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Smartphones are absolutely a huge contribution to the mental wellbeing of people today. It’s pretty fucked up, tbh, that anybody anywhere can choose to interrupt your day on their whimsy
Just because someone calls/texts doesn’t mean you have to answer. Adjust your alerts for your comfort, not others.
Definitely I identified with this meme not because I think having a phone on your person at all times is a boon to my mental health, but because I identify with the idea that’s it’s relative detriment is much lower than other societal woes.
True. But not what people are depressed about. People want to be able to won a home, have kids, go on vacation, and retire at some point. The way things are going right now that’s not looking likely. Smartphones may not help but they aren’t the cause either.
Rest assured the Earth will be just fine. It isn’t dying by any stretch of the word.
It’s changing. Changing in a way that isn’t conducive to human life.
We earned this. It’s time to take our medicine. We either change, today, or we die. It’s that simple.
you got me in the first half. although, at this rate, the earth may turn unsuitable for any life whatsoever. or at least any microbiological life.
I don’t think we, humans, will survive long enough to do real, long lasting “damage” to this world. We simply don’t have that power.
In truth, we are pissants on the ass of a titan. A nuisance but nothing more.
Once momma shrugs her shoulders we are done.
It depends on what you mean by “damage”. Humans have made a lot of other species go extinct. But damage to the planet itself? Hell no. Even if we did want to blow up the planet, I don’t think that we could.
What I mean is that Earth will recover. New life will arise and thrive and very likely something else will get a chance at dominance. Or nothing will. There are no guarantees that what sparked human development will ever happen again. However, life, will go on. It’ll just go on without us.
I mean technically, we have the know-how to grab a space rock and toss it, really really fast, at Earth and take off a decent chunk of it.
Meanwhile their constantly watching conspiracy videos on their phones
Also them: “Don’t trust everything you see on the internet”
Quite sure that our planet has potential to recover once we humans are gone for good !
Sure, but like, you know what we mean.
I know what you mean , my mom yells about my phone all the time!
To be fair the phones and internet are a big part of that. Ignorance is bliss. When I was a kid I didn’t really know what was going on with the economy. Even if someone told me, I wouldn’t have a good perspective on what that means (that part could still be true for kids today). I was just worried about riding my bike, playing ball, and whatever homework I had to turn in the next day.
Adulthood was going to happen with or without phones and internet. The only difference with phones and internet is you now have access to more than just the regional opinions and limited sources of curated news.
But to your point, without extended awareness that phones and internet give you, the ignorance that you are surrounded by absolutely horrible scumbags would be blissful.
However, flip side, you would likely never know your pastor rapes children and your dinner guests are Nazis. Not sure that is really bliss.
To be entirely fair, those things wouldn’t be impacting anyone’s health if the news never reached them (through their iphones). Both points are technically true. My ass completely missed all those civil wars when I was growing up because I was playing neopets.
Pretty sure the fubar’d economy would be plenty apparent without the iPhone.
Bread and circuses. The iphone is the circus. Cheap manufactured food is the bread.
Last I checked the iPhone didn’t exist in 1929 when the economy collapsed and sent huge swaths of the population into poverty. It still had an impact even without a single iPhone to tell people the market crashed.
Which would be an overwhelming factor that would probably be unusual in the west. 95% of all other news going on right now would not reach me without social media, which didn’t exist until very recently.
Ukraine, I’d hear very vaguely about and have little opinion on. All the other repeatedly ignored crimes against humanity that I’d literally have to go to therapy to ever find my way through? Wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t gotten bored enough to scroll mastodon at the worst time.
Back a couple decades ago, most kids could cover their ears and scream because reading the newspaper was something boring their parents did. Now, there are no real alternatives because everyone wants to hang with their friends and social media is the definition of doing that.
Recognizing that it may make people sad to be subjected to a constant reel of everything wrong with existence isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Yeah, those things should maybe possibly be addressed ever, and raising awareness of it is crucial to any hope of that. I cannot, myself, make Turkey give Syria their water back though. So what good is it doing me to know about it, other than shorting out my will to live at all?
Dismissing it as “grouchy old people hating tech” glosses over that it does genuinely have a huge mental impact that is still relatively new.
Very well said. There have always been problems, not all of them are solvable and it’s ok to zone most of it out. Think globally, act locally.
Correction, humanity and many forms of life are dying. The Earth is fine and is going to be fine. It has survived many extinction events and will probably survive many more until it’s consumed by our sun when it dies.
