Thread: Cell phones and internet -- hurting human relationships?

I mean... that wasn't called for!

Originally Posted by MOtorboat

Vocal interactions are generally much, much better for everything. Electronic communication has hurt communication in general, but I have learned to work with it. Especially with younger people, who really seem to have a lot of anxiety with person to person interactions. That's frustrating to me, but it's something we have to cope with as a society because it's not going to go the other way.

The question I have is where would it end? If they have anxiety talking in person then personal interaction is avoided. Given enough time NOT personally interacting would become the norm. Then were are we as a society. Might as well plug us into the pc and feed us through an IV.

Originally Posted by slim

Who knows what a party line is?

It's not as fun as it sounds.

You got to know a lot about your neighbors though. hahahaha

Originally Posted by BroncoWave

Fully agree that parents need to teach their kids the dangers of it and restrict access until the kids are ready. Which is probably difficult for today's age of parents since this isn't something they grew up with themselves. I would imagine this issue will more naturally correct itself when people who grew up in the social media era themselves become parents and can more knowledgeably guide their kids though those issues.

There is some good sense in this. My caution here though is that the technology is moving so fast that what you know now will almost certainly be obsolete in a decade or so. The day may come sooner than we think that Twitter and Instagram are as obsolete as Compuserve, dial-up modems, AOL, and flip phones. Facebook and bulletin boards in general are trending towards obsolescence even now. We are always fighting the last war, including parents.

What comes next? Dunno, but whoever guesses right will make a crap-ton of money

Originally Posted by BroncoWave

The communication aspect is great. I think it's just the aspect in which everything you do is public and out there for the world to see is the big negative. That along with the self esteem issues that can come from seeing the highlights of everyone's life that you know plastered everywhere then comparing that to the negative issues in your life.

The scenario you laid out in which a group of friends use it just to chat with each other is a great use of it. Keeping in touch with various people is basically the only reason I keep social media. It's all the other bullshit that comes with it that's harmful.

Agreed. A good example is when I was expunged from an interview process because the company looked at my Facebook profile and found a post from 5 years prior that they deemed racist. The funny thing is the person I tagged in it was my best friend since age 9, who I graduated with, enlisted in the Corps with, was the best man at my wedding, etc...and happens to be a black man. Half of the people that liked the post were black as well. But some overly sensitive rich white chick with no knowledge of inter-racial personal relationships took offense and removed me from the interview process.

Originally Posted by CoachChaz

Agreed. A good example is when I was expunged from an interview process because the company looked at my Facebook profile and found a post from 5 years prior that they deemed racist. The funny thing is the person I tagged in it was my best friend since age 9, who I graduated with, enlisted in the Corps with, was the best man at my wedding, etc...and happens to be a black man. Half of the people that liked the post were black as well. But some overly sensitive rich white chick with no knowledge of inter-racial personal relationships took offense and removed me from the interview process.

Which wedding?

Originally Posted by CoachChaz

Agreed. A good example is when I was expunged from an interview process because the company looked at my Facebook profile and found a post from 5 years prior that they deemed racist. The funny thing is the person I tagged in it was my best friend since age 9, who I graduated with, enlisted in the Corps with, was the best man at my wedding, etc...and happens to be a black man. Half of the people that liked the post were black as well. But some overly sensitive rich white chick with no knowledge of inter-racial personal relationships took offense and removed me from the interview process.

Yeah that's always been one of my big fears that something I put on Facebook over 10 years ago could come back to haunt me. That was probably for the best for you though. That doesn't sound like your kind of people I'd want to work for.

Originally Posted by BroncoJoe

Which wedding?

Such a good song, and I forgot how great that video was!

#80'smusic

Originally Posted by CoachChaz

Agreed. A good example is when I was expunged from an interview process because the company looked at my Facebook profile and found a post from 5 years prior that they deemed racist. The funny thing is the person I tagged in it was my best friend since age 9, who I graduated with, enlisted in the Corps with, was the best man at my wedding, etc...and happens to be a black man. Half of the people that liked the post were black as well. But some overly sensitive rich white chick with no knowledge of inter-racial personal relationships took offense and removed me from the interview process.

It's frustrating that our lives are becoming more archived and scrutinized, making us become more bland in general.

Interesting piece, and I agree pretty wholeheartedly. Speaking as someone who refuses to own a cell phone of any kind, I can't but agree that blaming them for all of the unhappiness and dysfunction of 21st Century life is missing the big picture. Like, almost completely

Smash the smartphone in your own hand? Go ahead, but let’s not lobby Congress just yet.

Should we start smashing the machines? Tucker Carlson has made Luddism a force again. Destroy them before they break our society. Arguing with Ben Shapiro, he recently said he would ban the use of driverless trucks lest they leave a huge cohort of American men unemployed. In a debate with Charlie Kirk he asserted that we build robots and machines for us, and if they’re doing social harm, we have the right to stop them. And then on his show he came around to smartphones. It’s science, says Tucker Carlson. “Smartphone use makes your kids sadder, slower, and more isolated, and over time can kill them.” And then he said Congress should ban them for kids, while comparing them to cigarettes.

Let’s slow down on legislation and dwell on that analogy to cigarettes for a bit. Smartphones have been ubiquitous for perhaps five years now. It was decades before the harmful effects of cigarette addition translated into social stigma against smoking and the wave of local ordinances that pushed smoking out of restaurants and bars. Do we know what we’re doing yet?

It’s true that there are lots of studies suggesting that kids are having more mental-health problems, and some adults, too. Those problems are correlated with a decline in their time socializing, and a huge rise in time on screens. Social media is also shown in studies to drive rates of depression. Social media is used as a replacement for normal social activity, or displaces it. And probably distorts it. The fact is that social-media interaction is a parsimonious replacement for friendship. No amount of social-media “interaction” will ever have the same hormonal effect as falling apart in laughter at an inside joke with a group of friends.

My instincts tell me to smash the phone in my own hand. And to not let my kids near one for too long. But, I’m not quite ready to lobby Congress yet.

How much of the decline in socialization is due to screens, and how much of the uptake in screens is due to a decline of socialization? In half a century, America has gone from having over 90 percent of its children born to wedded parents, to just 59 percent. Combine that with plunging fertility rates, and that means smaller households and therefore less socializing in the home, too. Lowered fertility over generations means much smaller kin networks of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Family dysfunction is greater at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. But a kind of hyperactivity that crowds out socialization is more typical up top. The rise of the “organization childhood” and helicopter parenting predated the ubiquity of smartphones and radically began reducing the amount of time kids could be socializing outside with friends. The social effect has been disastrous...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...e-legislating/

I think we view the benchmark for what childhood is through a very distorted lens

Childhood is a relatively new concept, only since the government realised they needed an educated workforce at the dawn of the industrial revolution did children get any form of protected childhood.

Post industrial revolution, poverty and war pretty much cancelled out this idyllic childhood some seem to think existed in yester year

We then use our own subjective experience to romanticize the simple times of our own childhood and assume that everything since is dangerous or worse

Most of the damaged adults I work with are not the product of a childhood with smart phones, but if those adults existed as children today, they would be getting diagnosed with something that was simply not in the radar.

My point is simple, people have always been mentally unwell, we just line in a more aware and tolerant (of mental illness at least) society.

To blame phones is such a poor and linear analysis it makes me sad.

So while I disagree with the dude in dreads post (for his reasons) I absolutely accept the ridiculousness of pinning all the blame on a device

Originally Posted by Valar Morghulis

Childhood is a relatively new concept, only since the government realised they needed an educated workforce at the dawn of the industrial revolution did children get any form of protected childhood.

I wonder if that protection arose from society's demand that childhood be protected? And if that demand arose from a then-extant expectation of childhood as deserving a protected status? It seems common sense to me that it did, but I genuinely wonder this.

One of the problems with the loom is that it takes away from the organic experience of designing and fabricating one's clothing, leaving us all more spiritually bereft.

And the great pitfall of society is that it takes away from the savage pleasures of finding and killing other males and subduing females prior to intercourse--that was much more satisfying and exciting. Alas.

The epidemic of sliding into virtual exchange as humans brings with it a reduction in the quality of exchange, but it brings with it many enhancements: frequency of exchange, enhanced opportunities for exchange, long-distance exchange, and large-group exchange.

The central question is whether this evolution cuts too far across some natural (biologic) baseline of human behavior.

Originally Posted by Hawgdriver

One of the problems with the loom is that it takes away from the organic experience of designing and fabricating one's clothing, leaving us all more spiritually bereft.

And the great pitfall of society is that it takes away from the savage pleasures of finding and killing other males and subduing females prior to intercourse--that was much more satisfying and exciting. Alas.

The epidemic of sliding into virtual exchange as humans brings with it a reduction in the quality of exchange, but it brings with it many enhancements: frequency of exchange, enhanced opportunities for exchange, long-distance exchange, and large-group exchange.

The central question is whether this evolution cuts too far across some natural (biologic) baseline of human behavior.

I hate books, the damn kids want to read instead of clean chimneys, it's making them weak