Pitching Technology Addiction
Does social media distort the way that we interact with people? Do we have an epidemic on our hands? Or do we have a bunch of hyperbolic Cassandras panicking about nothing and being very noisy about it?
Novels were once seen as a social evil by the older generation. Radio and rock music were seen to be signs of the decline of Western Civilization. TV was going to damage your kids beyond repair, and the generation raised by TV were not going to be worth a damn.
Biggest problems in society today, really? The opioid crisis, prescription drug addiction, and deteriorating mental health brought about by big pharma turning everything into a condition. Yeah — the same people who are pointing the finger at different bug-bears in the realm of media are the ones drugging people into a state where they are unable to interact with people. Oh, the irony.
It seems like a great example of misdirection, and the latest people pitching the whole notion of this spurious condition are disgruntled exes who broke up with Facebook and Google.
In a market where the latest disease is always the money maker why not corner a market that makes up a huge percentage of the world — fit it to a framework of a spectrum, where differing degrees require different dosages, and you can medicate all those people out of their technology addiction.
Or, you could just tell your kids to set aside their devices and help them to find something more interesting to do — participation over observation. You could set an example and lead the way.
A lot of this idea denies the agency of the person involved and is an extension of pushing the victim mentality on everyone. You are just a Pavlovian Dog that cannot resist the manipulation being used on you, but that is a very disempowering position to take on anything — it means you can’t control your slide into addiction and that you need a helping hand from someone else to get out of it — you can’t just decide to walk away from it or choose to do something else. It’s an interesting sales pitch, on used often by those with so-called magic pills — that everyone is affected, even if they don’t know it, and any denial of the need for the solution means they are, of course, in need of the pills.
Kids and adults get bored and these things keep them occupied, and they often aren’t aware, or don’t think with the possible alternatives. All they will often need is pointing in the right direction.
