I don’t believe anything has changed neurologically or psychologally in the last decades.
There have always been people who are more susceptible to consume “trashy” (provoking, easy to consume) media.
Once it was low-quality newspapers (a german band once refered to them as “fear, hate, tits and the weather forecast”, which fits really well!), then it was trash TV, then mobile games, and now TikTok and stuff. Some people are just attracted to flashy stuff and can’t get enough dopamine.
It’s just that the latter example is very new, and everything new is automatically bad, no matter what.
There have always been young people who read books, create art, video game, listen or create music, have hobbies, and so on.
BUT, something has changed:
**One word: attention economy.**Capitalism realized, that especially in combination with ads, you can create A LOT of money by making easy to consume content.
If a platform uses dark patterns (emotional or funny content, reinforcement, short content instead of longer stuff, flashy stuff, likes, endless scrolling, keeping you as long as possible in the app, etc.), it makes a lot more money with it’s users.
Years of algorithms perfectionized manipulating you and your attention span with supernatural stimuli (as mentioned above).
What to do with those informations?
Notice, how boring Lemmy, RSS-feeds, and stuff like that are?
After checking my posts for this day, I’m done and do something different, like cleaning the kitchen. Now, I’m on the toilet and don’t have anything else to do, and I have fun answering you :)
That’s how our devices should work. I don’t wanna be a slave, I want to own my device, and not the other way around.
Tbh, I’m grateful Reddit went downhill. A year ago I could never imagine nuking my account.
I spent my whole teenage and now adult years (15 - now) on that shithole, was super addicted and couldn’t spend 2 minutes without checking my phone, even in meetings, dates, and so on. It was just as bad as vaping for me. I knew, that it was slowly killing every brain cell, but “loved” it too much.
Thanks, u/spez ❤️ You killed Reddit for me and made my new “Reddit” (-> Lemmy, but with the same app) THAT boring for me I bought an e-reader now to read books instead😂