I think it's just the opposite. Kids who've grown up with this crap will be wise to the tricks. Those who don't get exposed until adulthood have no resistance. Just like how the younger generation is pretty good at using social media responsibly and prioritizing stronger relationships, whereas the older generation get hooked and spend their whole lives yelling in newspaper comment sections.
I am not disagreeing, but, on the other hand, they will be exposed to this, at at least one order of magnitude higher intensity than I ever was as a kid, or even in my 20s.
I don't have a perfect solution, just pointing out the bind we're in.
I'm actually not terribly prone to the "youth are just all messed up today compared to my generation" idea scheme, but while homo sapiens hasn't changed, the environment has changed radically and the amount of cognitive firepower being brought to bear on us to get our money and manipulate us has skyrocketed in the past decade or two. I've got a 11 and 8 year old and am still struggling through how to deal with it.
It seems to me that they're only "hard to persuade" because they are constantly bombarded with these mental viruses. There was (books/telegraph then?) radio, then TV, then internet, social media, scrolling social video... While it's true that each generation eventually develops some immunity to their entertainment afflictions, it does seem to be accelerating, and those not exposed as youth have less immunity (grandpa on facebook). It also seems to have continuing impact even if most become functioning members of society.
For sure. I could have phrased this better. Perhaps, "younger people were socialized to interact with people over the internet, unlike their parents or grandparents. In the same way, their children will grow up socialized to use a battery of tools to determine what's real or fictional in an environment of adversarial information."
I'm not necessarily saying they'll be good at it (indeed, that's part of my concern) just that they'll grow up in an environment where it's normalized & expected of them. Like how I grew up being told, "don't feed the trolls" or "lurk moar" by my online peers.
The difference is that hyperpowerful social media algorithms have weaponised it. Kids in the 90s had to actively seek out whatever propaganda or whatnot that they wanted to read about. If you were a pissed-off goth kid wanting to read how to bomb something, you had to genuinely work to find shit like that.
These days, you linger on an auto-playing video too long (that is quite possibly intentionally engineered to bait you in) and suddenly the algorithm gets a lock on you and absolutely rams more of that shit down your throat.
It's not even just propaganda either. The exact same cycle is what's at play here with preying on children's weaknesses. Mental health, body image, etc. etc. can all be weaponised the same way. And kids are espeically susceptable to it given the age they tend to start getting on social media is precisely also the age where they feel most socially awkward and trying to find their identity in the world.
I was with you up until "I believe that in general, younger people have become better at filtering out bullshit because they've had access to much more information than older folks did growing up." Um, have you actually talked to any younger people? I both teach young adults and have teenagers/kids in their 20s. They seriously believe anything they come across on the internet. They have no filter. It's incredible how little skepticism they have. And good luck trying to point out that something is BS, they don't have the attention span to hear it or they just don't care. Titillating trumps truth. At least that is my experience.
You might have grown older and more frightful. I think kids today are fine navigating misinformation that another even older generation thinks will destroy societies.
I think young humans are not developed enough to understand that the media's high praise of corruptive behavior is not healthy. I think young people are growing up thinking all the outrageous and adult content on the media platforms is not just some outlier entertainment, but rather that's what their future is going to be.
Maybe it's this perpetual chastising by the older generations that gradually "teaches" the younger generations. What if the older generations never said this sort of stuff? Would the younger generation never grow out of it? Just wondering. I'm a 23yr old myself.
The people who came of age after the internet but before it was censored into something safe enough to sell ads on are far more aware of how nasty things can be than the people before and since.
If anyone is gonna set out on a path of "real violence" it's likely going to be a subgroup of millennials.
It's analogous to the immune response. Of course adults are going to be resistant to ideas that are a total mind-$%^#! If something does not fit in with your foundation model of reality, then it's likely an exploit meme. (Like, "We are the messengers of the supreme being. You must convince others of this, and also give us 10% of your earnings!")
This poses a special problem for the transmission of things like values -- some of which are not exploit-memes but actually valuable heuristics for mutual benefit. (Like honesty and fairness.) Since the contexts that preoccupy the mainstream of each generation change so dramatically now, the lack of common context impedes the demonstration of values by an older generation to a younger one. Several centuries ago, it would be commonplace to find 3 generations on the same dance floor, all having fun dancing to the same music. Now, this is considered to be a ridiculous situation.
This change is so rapid now, that you see generational rifts in recent pop phenomena like Anime fandom. A friend of mine who was an MC at some of the early Anime Expos got trashed online by some kid over some bit of web forum etiquette. I'm sorry, but someone that connected with the history of your scene deserves a little patience and an explanation. (I'm sure others have similar anecdotes from Hip-Hop or skateboarding. Heck, there should be plenty of programming related anecdotes similar to this.)
Personally I think it's more likely that we'll adapt over the next few generations to cope with it, than it is that a conscious effort on our part will reverse the trend.
People underestimate the rate at which social behaviours change. I'm 27 and have younger cousins who have completely different social conventions and understandings in and out of school than what I experienced. Much of that is due to pervasiveness of the net and mobile. It's really bizarre.
Sure, but that's kinda the point. Changing society's beliefs and especially behaviors can take generations.
Today's adults are talking about it, but not doing enough about it. But for many of them it only became a problem after decades of not really hearing or caring about it. They have decades of experience not worrying about it and not seeing any consequences of it.
Today's kids have been hearing about it for most or all their lives. They'll grow up seeing more evidence of what's happening and how it will impact them. They won't know a world that's not talking about it.
Is that a guarantee they'll do something about it? Of course not.
I def agree with what you're saying, and so this is definitely not for me, but part of me wonders if this might become the next generational divide (ie if kids grow up with this type of content normalized, maybe they don't react as negatively?).
I don't know. I grew up the same way, and it really helped me become cynical about messages from media, which is a good thing. It's kind of like how European kids are allowed to drink alcohol, and they tend to not be as stupid with it as us Americans when they're in college. (Or so I'm told.)
Yeah, we see this a lot with younger people because they are just starting in the world. Also, they're the predominate generation right now that's video taping and posting every even possibly interesting moment of their lives, irrespective of whether some 30 year old thinks it's embarrassing. If 60 year olds were posting every strange thought or funny moment we'd have some opinions about them too (Facebook, anyone?) They're just thinking about and misunderstanding a different set of things. But i think the kids are somewhat closer to a humility that might be hard to find elsewhere.
This matches a pattern I think I noticed in the last few years (maybe it was there all along): those who want to protect the weak by forbidding some aspect of life are often the ones that seem to somehow struggle with it themselves.
E.g. sexuality. Those with a healthy sexuality are literally never the ones asking to protect the youth from it. It is always those for whom it is connected with shame and stigma. So the most safe route to become afraid of the sexualization of the youth seems to be to have shameful sedual thoughts yourself. And because you, a (in your self image) controlled person have troubles with your dirty mind, how bad must it be for the youth?
So when it comes to assigning priorities to potential problems, one seems to look to themselves and extrapolate from there.
I saw similar patterns with parents that have troubles with their TV habits and extrapolate that onto the (in their eyes comparable) activity of siting on a computer.
The problem with computers is, that you can’t really tell what your kid does unless you spy on it or have the trust bond to ask them. They could be playing games, socialize, watch porn, read the news, watch videos, learn programming or editing software — who knows.
The generation of obsessive television watchers thinks kids are doomed because of the internet. The generation of wild parties belives the youth is unhinged (despite evidence against it). Etc. Just because it was aproblem for you doesn’t mean the next generation even wants it.
I have cousins that are around the age I threw my first wild parties and they didn’t even go out ror a drink yet, befause it literally doesn’t interest them.
Reminds me of one interesting thing I heard about younger generations - they know social media is a facade intuitively growing up with it. I guess it is the adults who fall for the keeping up with the Jonses facade gilding contests and don't realize their lawyer neighbor managed to get deep in debt despite making six figures in a five figure COL area.
I have noticed a fundamentally disturbing thing about many who are essentially LARPing adulthood by following social pressures blindly - going through the motions of social spending, marriage and having kids not out of a desire for any of them but because they think that is what adults do.
Another way to read this is that every generation gets braver, and more willing to stand up for their privacy. (The proportion of people in the 'protection over privacy' camp consistently goes down with age).
I hope its a generational thing, and that these young folks won't change over to the "protection over privacy" camp as they age.
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