>I'm not sure internet use alone is concerning. It was a problem when I was a kid because it isolated me, but it's also hard to tell how the causality worked there because I was a weird-ass little kid.
Same with being a weird kid. Being weird led to not having many friends led to relying on internet socialization more and more.
>It'll also be interesting to see if anybody starts to disengage. The Internet relies on constant novelty to keep people engaged since the body naturally starts regulating to things and once you've seen enough it stops hitting the way it used to.
I’m hopeful but cautious. The internet is novelty manifest. There are single sites alone that can keep someone occupied for days. Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down. It’ll take willpower for sure for some people to get out of the rut that they’re in right now, and especially for future generations, if entertainment continues to advance.
I think there were always people in history who just couldn’t make friends like others could, but now the internet is a (sort of) welcoming environment for those kinds of people born now. What incentive do they have to limit/replace the time they spend online? I’m still undecided with ADHD. I’m honestly inclined to say it’s also been around forever, but we only recently have a name for it and a way to identify those with it.
(Hi!) I think I’m seeing it, too. A number of IRL friends I’ve made were originally just known online until I moved out and we began hanging out in person (after we confirmed none of us are secretly human traffickers). I believe that non-virtual connection is always going to remain important. People who are social butterflies use things like Discord, Instagram, datings apps, and Twitter to really just optimize what they already had going for them in real life, and are having more success than they could have had in a past time, imo.
Yeah, guilty as charged. I’ve probably been constantly online since I was 13 (24 now). It’s incredibly easy to find a multitude of things to do online to keep an ADHD-brained person entertained for hours on end, especially if they don’t have a social spark that makes them want to form connections with other people or go on any kind of social outing.
I think this number will continue to rise in the future. Probably 40% by 2035.
Same with being a weird kid. Being weird led to not having many friends led to relying on internet socialization more and more.
>It'll also be interesting to see if anybody starts to disengage. The Internet relies on constant novelty to keep people engaged since the body naturally starts regulating to things and once you've seen enough it stops hitting the way it used to.
I’m hopeful but cautious. The internet is novelty manifest. There are single sites alone that can keep someone occupied for days. Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down. It’ll take willpower for sure for some people to get out of the rut that they’re in right now, and especially for future generations, if entertainment continues to advance.