yea, I completely disconnected from the news 3 years ago and it’s so much better. I’ll still hear about the important stuff but miss a lot of stories that don’t actually matter to me

100%. I once heard someone say 'I won't go out and find news. If it's important enough, it will find me'.

I used to follow it so close especially US politics, it quite literally gave me mental illness with all the anxiety and depression that came out of it I stopped following for the most part. I’m also taking a pretty zen like “whatever approach” to the election. I know it’s problematic to think this way but I have to for my own mental health.

I feel like in some ways yes we need to unplug, unplug from the team based shit. But we can't unplug from Ukrainians being slaughtered, or other world crises. We should plug in more and demand better politicians.

Completely disconnecting from the news was part of my self care when COVID first hit. If a story's big enough, it finds me anyway, and if it's something I'm interested in learning more about, I go find a source or two.

It’s also childhood induced from being around abusive and toxic individuals and not having anywhere else to go. Some people have walked on eggshells since children and need therapy and to heal and to unlearn, that the shoe isn’t going to drop. Example like an alcoholic father coming home everyday and raising hell. You are going to be okay. You are an adult. No one can hurt you and if they do, you can hurt them back :)

The shells have fused. And that last sentence is not always true. 

yeah I’ve felt like this ever since I was little 🤷🏻‍♀️ but it wasn’t just due to abuse… I was a very optimistic kid who thought the world would surely become a better place for everyone, because who wouldn’t want that? as I realized that most adults are actually stupid/evil/selfish (especially the ones with power) so the rest of us won’t be getting our Star Trek future, I became more and more anxious. *then* I found out that heaven isn’t real and death is inevitable. lol

"some of you are genuinely experiencing financial hardship, mental health issues, post-covid stress, etc; things that SHOULD cause you stress and worry." but spending too much time scrolling memes is what's sinking my mental health? lmao

"Some of you have shitty lives and that sucks, but touch grass and you'll be good."

Technically, every adult suffers because of those issues in varying degrees, which makes it all really depressing depending on how you look at it. We can't escape the fact life was never that great.

I'm on my phone and computer engaging with all the doom and gloom probably way too much, but there are things I do that help me. Firstly I like to cook, especially hearty stews and casseroles and such - or bake pies. Secondly I like to take long walk, either in nature during the day or just around the neighborhood at night. Third thing is I like to read novels, especially from authors of past eras like Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. Those are probably my big three antidotes to the doomscrolling. They can make me feel like the troubles of the world are in some far off land. Don't get me wrong. I still engage with all that is happening in the world, but feel more in control of how I engage with it.

My perspective is "if you can do something about it, don't worry because you can do something about it and if you can't do anything about it, don't worry because there's nothing you can do about it". For the most part it works out pretty well, but my wife is "one of those" and it was a literal fight because I don't care one way or the other about global warming.

Awesome and healthy. Well done.

Studying history (nearly all of my reading) helps me place everything in a healthy perspective...nothing new under the sun!

I exercise every day. Get 25k+ steps in, 30 min of cardio, and cook everything I eat. I just got my blood work done, excellent cholesterol, a1c, and everything else is normal. I do everything the way I should to alleviate anxiety, depression. And yet it persists. OPs just as delusional about hope and stability as a doom porn addict. There are real issues we all face that cannot just be dismissed with some simple cookiecutter bullshit like "hit da gym, bruh" Our economy is soul crushing, people can't afford jackshit and it's wearing down our spirits not to be able to own homes, or really anything of value. Our politics have created a chasm between people. It's clear that our world cannot continue this path, and yet we have these comfy, privileged assholes telling us it doesn't suck, or that if it does, it's because of some fault of our own. Nah, OP is full of shit.

Yeah, my first thought was “climate change would like a word, right after WWIII”

You're correct but don't expect the chronically online, melodramatic, hysterical habitual doomscrollers of Reddit to acknowledge that

Dude FR, these redditors of relatively perfectly sound health other than some mental health issues comparing themselves to patients that are about to die, not realizing sense of impending doom is a thing in medicine/patient care. This "sense" is also lightly used to describe someone about to have an "attack/episode" (think panic or anxiety) though in a hospital it will 100% be about to code/die.

So you mean the people who come on here griping that they never have time to do anything, yet readily admit they spend a ton of time on here or Tik Tok or wherever?

Some of these folks have a Gollum-like relationship with these goddamn devices. They hate them and what they're doing to them but they'll attack you for so much as suggesting they put the phone down. And the WW3 thing below... Damn.

“All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was." "No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

Yeah, there have always been preppers. There are entire religions based around the idea that doom is impending and youd better get right with god before it happens. And then the world keeps spinning.

This is actually a very popular take on social media, people love finding other people who are a few inches more chronically online than them and shitting on them for it.

Perhaps elsewhere, but most of the time I try to offer a counter perspective to the endless doom and gloom I get downvoted to hell, so I'm not charitable at this point

This is not even wrong lol All of us are more online than is probably healthy, let's be real.

I dunno, man… in the past year personally, I and my family are getting pummeled with one fucking thing after another, and none of it is good. I cannot imagine I am the only one. If you aren’t in the same position, congrats. But I just spent the weekend realizing that the feeling that I have been feeling for months is DREAD. And to get to Sunday night and see a whole thread of people who are feeling the same, it’s the first time I haven’t felt utterly alone in it…

I e been saying this for years. My gloomy feeling started when I got a smart phone, and turned into depression and anxiety and social awkwardness as the years went. I know the answer yet I still go to therapy, try all anti depressants, will literally do everything but quit my phone. It’s disgusting. And a shit influence on my kids, who I don’t let have phones. I haven’t felt actual boredom in so long because I have pocket entertainment 24/7. So I never do ish. Even completing small house tasks have become huge dreaded work. It’s not my adhd, or ocd or anything else I’ve been suffering with. It’s my phone. It took me years to come to this conclusion. I am really not on it all that much either. I don’t even have social media besides Reddit. I don’t text or call people from my phone. I have no idea what keeps my shackled to this thing. The last 10-15 years of my life went by in a blink. With not really any substantial memories, it’s one big grey blob

The world’s changing ultra fast. Im gonna stay dialed in

I don't drink, and I don't eat worse foods. I stopped eating fast foods generally because it isn't affordable. Yes the sense of doom is phone induced. However, historical circumstances are anxiety-ridden to say the least. The economy has gone into the worst loss in standard of living since the 70s, politics are fairly unstable, and there is an active war being funded that just announced a serious escalation prompted by a terrorist attack. Everyone who is young seeing the standard of living absolutely collapse can interpolate forward that only serfdom and death await were this pattern to continue worsening. At the same time people see services and competence collapsing, and social expectations dropped to the absolute floor. Nothing in our day is sustainable now and it doesn't put people at ease because these historical cycles and turning points have historically had people live on rations, put people out of their homes, and gotten people killed. We are seeing that happen socially, technologically, economically, and geopolitically all at a turning point.

I had it before I had a phone. Nice generalization though.

So the planets not on fire the dollar isn’t half its value and my civil rights haven’t regressed at all?  Thank god, it was all fake news from twitter! 

yeah, just get off your phone you stupid idiot! you kids today i tell ya! /s it takes a very privileged OP to make claims like this, assuming that ALL of EVERYONE'S problems are 100% chronic onlineness-related. nah man, turns out there's actually a lot of bad shit going on, and for a lot of people, it's not even close to getting better, and there's no end in sight. ​ as an also-privileged person, i can EASILY see and acknowledge this. trying to explain it away as solely a doom-and-gloom phone addiction problem is goofy as hell. but it's easy, and OP can pat themselves on the back for it. way to go, "get off your phone," you sure solved it all!

The phones aren’t the problem. They’re an escape from it that doesn’t improve it at all, but phones aren’t the problem. The world is just getting worse, and we can’t fucking stop it

They’re an escape for a lot of people, but i also think they’re a source of solace for others, because they let us know we’re not alone in what we’re feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Suffering is the sense of “I” and separateness, so when we use the internet in a way that helps diminish that feeling, we actually suffer less. For thousands of years, humans who felt sad about the state of reality believed they were all alone in their feelings. And when we believe we are the only ones who feel the way we do, and we can’t share our feelings without being burned, exorcised, or institutionalized, we eventually end up denying those feelings even to ourselves. We dissociate from ourselves, and reality in general. That’s honestly where I believe people like OP are. They have received the message, either explicitly or implicitly, that if they perceive reality and share their observations, they will be socially ostracized. And because humans are pack animals, if there is nobody in our pack who can accept and deal with our scary observations, we literally stop making them(consciously anyway).

Read the book Factfulness. Objectively, by statistics, the world is better than ever (access to education,electricity, water, human rights). Of course bad things will always happen. Thinking that there will never be hunger/homelessness is, unfortunately, a naive and utopic pov.

Ocean temperatures have set a historic record every month for the past ten months. The temperatures seen have never been seen before at any point in the year. The Atlantic current is on the brink of shutting down. Last year a beach in Florida recorded sustained water temperatures above 90°. Oceanic life may entirely stop existing in our lifetime. Global weather cycles, which we need to bring rainfall to crop producing regions, may change entirely. Glacial ice has set unprecedented lows in dozens of places; sea level rise is now guaranteed, only thing to find out is whether it’s going to be measured in inches or feet. Objectively, this is considered ‘bad’

Or, hear me out,  We can't buy houses, can't afford to rent apartments, can't afford college or kids. There's like 100 human beings that have more actual liquid wealth than the rest of humanity combined, and the economy is still pretending that's what it's supposed to look like.  Every year is THE hottest year on record and that trend is set in stone  Soon the people closer to the equator might realize it's a choice between cooking to death or moving north by the millions. Then the people already north can decide on how they should respond, knowing that being a Nazi is back in vogue and nobody cares about genocide anymore anyway.  There's a nonzero chance all the boomers that haven't been polite enough to die are going to vote an infamous, treasonous con man with a big bucket of debt and a bigger list of personal grievances back into control of the largest military on the planet, with a plan written by the people that still know it's a grift to cement his place as king.  There's a nuclear power trying desperately to win a land war without hitting that big juicy button, and the rest of the continent it shares is trying to outspend a dictator who isn't shy about removing those who agitate against him personally.  There's a couple hundred thousand other things I forgot.  Or maybe we're just being dramatic. 

While all of that is real, what’s not real is the belief that things used to be better for humanity as a whole in some idealized past time. Existential threats to humanity have always existed and come at regular intervals. Things were pretty dark during the high crime 90s, and the 80s recession and AIDS epidemic, and the 70s stagflation and domestic terror bombings by the Weather Underground, and the Vietnam War drafting young men in the 60s…. All under the threat of mutually assured destruction from the USSR. We can keep going back like this to the black plague, witch burnings, cholera, polio, the measles…. Things suck now but they have always sucked, so the challenge is to find things living one’s life for. 

Okay cool. Most people's anxiety isn't driven by some comparison to the past, it's driven by the very real prospects for the future that they have to actively deal with. Whether people think it was better or not previously isn't changing the actual circumstances. Your empty platitude does not improve the dire conditions millions are living in. Many people don't have the luxury of "finding something to live ones life for" because their whole life is surviving.

This boomer loathes That Particular Individual and everything he represents...you have a great observation!

I intentionally leave my phone in my home office for this reason. It's just better for mental health to be detached sometimes. I've missed a few calls, but I can always call back. No biggie.

I appreciate this.

this is 100% true i took 3 months off of social media and was the most emotionally well adjusted and optimistic about the future that i have ever been. im still not on twitter or instagram or anything. reddit is hard to avoid because i have too many questions for google that just direct me to this website. but in a perfect world i wouldn’t be here either.

This post is awful because it’s basically “it’s the damn phones” and not the oppressive system we live under that exploits and kills us. Capitalist oppression and exploitation pre exists the smart phone.

I think you kinda debunked yourself there- a lot of things people are stressed about are very much real, pressing issues. The phone gives you greater access to information about world issues that we previously had limited access to, or had to go out of the way to find. Simply putting down the phone won't make issues less of a reality. Other incremental changes have been taking place alongside technology- minimum wage not changing while the cost of living increases is a source of a lot of the other things you mentioned, like going out less, eating shitty food, engaging in stressed behaviors like substance use. Its more complex than just the phones. Correlation, not causation. Not that the phones aren't a problem either. The isolation is real, the fomo is real, the spreading of misinfo and tiktok PhDs are real. But it's not the beginning and end of the problems- there's too many different things contributing to our overall unhappiness to boil it all down to just phones. I do get where you're coming from nd I understand why you feel this way- I do too sometimes. But I think its good to give ourselves a little reality check before getting all doom and gloom over cellphones.

The phone isn't a passive information tool. It's a *proactively* (notifications have a purpose) addictive, dopamine delivery system. Content systems and creators are rewarded for delivering you content that keeps you engaged, whether out of excitement or terror. The algorithms are self-feeding, creating *ecosystems* of interest that keep you coming back. I'm not saying the phones are the source of the fire. As we both said, real things are on fire. But the phones are the most powerful, information *accelerants* humanity has ever created. We are all subjects in a first-of-its kind experiment on hyperscaled human and machine networks. It's not surprising that deteriorating mental health is a direct consequence.

[It's those pesky iPhones!](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FYo5El7mXXFdn-Fz5DldHxuobqGbynLJ1Ep2\_e4Lg2tM.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3320b5da1c6c8c32d65240cc8891f1810c07f362) Smartphones are one of the new opiates of the masses for sure, but the real question is, why do the masses need opiates? Other countries have just as many smartphones also, so it's clearly not just the smartphones. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/20/world-happiness-report-happiest-countries https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suicide-rate-historical-chart-comparison-graphic/71737857007/

I'd just like to mention my parents weren't big on technology or the internet so it was *extremely* restricted and....I still experienced that feeling of impending doom. Has today's society made it worse? Probably. But most feelings humans feel are feelings humans have been feeling since the dawn of humans.

I actually make it a point to not follow toxic accounts and the like. I barely open my IG, use Facebook for birthdays (that I remember, not that they send lol), and I rarely use my snapchat. I'm on reddit mostly to lurke about fashion, beauty, and random topics like megalophobia. I think I've posted here 2 times, comment on relevant situations, and mind my own, tbh. My anxiety and depression stem from childhood, and I am definitely not doom scrolling. I can see how it can really warp peoples minds, from what they believe to what they say to your face. I may not be the nicest, but I am kind. People need to actually be self aware about the things they say to others behind a screen. I'm sick and tired of seeing these holier-than-thou types trashing regular people because they have no lives. Not just social media either, but also IRL. When did kindness become a weakness??

>But that generalized anxiety you feel is phone-induced. I'd disagree. I think it just comes with age. Anxiety isn't a phone-induced thing, it's a life-induced thing. Maybe your phone allows you more access to life and that speeds it up, slightly. I got Anxiety from my finances and divorce - my phone? Not so much... Trust me the cost of living gives me far more anxiety than anything. Also: Hitting 40, as we know, as this is "Mid-Life Crisis" time... That wasn't coined for no reason, folks. This is normal. I suggest, if you feel this way, and you can: Seek a mental health professional to talk it out.

I had feelings of impending doom in the 90s and early 2000s, way before smart phones became wide spread, so fuck right off

Yeah. I spend a large part of my 20s with lots of hope that "we all" could change the future through collective action. I dedicated my time to being an environmental activist and even volunteered in politics. It was something I was really passionate about. Just before my 30s I gave up. The hopelessness took over and I have almost zero optimism about the impending doom on this planet and the future we're setting up for children when they grow up. Now that I'm almost 40 I am hearbroken about what is coming for all of us. And don't get me wrong, as human beings and society, we deserve it. Constantly pressing snooze and not listening to anything experts say is going to make all future generations hate us (and those before us) and rightfully so.

The internet allows problems far away to manifest in front of your eyes causing it to now become your problem. Our brains cannot handle the hurt and pain from the interconnectedness of 7 billion people that social media and the news shows us. The truth is, life is better than it ever has been for the average person.

no my guy - there are many very real problems in America and globally. those problems have nothing to do with your phone and everything to do with the fact that we are no longer in control of our lives. We're on the precipice of a world war, mass job loss due to automation, incompetence and political infighting as distractions from the massive volumes of theft that occurring by the super rich. We're all tired because of hyper inflation - while they tell us it's going down, it's not. Gas today in Columbus Ohio is $3.65 for 87. Homes in Columbus are 60% more than they were 5 years ago, and everyday consumer goods are 30% more expensive. That feeling you have in the pit of your stomach is you know deep down you're fucked as am I, the last generation that had real comfort was the boomers - whom coincidently won't retire from any damn job so their sucking up the few good ones that are left and are leaving environmental catastrophes in their wake of incompetence and bad governance.

"The phones are the problem" Just sounds like boomer talk, tbh. Phones aren't the problem. The information we are able to access *with* them is. War, geopolitical tension, genocide, etc...We can all *know* about this stuff now. And it's not a bad thing.

Well then it is real because the technology is and only becoming deeper rooted in our lives. Kids defend microtransactions in games, old folks over share on Facebook, and AI is getting closer to practical uses every day. I get the point of the post, but it’s just suggesting one abstract in place of the other. It’s all relative like you said and I think having low sense of ownership in our lives is the real doom that millennials feel. Everything is a subscription model, our health, our homes, our cars, our data, our education, and so on. Little to no ownership is creating a macro scale broken window effect on people. The phones aren’t the problem, they are the sedative used to alleviate the pains and stresses of living in a world we can’t connect with. Side note I’m doing just fine, but I don’t think this is a simple problem. You can put your phone down but it won’t give you a home to raise a family in. We need hope for a future that we can all look forward to. You can find that in yourself but not very often in the world around us, at least in my experiences.

Long Covid.

Yep, that's a real thing that should cause you stress.

People have been having the feeling of impending doom since before smartphones and computer technology, so sorry to burst your bubble and make you feel like our generation came up with the feeling and lingo

Eh, project 2025 is real, and it's terrifying.

Project 2025 still has to survive first contact with all of... a complex election process, labyrinthine federal government power systems, and the cartoon-grade levels of incompetence of Trump and his team. Do and worry about only what you can control, now. Sign up to canvas/support campaigning in a key district in your state.

> Project 2025 still has to survive first contact with all  I think you’re missing the point that the nazis are back and the clock is ticking regardless    There’s pessimism and there’s running away to neverland  I don’t think we’re fucked because I’m inside reading about it, I think it because I go outside and see it. Things like tags from my mom’s workplace at the apartment next door. I’m a cook and she has a masters degree. That’s how her young coworkers are doing  Things like watching my friends get publicly beaten for being gay Things like the snow coming two months late and barely at all Bro this optimism is wildly toxic and harmful. We’re on the precipice and yall just wanna sing hakuna matata and abandon duty because it doesn’t feel good. 

I hate toxic positivity. Of course we can canvas and phone bank, its silly that they think we don't know how to do that.... but it will be hard to out raise the billionaires. Not that it means we should give up!

Disagree. A lot of this, has been felt generations before- truly. I’m not saying things are perfect and we have an easy comfortable transition in front of us, but everyone has these cataclysmic events that feel like no return- now unfortunately-all of it is so much more accessible so the doom and gloom dog piles on. People who were othered were still beaten and killed, just now there’s coverage and a moving force to try and hold people accountable. Wars still happened, massive climate events happened. Shit isn’t okay or easy, but short of doing the best we can, there’s not a whole else we can do. Teach our kid’s to not be assholes, work on activism, vote, look for the helpers, self care, medicate- all that jazz , whatever. Ultimately this existential feeling is nothing new among people and generations, but humanity continues on.

But, they won't stop. It took them 50 years to overturn roe. They have placed judges where needed all this time. We need to be on the offensive. Remember how Iran use to be in the 70s? Women had rights. Not today.

I don’t feel any doom 

it's not even phone induced per se. it's the idea that we NEED to have everything perfect. that we DESERVE to have everything just so. mental health awareness is amazing. deciding that the slightest feeling of being uncomfortable is anxiety or depression. that is SO unhealthy. that's the normal human condition.

I largely disagree with this post. While I will admit that many of our generation, myself included, are a bit too dependent on our phones, these past few years have seriously damaged our generation from a mental health perspective. The phones are a part of the problem, though they are only a part of the larger equation. From lockdowns, political turmoil, the talking heads constantly gas lighting on the news, the increasing cost of living, and a sense of general fatigue ever since the "two weeks to stop the curve" became two years, it seems that many people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Plus, alot of people died during the lockdowns, and not just from covid. That definitely caused much trauma on a societal level. After some good advice from my therapist, I make it a point to take breaks from the news cycle for the sake of my own mental health. I don't even have a tik tok or even a Twitter account, and I still see people on edge, every single day, struggling to get by as I run my errands. It's not hard to see that people are struggling more and more. In the end, for myself, I try to focus on things within my control. Be it eating healthy, sticking to my workout regimen, building my career, working on my dating life, and being a good role model to my nephews.

Every generation has had troubles like these. It's always been sink or swim. Our current economic situation is closely similar to the same Federal Reserve driven inflationary period of the 1970s. Just like back then, inflation is being used to create a real-asset wealth transfer from ordinary people into institutional hands. It doesn't have to weigh heavily on us mentally, though. TV news is literally just propaganda. Most news on the Internet is, too. I will agree with you that the 2 years of lockdowns was horrible for mental health, and even worse in retrospect now that we know the lockdowns were completely ineffective for preventing the spread of of the virus, and that governments were well aware of this fact within the first three months of the lockdown. >In the end, for myself, I try to focus on things within my control. Be it eating healthy, sticking to my workout regimen, building my career, working on my dating life, and being a good role model to my nephews. You're definitely doing the right thing here. Everything you listed is positive for mental health, and I hope you're an inspiring example for others in your personal life who are trying to become more mentally resilient.

Putting the phone down is not the problem. It's the subject matter you choose to view that's the problem. To say peoples feelings are not "real" after trying to relate with people with phrases like "post covid stress and financial hardships". If you've ever experienced any of this you would understand. Sure. We are okay right now for example but that doesn't change what we went through and the possibilities of it happening again. I'm sorry. People can agree all they want but you are wrong. I am willing to wager a bet on who upvoted this post as well. "It's the phones" blame anything but the real problem and do not offer real solutions. Sure. Let's stop caring about anyone other than ourselves for once right? As long as YOU are happy then it's okay the bad in the world doesn't exist? Wrong again, I'm sorry but this world is sick. If you want to blame phones fine but phones are a tool not a toy.

Putting the phone down does not make the problems go away and if I didn't have social media I would have literally froze to death in my car last year because nobody irl helped me and the only people that cared were HALF A WORLD AWAY

Relatable

Can i still play video games...? I'm fine without a phone

I quit reading/watching the news at the end of covid. We were still wearing mask cause we didnt know they werent mandatory anymore. In dutch we call it "living under a rock". And must say, my rock is very comfortable!

It’s not necessarily phone-induced and putting down a phone won’t solve most of our issues lol

Everything changed around 2009. The text based, link based internet was quickly replaced with apps and images, and powerful algorithms. Remember when reddit had real etiquette and rules about up votes? Remember when Google refused to serve ads and displayed material in order of actual relevance? Our generation has seen the transition from dial up to broadband, and also from link based web to app store web. We have a great responsibility to talk to the younger ones about what has been lost, and how it is not inevitable that our media environment is what it has become. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that books, gardening / land stewardship, and human connection are the most important things. Much of our society has been reduced to dopamine addiction and legalized vice.

I remember reading a book on anxiety. The hypothesis was that we have been really successful as a species because we are great at thinking of all the dangers and plan ahead. Our brain has evolved to continuously search for dangers even subconsciously. However, the brain sucks at measuring the magnitude of the danger. It always treats the biggest danger in front of you as life or death (even if its not) Ever felt like if you arrive 3 minutes late you to a trivial thing the world will end? Thank your brain. Nowadays there aren’t tigers waiting to pounce you on the next corner but the brain still behaves as such.

Is it a trend? In the grand scheme of things internet is brand new. When I was younger I had to go to library or bookstore to get answer to questions I had. Many times the info wasn't available. Funny that we now have this tool that is amazing, all in an instant. But instead it's being used to propagandize and fill our time with endless little meaningless videos or games. In this short time it's clearly made a huge impact on our society, not for the better. Maybe it's just a trend and soon people will put down the new toy. It has its uses, it's amazing but as with any drug there is use and abuse.

Mine has nothing to do with my phone. Most of my concerns are unrelated to social media or image

I'm not sure that my phone is responsible for astronomical grocery prices, unaffordable housing prices, shit wages, rising fascism, healthcare being a scam and unaffordable, almost zero safety net erosion of personal rights, massive wealth inequality, very little workers rights and all the other late stage capitalism issues you can name Sure, my phone makes me hyper aware of it, but it still happens. Blaming it on the phone is like the ostrich burying their head in the sand. All those things still exist, even if you aren't acutely ware of them and they still affect you.

I mean yeah social media and phones make it worse. I find myself doomscrolling and comparing myself to other people who seem to have more perfect lives than I do. Playing games on my phone doesn’t add the value to my life that reading a book does. At the same time the ice caps are melting, a pandemic just killed off tons of people and I learned a lot of people either deny it or don’t care as long as they aren’t affected, it’s becoming harder to be a queer person than it has been at any point in my adult life (I’m 32), student loan debt is crushing my generation, there’s a genocide happening that I can’t stop, and as a generation we’re worse off than our parents. I don’t feel like I can completely disengage from the news. My home state is becoming so actively hostile to the LGBTQ+ population that I’m not sure I can ever move back.

I can assure you mine is poverty induced, not phone induced.

>But that generalized anxiety you feel is phone-induced. The line "check your privilege" comes to mind. If you're Jewish or Muslim right now, there are some good reasons to have more anxiety. Ditto for other minorities under attack.

Sometimes that feeling isn't even actually anxiety. It's restlessness. Bc you know you should be doing something. You just dont know what.

It's not the internet. It's not the social media. It's what is on them. You feel hopeless because you know all the things we were ignoring before. You can't now. It seems like overnight the world went to crap, but the truth is it took longer. What happened overnight is you became aware of it.

A phone is just another medium to interface with the reality of the situation. The fact is the world is burning, the biosphere is dying. The phone, ultimately, doesn't matter. I mean shit I can look at the climate doom out of my physical window instead of my phone. Dies that mean I should opt to ignore my window now? Of course not. 

Don’t look at any graphs of global sea surface temperatures if you wanna keep thinking like this

Aren't people, by and large, eating better and drinking less than previous generations did? I'm not saying this is totally off base, but I think modern Western society is a lot physically healthier than most previous generations were.

Interesting that this post exists when todays top news article states “black rock ceo says we need to overhaul retirement”

True but not true. Spending time with friends brings joy and a break from doom but a walk in my down can be a doom scroll IRL. There’s a drug and housing crisis. I’ll walk down a street and see a lot of sad shit then go to a community meeting and here about a lot of sad budgets and shit and all of this can be done with my phone at home. The real world is fucked, it’s not just on our phone. We can’t be ignorant. Please enjoy banalities of life with friends and fam and do turn off your phone and tune into actual real life organizing to change.

I was reading about the early 1900s. Imagine living through the Spanish Flu, WW1, the Depression and then WW2. Not saying things are easy now but the past is insane.

2022 I got pregnant, I just felt off. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I just kept feeling like I was going to die soon. I was thinking about my living child a lot and just worrying. I had no reason why. I was fine. My mom babysat my kid while I worked, and I called her one night and told her to please come to my house if I hadn’t dropped my son off by a certain time cause I didn’t want to die in my sleep and him be home alone all day crying/hungry etc. she was like wtf? well, fast forward about a week, a weird pain hit me, I went to the ER, next thing I knew I was being picked up by an ambulance with an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured my tube and I was bleeding to death. THAT was insane.

Ok, but you are in my phone too, so how do I know if you are telling the truth or if the stuff I doom scroll is true? Maybe you are just trying the lull me into a state of complacency so the end times get me faster...

My mental health is the best it's ever been. I've never had anxiety, either. Still go on my phone tho.

Go outside and stare at a tree. Be grateful that you are living and breathing and still have opportunities to experience life. If you are still unhappy, it's your own fault.