Like almost anything, how much we're reliant on technology nowadays to the point that it alienates and isolates people more than bringing people together. When I go outside and people always have their heads down in phones instead of paying attention to their surroundings almost causing accidents. Everything is so dependent on ads to maximize screen time and engagement and even people are treated like they're disposable because of apps and wanting things to be instantaneous. I'm also not that old and I was born in the late 90s. I'm tired of it.
As a boomer I love the technology of today & the instantaneous availability of information literally at our fingertips. What I see though, as a major problem, is the over reliance on social media and “fomo” that has younger people permanently attached to their phones & missing out on the real life moments.
I think it’s kind of sad to see statements like in a previous post I saw on this sub where the person says they have “friends” from all over the world now & they’re like “family”.
Really? They are friends & just like family, are they? I’m in contact with people from all over the country & some from other countries too, but I will never consider them to be actual friends, much less family. Yikes! I have actually met a few people in person & yes, I DO consider those people friends now, or at least acquaintances. I guess face-timing counts a little, but still—technology & social media is no substitute for having actual
in-person relationships with people. Another thing I see a lot on Reddit is people posting about how lonely they are—esp younger people living on their own. Where are their friends? Why are they not out socializing? I think perhaps there’s entire generations now who really have no idea how to socialize or make friends. That’s so sad. I’m hoping that coming generations learn how to balance our amazing technology—esp social media—with actual personal relationships.
The small societal bubble I grew up in was full of people I never fit in with. I met my girlfriend online and we live together now and she's amazing.
That’s great! But try to build a network of friends you see together & separately. Relationships can dissolve & you don’t want to be stuck alone.
That's because there's not a lot of places to go to meet people, especially as you get older. The problem is much like you already said, the bubbles people put up when they're out in society and it makes talking with new people harder than ever before.
This is very true but we do make friends through work and outside activities and we still have our old friends from college & even earlier. It’s a much more mobile society now. People move around more, change jobs more & I think perhaps they lose contact with people.
I’ve always seen this as a super power of mine.
I’m 29, grew up with a lot of it starting with MySpace and AOL. I’ve just slowly fallen off all of it over the last few years. Reddit is the only social media I even have installed on my phone.
I love going places alone and making friends. Even if it’s just for the short time I’m at the show, bar, or whatever. It’s easier for me because I know, likely, I’ll never see this person again. But those interactions are so awesome, and they help polish up your social skills.
Yea, I'm a boomer and I miss the 50's and 60's! 😂 We all want to believe the good old days were better. I'm not sure that's true. Today is all we've got! Enjoy it.
I'm Gen X and yeah pre internet was fun but I don't think it was as fun as we try to convince you as it was.
I’m sure as shit not envious of boomers and x
I love this modern day and age
Yes. This is why many people like to live an outdoors centric life with hiking, camping, skiing, etc. It makes them feel like the humans that they are instead of zoo animals.
Agree with everything you said plus: Everything we're provided is poison. There is no way to avoid consuming micro plastics, soil steeped in carcinogens, factory processed food. Then the healthcare industry gets to profit when we all inevitably get sick.
Brah I wasn’t made for this society and this society was not made for this world
I'm as afraid and frustrated as "tired". People in my area are driving more aggressively, and just being more entitled as well.
Okay but you drive a prius, you probably have no right to complain about people driving faster than you😂
No, but lunging out into an intersection before the light is green has nothing to do with what I drive. In fact, their obnoxious entitlement has no connection to what I drive.
Gen X here. I love the digital world but am so glad I grew up without it.
I worry about people’s lives who have never experienced the freedoms we did as children. We were blissfully feral idiots rampaging around the countryside on our bikes, staying out all day and fighting opposing gangs from different areas, building camps in the forest and makeshift treehouses.
We used to carry machetes in our belts but never for any reason apart from forestry and associated construction.
Our weapons were mud and occasionally stones but the rivalry’s never really came to much. (One boy fell out of a tree and broke his arm so we stopped fighting and all helped him get home)
Some days nearly everybody I see is just staring down at a screen while walking, eating, travelling and even when being with another person.
It may all come to nought eventually but I really don’t like the way things seem to be going. I can’t believe this dopamine addicted society is capable of changing course any time soon.
I agree. I also think people have become more superficial. Maybe it’s just because I’m a boomer (early 90s) but I swear to god people didn’t used to be as obsessed with their appearance and the average person didn’t assume your personality based off your height or the shape of your face
I don't think you're wrong in that feeling. I'm sure people have always had the capacity to be this narcissistic and self absorbed, it's just that the internet has been instrumenal in growing that like a virus. I'm completely sick of modern culture, it strikes me as the death pangs of a civilisation on the brink of collapse.
I dunno. Boomer/generation Jones here (‘55). We dyed our hair, constantly tried new styles (including those awful perms), wore certain clothes that everyone else wore.
The difference was no one was on social media to be influenced. We went by movies and TV.
That sort of thing was really big in the Victorian era actually! Very racist and obviously not scientific but they thought the shape of your skull could indicate intelligence/personality.
Yup, I wanna have a hippy compound at my place , mini village.
Lies. Gaslighting. Propaganda disguised as news. Flashing images and unfunny jokes. Manufactured bland music. Processed food. Distractions and misdirection. Fools and criminals in politics. Messages telling us to hate some group or other. I'm heading for the middle of nowhere as soon as I can, so I can live. Breathe clean air and hear the silence. When I visit there, the stress lifts off me, palpably. So nice.
Social media ruined many relationships. Ironically i met my husband over the Internet and now i wish i didnt have any computer or tablet. But ive been addicted for too long
Same born at the end of the 90s. I feel like I don’t relate to most people around my age because they are so entranced by social media and shit. I hate it. Everything is so rampant we eat shitty professed and poisonous food. Profiteering leads to not being able to talk to a human when you call a business. Jobs are being cut left and right to save profits. Been a big shift after the technological revolution. Things have gone downhill.
I think we're going to need go back to the drawing board as a species. We will need to fundamentally change everything to survive. We need to imagine a world without countries or money. The society we built isn't working.
Yes, absolutely. It’s miserable.
Absolutely! Feeling tired of modern society can be like trying to keep up with a treadmill that's set just a bit too fast. Sometimes, it's nice to take a break and step off for a breather.
I'm a gen x-er. I'm glad I grew up in a pre-internet world. Socializing was about spending time with friends in person, either going places or just hanging out at someone's house, or yakking away with them on the phone.
I definitely miss the pre-social media days of the internet when it was just Usenet and message boards. Trolls and wack jobs were actually called out for being trolls and wack jobs. They were invalidated by their peers, not validated.
The flaw with the internet is definitely the development and growth of social media and its influence has seriously screwed up society. Feelings have become facts. The lunatic fringe has become mainstream and is seen as 'equally valid', so you wind up with garbage like various conspiracy theories- MAGA/Trumpism, Q-Anon, anti-vaxxers, reptilian and chem trails believers, the replacement theory nuts, etc. and their ilk spreading this poison online and people fall for it. Influencer culture, toxic positivity, and on and on. It's never ending.
It's horrible there are people now dependent of sites like Tik Tok for getting all their news and information about anything and everything, trusting that some video posted by some random person is accurate, factual information. Some rando's scatterbrained opinions on an issue or event posted on social media are seen as equal to some journalist's carefully researched article that appears on the Guardian or NY Times websites.
All of this negativity impacts the way people's minds work. Too many people shutting off their brains and following groupthink. Too many people focused on their 'image', their 'personal brand' and 'marketing' themselves online.
People don't pay attention to what's really going on in the world because they're obsessed with this weeks social media fads, and the influencers of the day or week. Lowest common dominator society at work.
Beat down burned out run down by politicians and their wants and needs and dirty disrespectful attitude towards anybody who's not one of them. Cops who are poorly trained and react with their egos and don't even know what laws are anymore and have no respect for civilians. Any event you go to just a Coke is going to cost you $5 so f*** yeah I'm tired of all the b******* the grid the want the ego trips and the young people who think they've got it all figured out. You know there's a reason that all those statues all over the world are of older people.
You have no idea. Next prime is a landline with ans machine. Communicating emotions with text is like trying to read braille.
I’m tired of how everyone is forced to be an activist. It doesn’t matter who you are, because everyone’s problems are now your problems. I wish the early noughties when I was just a kid and didn’t have to worry about shit like the Middle East or National Politics.
I’m tired of having to ask my partner (the love of my life) to put her phone down every now and again. I’m tired of having to worry about finances and such all the time.
It depends on how old you are. I was born in the late 60s. We didn't have any of this stuff back in the 70s. We had cars and pay phones. I was probably one of the last people to get a cell phone, and it was a flip phone. I didn't own a computer until 1997. It all seems so strange, all this technology. My nephew wants me to get Alexa, or "Hey Google" for my house. I'm like "why? That's creepy".
For me, I feel like I long for a society that doesn't even exist. Like I'm a 90s kid and I'd like to go back for awhile, but what I REALLY crave is something like the friendships in fantasy stories, whether it's the Fellowship from Tolkien or the kids in Harry Potter or even the teams on Star Trek. Even as bad as things get on stuff like The Walking Dead, they still have these really strong friendships that form. I have NEVER had a group of friends like that and I've never really belonged anywhere. I have friends, but rarely see them because most live in other states. I don't want to just "hang out" and go to a club or something. I want a sense of COMMUNITY that I can connect with overall and a few close companions within that community that I can really trust and bond with, and it seems impossible to find that.
Yeah, but I’d be dead wo modern medicine… so there are good things too.
What I can’t get past regarding “modern society” is how many apps or QR codes involved in everything. We upgraded our house internet and had to download an app for a 3rd party service just to connect to the Wi-Fi. I hate that all of my info is constantly out there and gets hacked. Old ass accounts that I don’t even have the email for anymore that are connected to services that I don’t use. Instacart is a big one. My husband is constantly getting alerts that someone is trying to get into my instacart but somehow it’s his email and my name and it isn’t the one on my phone either and it’s just a lot of frustration. I don’t want to scan a QR code at my child’s school for a fundraiser or event info. Not to mention the amount of scam likely calls I get in a day and then there’s trying to unsubscribe from promotional emails. Gtfooh it took over 6 months of constantly unsubscribing from campers world for them to stop sending me concert promotions. It’s too much. Too fast.
I (64M) have seen the transition to computer everything. Much of it is amazing and time saving. It’s astonishing that I basically have the entire world available to me on a smartphone. Having said that, a lot of it is also unnecessarily complicated and user hostile. I’m ok with QR codes at restaurants to see the menu. I’m NOT ok when they want a profile with emails to confirm your profile. Nope. I’m the most tired of the tribalism. Say the wrong thing in any setting and not only are you wrong, you’re the devil incarnate. People on your own side will throw you under the bus if you stray from the orthodoxy. Enough already.
All day, every day. I hardly ever leave the house because going anywhere for anything is a dangerous, annoying, stupid hassle. I don't even have to leave to feel encroached upon, either. The street (residential, 2-lane) that intersects ours has become a main connector between two major areas and has a constant flow of traffic day and night with constant vehicle noise and blaring stereos (auto, motorcycle, atv/utv) that keep our home filled with noise.
Beyond the things you brought up, a general lack of courtesy for those that we must share space with has all but vanished. The modern world is just not a pleasant place to exist in without being able to afford to live in affluent areas that are generally more spacious among other things.
Yess
I think more and more people are waking up to this. Many are becoming car and van lifer's, and trekking outside now just to escape. Give it time and I think people will get sick of it.
Yup it's totally soft and lame.
Yes, I miss the early 2000s. Honestly would prefer to have grown up without the internet at all though. :( I'm envious of boomers and gen x, and the generations before that.