I haven't finished reading Amusing ourselves to death. But it is kind of obvious that the result of technology's effects on youth and how tech companies pursue this abuse of cocktail concoction of digital addiction are "zombification" of people today.

Digital addiction is not new. It's a global problem. Educational institutions around the world are finding solutions to mitigate this effect.

Technology is not the problem. Content is.§

Digital addiction is sometimes attributed to technology. But it is wrong to blame technology. Intent on use and/or abuse is the issue here.

Companies take advantage of the psychological patterns humans have. Our addiction to momentary pleasures is one thing. And they take it to the next level — social media.

Social media§

Social media is not new. Its cousin, social networking, is an old thing. IRC chats exist, Myspace, whatever you call it. Those olden days where people just love to chat and talk with their friends from far away are now gone.

So why do we focus on the fact that "Social media" is different? It is because of the content it has and how it affects human behavior. It also changed how we perceive ourselves towards other people and thus, "stories" and "post random things every minute".

Repetitive§

Because of this, social media has taken away our freedom of "time". We are so hooked with the idea to get the taste of attention that it ended up making people as mediocre as they are and as braindead as can be.

Tiktok for example forces women (or men) to become thirst traps. Tiktok forces people to indulged in short videos that do weird crap dances that don't make sense and don't contribute to anything to society. This is not just in Tiktok but also on other platforms.

Our reliance of technology is kind of understandable. Our ancestors depend on these things for survival. That purpose has lost its meaning in the modern age. And it is mostly for that large dose of dopamine.

Boring and brain draining§

Social media brings boring and brain draining people into the space. As people flock over to get others attention, most people are focused on the "getting attention" part rather than the "get a life" part.

Technology is not the problem. Capitalism is.§

Our world has focused to get more money faster and exploit more people to become their advertisers. This so called "influencers" are the issues.

Influencers§

These influencers also bring false positivity into the space that blinds peoples' critical thinking. There are also who promote poverty-porn to gain more attention but behind the scenes, they are as "matapobre" as they can be.

Free is not free§

As explained before on my other post, companies trick people that free is actually free. It's not. You are the product. Most people do not care anyway so why bother explaining. Right?

But despite knowing this, people are conditioned to believe that they need these things. So they are more likely to stay.

Post rant§

To be honest, this is such a huge topic that a post is too small to cover all the issues and causes of digital addiction. And there are a lot of articles already about this topic. But do people really care? Not really. Big maybe.

FQA§

• "We can solve the addiction by providing educational shorts!". To be honest, that's just adding more to the problem. If the platform is still riddled with distracting content, then what is the point? Educational shorts don't bring much value in the end anyway since they are easily forgotten.

• "We can solve digital addiction by confiscating smartphones during class hours". The issue isn't about the use of smartphones in the classroom. It's outside.

• "We should remove technology". No, you just missed the point.

• "AI and large language models will solve our brain drain". I love prompt engineers.

• "You are using technology for this post. You are also a digital addict". It's called being digitally productive. Check your vocabulary.