Gen Z Brain Rot

[Lyubov]

There’s going to be a digital underclass, it’s already forming. I can tell you guys now that many wealthy and educated parents are equipping their kids with skills on how to not fry their brains. I predict that setting up your life so you aren’t on social media much will soon be associated with wealthy educated people. 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

I think a lot of this comes down to parenting & maturity. 

Technology is accelerating at a rate we cannot keep up with.

There is no way to fully control a child's access when every other child has access - social media in particular. Many parents do not even know how to regulate their own technology use, let alone their children's. There isn't any wisdom grandparents can pass on to parents around raising kids either. Because half this tech hasn't been around enough for us to establish good, healthy habits based on technology use impacts etc. 

Then you have the family unit breaking down. Divorce being higher than ever. Social media, AI and phones are raising kids now

[bazera]

5 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Because half this tech hasn't been around enough for us to establish good, healthy habits based on technology use impacts etc. 

These social media / tech companies do their best to rot peoples minds and push us against developing healthy usage habits, that's against their interest since they are just profiting out of our attention. 

Sometimes I install Instagram app when I want to check DMs easily through the app, and it's really hard even for me to not get lost in endless media I see on my feed. I used to be very addicted to this stuff and somehow managed to remove it from my daily life, but I imagine little kids and teenages don't have that kind of willpower or even desire to do so, so they are lost in it.

Also I don't see many people speaking up about the dangers of this attention economy. Someone like Cal Newport has great takes on this.

Quote

Then you have the family unit breaking down. Divorce being higher than ever. Social media, AI and phones are raising kids now 

Our parents were right, it was the damn phones all along 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

3 minutes ago, bazera said:

These social media / tech companies do their best to rot peoples minds and push us against developing healthy usage habits, that's against their interest since they are just profiting out of our attention. 

Exactly - we are the product.

4 minutes ago, bazera said:

Also I don't see many people speaking up about the dangers of this attention economy. Someone like Cal Newport has great takes on this.

And not only duration of attention and time spent - but the actual quality of our attention has eroded.

One thing serious meditation showed me was attention isn't just a binary thing. There are levels of it. And you can enhance the quality of focus and attention through training. Technology/AI/Social Media can do the exact opposite...

[Natasha Tori Maru]

I sound like a black pilled doomer lol

Tech has done some amazing shit for sure. But so far it has always enhanced our lives.

It appears to be beginning to replace our lives now.... replace humans instead of assist.

[bazera]

Using technology in a healthy ways requires A LOT of responsibility to not mess up your life. I see people around me hooked into social media and doing nothing but switching their attention from TikTok to Instagram reels to Facebook reels, back to TikTok, etc. 

There's always something new to check on your phone if you have all those apps installed. It's like an infinite dopamine source. 

I have a friend who told me that 2 minute video was too long, he couldn't stand it. He needed 30 second video or less to get the same information. And in the back of my mind I was thinking that sometimes I watch 4 hour videos from Leo couple times to try to understand some topic discussed.

What chance is there to understand life when you can't even watch an hour of content that tries to educate you.

Or maybe we are bunch of "old man yells at cloud" fellows, idk 🫠

[ExploringReality]

AI is definitely a tool, but you don't want to let the tool become the master. I do use Claude AI for fact check or to go even deeper on a topic that I don't understand and I ask a lot of simple and advanced questions not to just extract answers from it but to have a deeper understanding and a better clarification of topics to learn from and I don't just say I know it because I looked it up and used ai, I use it to further deepen my questioning and I don't just stop there. I totally understand the traps of using AI and how it could be used as a substitute to use your own mind to think about things. For example I'm learning more and more about black history, slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, black activist in the early 20th century, the Jim Crow laws etc so that I can command my depth and memory of human history. And I think it's the intention behind using it as well and not just consuming it

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 minute ago, bazera said:

I have a friend who told me that 2 minute video was too long, he couldn't stand it. He needed 30 second video or less to get the same information. And in the back of my mind I was thinking that sometimes I watch 4 hour videos from Leo couple times to try to understand some topic discussed.

I linked my younger brother (he's fucking 38 mind you) a 10 minute clip 'Fuck I can't do that length, sorry. Got a 2 minute synopsis?'

Imagine one of Leo's videos >.<

[ExploringReality]

 

Over a hundred books I'm proud to collected over 10 years , I know this is going to be valuable over my life and I don't just read these books once or twice I go over them multiple times because I know I will have to in order to have a degree of understanding that I may not have at the moment that I read it but I understand how important this is to my life. I even bought a bunch of books for my babies that we read together, I'm not reading them Peter Ralston and Ken Wilbur, LOL but I did buy them books on emotions, emotional literacy,  educational and very simple cognitive development books. My babies are three and they do not have a single iPad or phone, and we monitor screen time. Sucks that the rest of the families like their cousin and other relatives already have iPhones and iPads and they are just sucked on that stuff, not my twins.

Edited 53 minutes ago by ExploringReality

[bazera]

1 minute ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I linked my younger brother (he's fucking 38 mind you) a 10 minute clip 'Fuck I can't do that length, sorry. Got a 2 minute synopsis?'

Imagine one of Leo's videos >.<

Haha, so it's not only GenZ problem then I guess 

In certain kinds of groups of people, I don't even mention that I like to watch 3-4 hour lectures on a daily basis. They'll think I'm a creep, lol.

Your brother will like a new "Ask" Gemini button under YT videos that let's you quickly summerize the main points from the video.

[bazera]

4 minutes ago, ExploringReality said:

 

Over a hundred books I'm proud to collected over 10 years , I know this is going to be valuable over my life and I don't just read these books once or twice I go over the multiple times because I know I will have to in order to have a degree of understanding that I may not have at the moment that I read it but I understand how important this is to my life. I even bought a bunch of books from my babies that we read, I'm not reading them Peter Ralston and Ken Wilbur, LOL but I did buy them books on emotions and educational and very simple cognitive development books. My babies are three and they do not have a single iPad or phone, and we monitor screen time. Sucks that the rest of the family like their cousin and other relatives already have iPhones and iPads and they are just sucked on that stuff, not my twins.

Good job man, keep it up! Your twins will be grateful for that when they grow up.

[ExploringReality]

Just now, bazera said:

Good job man, keep it up! Your twins will be grateful for that when they grow up.

👍🏽 Thanks man. My dad set the tone, granted he only read fictions like james Patterson, social economics and black economics. He was very good at teaching me about his experiences growing up during the 60s and educating me on systemic racism