The issues of social media and the modern world.

The issues of social media.

'The winter of our disconnect.'

By Susan Maushart published in 2010

I read a book a while ago called 'The winter of our disconnect.' It was an experiment in going screen-free for a year her herself and her 3 teens and the results it had on the family. This was back in 2008 so we need to see where we have gone with the internet from there the issues she outlined have only got worse during the pandemic and as the technology has gotten more advanced and the issues around it have got more complex and the complexity of the socio-political landscape has got worse and more polarized due to the internet and that we can be connected from anywhere as we did see the internet used more and more to keep people connected during the pandemic. However, we saw that this created more issues than it solved. As I will discuss as I have based this post on several of her quotes in the book and I do encourage you to go and find the book and read it and see how her family coped with it.

“It’s an environment: pervasive invisible, shrink-wrapped around pretty much everything kids do, say, and think.” Page 4

It is no longer just children as we saw we are seeing the internet increasingly used for political gain and we are seeing the emergence of what they call echo chambers where people aren’t challenged in their ideas and they can find evidence to fit their worldview. Or to increasingly “punish,” those who don’t fit their worldview. We now know about the manipulation of algorithms to sell to people. That our phones spy on us and that we are complicit in this spying, that we seem to know it but it is our equivalent of bread circuses. It is a way of diverting our attention. As we are diverting our attention we do see that there’s been a rise in ADHD and a lack of social skills development. We now have a generation that has been raised with social media and there is a whole new way of doing things due to the pandemic as the internet was a connection to the outside world and some sort of sanity. We now are seeing the effects of streaming services. You don’t need to wait for next week for the new episode to come out, we are also seeing a lack of meaningful full relationships because we are “electronically distracted. ”

We are also seeing a world that has the equivalent of newspeak, which I didn’t have growing up so things like, click bate, going viral, content creators, doxing, and hashtags and these are just the starts of the internet language, are also seeing that influencers going broke trying to promote a “lifestyle,” but it’s not the reality as it is polished for view’s and some of the content creators are amazing in the research and the high-level content they produce but at what cost so if they get “canceled for saying or doing the wrong thing and this thing can vary dependant on what the mob thinks about that week. So it is a very different social contract one that is less about the good of the overall community but one that is about the individual. So when are we seeing what happens when we put the overall good of the community against individuality. I am advocating for communism but to take a step back and see that actions have consequences. These consequences can be amazingly good or they can be bad like a person starting an online trend to be kind is great but then there have been several trends that are downright dangerous. Like the cinnamon challenge. I understand that teens will do stupid stuff but what was wrong with skateboarding bikes and hanging out at the local library or shopping center.

Yet an astonishing 30 percent of parents believe media have no effect on their children one way or the other Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Page 5 It isn’t as in education children aren’t being taught critical thinking skills and the media is used as a tool, there also have been massive problems of cyberbullying resulting in one young girl becoming the face of the effects of it and in the aftermath of her death her family created dolly’s dream and we now have to cyberbully as a crime in Australia. We also see that following a Youtuber and donating to their crowdsourcing pages is becoming increasingly more mainstream and in return, the content creators give you access to their lives however we do need to ask at what cost to their physical and mental health. However, I am a content creator myself and these online communities do have what they are calling Real life events and meet-ups as well. In 2020, we saw the effects of the digital divide. So Those who could work from home did however the children of “essential workers,’ were at an advantage in a way that they could still attend a physical school and get the social and emotional benefits that come with schooling. Schooling at a primary school level isn’t all about learning it is also about learning to fit into a group and being able to wait your turn and play in a group.

We are seeing that children born during the pandemic do have developmental delays due to not being able to have exploratory play and have the “traditional,” experiences for parents like playgroups and going to the local playground. I know that my local council has put a lot of money into upgrading a lot of parks to get people off their devices and into our community, they have also invited the disability community to the table so things like having disabled toilets that have easy-open doors having tracks that are accessible for members of our community that use mobility devices. Having the council workers regularly clean the park BBQs that we pay a gold coin to have access to.

“How clean is clean enough? The new technology, in other words, solves an existing problem but in the process, it creates a new and improved problem and more laundry. Page 5

So this quote seems to be an interesting one as at the time of writing we in Australia are dealing with a covid outbreak and we are learning that yes how clean is clean enough. As we by the current administration are being treated as adults. So vaccination and personal hygiene are coming into more and more people’s awareness, of what we need to do to keep ourselves safe as well as things that could seem basic to people, things like having a good diet. However, due to cost-of-living pressures, this can be a complex thing to navigate around. However, as we navigate these ideas we have to ask ourselves if are we ready to be adults in a very uncertain world.

“David Bussaus’s calls “ an economics of enough,” continued to occupy my thoughts”. Page 7

Where we are rationing items so there is enough to go around and this also goes into the economics of enough. As with Covid, we have seen what is enough and many people have gone away from conspicuous consumption back to only buying what they need or even simply not buying anything for a limited amount of time groups that use social media to get off the internet are helping this so community groups that help like unconsumers and even people who are doing groups like what is in my back yard shed so going back to knowing your neighbor's and borrowing a shovel or asking the retired lady next door to hem your work pants, is something that does seem to be coming back into trend. As well as home cooking and I remember the outrage that occurred when the CWA allowed packet mixes into their compositions it seems to me that we are slowing down as a society and this is becoming a movement of slow living so making things from scratch. Using second-hand where possible and recycling what is possible. I know of several groups in my community where we are focused on this as well as seeing things pop up like community libraries where you can donate books and a trend back to using the local council library and art galleries as well as shopping centers having play areas and craft area’s as well. But we seem to have had a collective waking up to what is important and it’s family and friends and that as adults we are much more open to making friends now I have friends that I have made through Girl guides, Toowoomba home produce swap group and my faith as well. I am also part of a very protective family as well as I have disabilities as well and live in what is called in Australia a Sil house so a Supported independent living house it’s a lovely house and we are encouraged to have hobbies and family and friends visit us as well.

“I moved swiftly from simple fear to profound panic. What other visitors were logging on to her bedroom in real-time, with full color and stereo sound while I slept?” Page 11

This has been proven and other things, as well as content creation, are now considered a legitimate sense of work as well however as it has been proven by Edward Snowden, and the Cambridge Analytical scandal, we see that people are being spied on as well and being radicalized as well as happened in the USA ( I am not educated enough on this topic but I see that this was a wake-up call for many people around this area. As some people who work in IT have what they call screen-free homes due to knowing the risk that smartphones do bring as well. So having a smartphone is a tool however how much time do we spend tending to our tools, and are we able to communicate without them and it has now been proven that smartphones are changing our brains. Not only in the way we process information but the way that we store it our long-term memories are changing as who needed to remember a phone number when it was saved in your phone, who needs to remember that Tuesday is your day for bins when you can set a reminder on your phone. Also, there have been several online trends both good and bad one good one is the kindness pandemic about spreading kindness in your community during the lockdowns and restrictions. However, there a more disturbing one is Doxing people who you don’t agree with and de-platforming them. ( this is something that many people saw ) and we don’t know what the long-term consequences around social media are as well, I know that there are what they call “ fandoms,” that have kept people going through the pandemic however some of these fandoms can go too far and bully the actors because they don’t like the book to screen adaptions and don’t understand the complexity of TV and movies as well. So one that springs to mind is the Shadow family that we call them they sprung into action when they heard the TV series was being canceled they essentially bullied the producers into making a family however at the beginning they knew that they had to age up the characters because they would get it through the international ratings.

I’d be the kind of single mother who’d openly sleep with her iPhone but … yeah. ( I told myself it was no different from reading a book in bed – which, if I hadn’t been watching feature-length movies and shopping for underwear, may well have been true) If I didn’t drag my laptop, a pair of speakers, my digital recorder, and a camera in, I sometimes felt a little lonely. I told myself I was just doing my job. But there were times I looked less like a journalist than some demented IT technical in a nightie. Good times, good times. Page 11

This shows me that we can see that we have developed weird habits around technology but it is fundamentally different in that we do see that it’s different from reading a book in bed fundamentally different and what makes it different isn’t that is on a device but the relationship we have with our devices, so it has changed the way we sleep and eat as we now have a name for this as well and a book we can’t go shopping on, we have to make a conscious decision to go out and find a book or I choose to and I don’t like online shopping as I know it puts people out of a job. So how many people are employed by the internet because they can’t get a “traditional job,” I am not talking about the trend on Reddit called Anti work but people who would like to get a job because it gets them out of the house. Or gives them a purpose in life or social life as well.

In reality, it was a case of media, media everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Page 47 This is so true however now we have what people are calling the “book tubers,” and the “political commentary’s,” as you don’t need a journalism degree just a laptop an internet connection, and an idea to start a blog you tuber channel or a podcast. Or have all three. However, what matters is the quality of the content. We have many more people going to university these days and often as part of their media training, they need to do some sort of content creation. I know that YouTube also has awards for the best content creators as well. Also, I know that friendly Geordies ( and I don’t agree with everything he has done ) essentially was able to bring down a state government and a police department by exposing the treatment of his producer. He was also able to expose things that the “mainstream media,” doesn’t seem to be interested in so things as the water allocation in the Murry Darling basin. As well so in having this type of YouTuber we can educate ourselves on anything but at what cost we need to ask at what cost to the community and ourselves. We are so busy that we don’t stop and take the time to develop a skill or devote time to a hobby.

Why do we say Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink? (bookbrowse.com)

“Bill’s point- basically, that boredom might be constructed as the impetus for achievement rather than as an obstacle to it made intuitive sense ( and given that he’d lent unexpected support to my case, I was gracious enough to acknowledge it at the time) months later when I started to investigate this topic more systematically I discovered how spot on his hunch was.” Page 70

This is a really interesting thing to look into and I am working on it as well yes boredom is the impetus for achievement and due to having so much electronic stimulation we never really find out what it is that we are good at or would like to do we don’t give children the space to be bored and to need to find something to do or to discover the joy of music, dance or like myself writing. How can we not practice it if we always have something to distract us from becoming good at something and this something could lead to what we want to do with our lives? Most people say that they aren’t creative but many people are and they can become creative. Post-pandemic we have seen classes rise for adults around painting, quilting, gardening, and even cooking. We are seeing TV shows based around playing with Legos. As we are so stimulated, we are seeing late development of social skills and the rise of something called the Hikimoriri a Japanese word for a social recluse who refuses to grow up and leave their parents’ home. In Australia, we have NDIS and support people to help them to develop the skills need to become adults or to go into appropriate housing.

“ If you ever wanted to know what was going through Frodo Baggins’ mid as she stood over the lava pits of Mt Doom in The return of the king,” wrote Norman, buy and iPhone. Page 108

I can understand that mentality as it becomes our life and I struggled with internet addiction myself as it doesn’t judge you and you can access anything on it and this is the problem as you can access anything on it or upload your life and it’s only getting worse. As we are seeing that people are recording things instead of getting help for the person that is injured or hurt. We are also seeing people faking illness for views in the hope of getting famous.

“To my way of thinking, this is the technology equidistant to the twinkie Defence, Nor does it mean that we as users of technology are passive victims hapless Pandoras wringing our hands in dismay at that chaos God hath wrought”. Page 120 No we are not and when we look at the internet as a tool, we see that people can see that like a tool it has both good and bad uses and that twinkie defines isn’t something that we as adults are accountable for our actions need to be aware of it, as well so we can choose to turn the device off to set limits around the usage of devices. As I know that I did overuse my devices too much and didn’t think about the consequences of the actions I was taking which caused a massive rift in the family around being able to make my own decisions as an adult. At the time I didn’t know that being angry and frustrated all the time was a side effect of one of my medications and that frustration is common in people with teleplays as I have myself we are also seeing a trend toward a lack of social cohesion.

Pandemic babies are now toddlers with delayed development. Here's why. (usatoday.com)

In the US college have introduced undergraduate courses in basic life skills such as banking and doing the laundry and ordering from a restaurant menu page 204

In Australia, I believe we still have home economics’ classes that are offered to both genders and these are basic life skills around being able to do these things. I also know that NDIS some service agencies offer what they call life skills training so these are things that you learn through doing but due to the person’s disability we see that they may have to be taught so being able to read a bus timetable, being able to cook a simple meal, being able to stick to a budget as well. So what are we going to do as we are now being told that childhood can now last till 40 due to a child’s reliance on their parents? However, in some cultures, we see that a child is never supposed to achieve self-reliance. It more is about taking place in your society as an adult, however, we have had the continued erosion of the markers of growing up in a society that we don’t know when we are considered an adult anymore. So the things that marked growing up were having the debutant ball or conformation in a faith-based community.

UM, maybe because the whole point of becoming an adult is to achieve self–reliance? Because maturity is largely about acquiring the competence to make your own decisions? Before the Industrial REVOLUTION, THERE Wasn’t this concept that children should grow up, move away and become autonomous. The father objects. That is very true. But this man’s daughter doesn’t live in an agrarian society. She lives in a dorm a Georgetown. “ page 26

Leaving school either at 16 to learn a trade or to get a job or for the “smart kids,” to go to university. As it was very competitive to go to university. However, now we see that most people regardless of their aptitude for higher education are pushed into the narrative that the only way to a good job is a university degree. Yet this is no longer true, you can learn on the job and many university graduates aren’t willing to start in an entry-level job as we have been raised on the attitude that you can be anything you want to be and that everyone gets a prize, this is great at the local show, but not at a sports carnival or the local Eastford. We see in some cases helicopter parenting or lawnmower parenting where they demolish the barriers in the child’s life and this child never experiences failure and the motivation to learn from their failure.

"This drug that we are craving .. could it simply be each other?" Page 221 is a question that we all need to answer for ourselves. To simply connect is to connect in reality is the best thing for us. As we realize that things won't check on us when we get sick, or when we know that we need help or support.

Child development stages - Wikipedia

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: Definition, Causes, Treatment (insider.com)

The public sharing of intimate images without consent is a growing problem in Australia. And, my teenagers are paying the price - ABC News

Cyberbullying | eSafety Commissioner

Home - Dolly's Dream (dollysdream.org.au)

Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal - Wikipedia

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica: A timeline of the data hijacking scandal (cnbc.com)

Hikikomori - Wikipedia

Who Is Brittany Kaiser? Facebook Leak 'Much Greater Than 87M Accounts, Warns Ex-Cambridge Analytica Director (newsweek.com) through m

Gamergate (harassment campaign) - Wikipedia

Doxing - Wikipedia

Edward Snowden - Wikipedia