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Dark age of technology? I smell warhammer 40k
The impact on mental health alone is insane. After doom scrolling I feel horrible about myself. It’s an onslaught of reading people argue over nothing, comparing myself to photoshopped women, feeling jealous that I don’t get to fuck around and travel, etc. It’s inescapable online. People are the worst version of themselves on the internet. 
The shitty thing is, I’ve tried to get rid of all social media but it makes me feel like a hermit when I do. I’m so conditioned to immediately go on my phone when I’m bored. >

I'm 30 and just got rid of everything in October except BeReal and Snapchat, as lame as that sounds. I like Snapchat because I can still keep in touch with people, post the things I want, and only check the stories I want. No other bullshit, long text posts, arguing, so on. BeReal is fun because it's new, and it's just a once a day prompt to post what I am doing right at the exact moment the notification goes off. 
Everything else was beginning to be exactly how you described it for me. It was just non-stop toxic trash. No more Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram for me. I'm actually MUCH happier without them. You'll feel like a hermit but your mental health will thank you for dwindling down your connections to only those who truly want to connect with you, and not the filler garbage of everything else.
ETA- yeah, I didn't get rid of Reddit, because I don't use this like social media, nor does it feel that way to me. It's not a toxic space like the "big 3" are (FB, Insta, Twitter). Getting rid of things for me was getting rid of those 3 mainstream social media apps. Here I most times just see lots of memes and cat pics-its a happy space, not a toxic one like the others are. Sometimes I chime in on things on Reddit, but it's not very often, and admittedly, sometimes it's hard to fight the nature of being human and wanting to have something to say. Personal growth is a journey, and not a perfect one! So if you're out there looking to put yourself in a better headspace- don't give up, keep pushing on, and do what is best for you! >

What is BeReal? I have never heard of it before. Would you mind explaining? >

Sure thing! The idea behind it, is of course to "Be Real!" A notification from the app goes off at a random time once every 24hrs. At that time you take a picture using your rear camera, and front facing camera. You have 2 minutes to do this. It will keep track of how many times you retake, and if you post your BeReal outside of the 2 minutes, it tells others you posted late and shows the time on your post (like 5 min late, 15s late, so on). The idea is, if you're being real and in the moment, these photos won't be curated to be "perfect". There are no filters either. When the notification goes off, it goes off at the same time for EVERYONE who has the app. You can have friends and see what they post in your feed and react with a "realmoji" which is a photo of yourself (like giving a thumbs up, smiling, so on). You can comment and mention as well, as long as you are friends with each other. There is a discovery feed to see what everyone else is posting that you can react to. 
The one photo a day, is all you get in the app. The next time the notification goes off, everything in the feed changes to that current days photos. In your own profile, you can see past "memories" of BeReals from days before. 
Hopefully that's a good explanation! >

This is perfect!! You explained it so well! Thank you for taking the time to do so for me. :) 
The app sounds awesome actually. It seems like something I would be interested in. >

You're welcome! It's not for everyone, but I've really enjoyed it myself! >

Right? Did not see this coming in the Xanga, AIM and MySpace days at all. The biggest contributing factors is that everyone has a smart phone now with cameras and the ability to post, look up and say literally anything they want to. I remember how in the 2000s being able to film yourself, put it onto a computer, edit it and post it online seemed like such a strange, magical and hard thing to do. Like “how the fuck do people do that”. Unless we have a huge shift in culture, I’m assuming we will probably see some strict regulations coming down the line if things get worse. It’s gunna get weird. >

The internet was a different thing when you could only access it at the school library, or at home, or office. The internet needed physical access at x locations. You weren't just on it 24/7 like with smartphones.
Fun statistic. 2012 was the year where, for the first time, over 50% of internet users came from a mobile device. You can quite clearly mark the decline around that time and after. >

Hey now, wasn't that the end of the Mayan long count? IE:
THE END OF THE WORLD?!?!
I kid, but I think it's kind of funny in a way. >

You’re not wrong >

This might be highly unpopular, but I miss the days when a computer was a thing only for "geeks".
The smartphone kinda ruined the silicon world because it became so mainstream that it got to the point of being a huge market, hence the ads, tracking, etc.
This kind of things only happen because basically everyone has a phone on their pocket. It's amazing having all the information any human couldn't even dream of knowing right on the palm of your hands. But it makes me miss the BASIC era (BASIC as in the programming language) >

and there was this wave when pcs became pretty affordable and there was msn messenger at all, all teens had one. and they went into higher education and could use a keyboard.
now, they spend 99% of that time on a bloody phone and don't even understand what the shift key is for (number of times i see teens hit 'caps lock' then type a key then hit caps lock again drives me mad.
no idea about files or folders or vaguely how things work.
all well and good if you're just going to be a couch cabbage reacting to the many bings your phone makes at you, not so much if you want a job in IT >

I think the 90s to 2007 was the golden years of social media and tech. We are sort of in some kind of dystopia as far as I see things. >

If this is the dystopia then this is the most boring and lukewarm timeline >

Not everywhere is the same but over a billion people living in China can definitely claim to be living in a dystopia, or Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Venezuela and more places. >

Well I see it through western media and so I have this bias. My friend traveled a lot of those countries and it’s a lot more complex than what we make it out to be >

One thing that's kinda scary is how China weaponized this. 
Tiktok is literally the perfect social media for harming the youth, and it's exclusively aimed at the west. Kids in China are allowed 40 minutes of douyin time a day and they get recommended educational and inspirational content excluively. >

Singling out Tiktok for harmful content seems disingenuous when both Instagram and YouTube are literally copying them in the multi billion worth short video format. All this talk of regulating Tiktok is just for the benefit of the American tech corps rather than the general populace. >

well yeah tiktok is the step forward for social media as a conduit to prey on children. Once we ban tiktok we can talk about reigning in American tech corps, because they surely need to be smacked down a bit as well. >

There's a reason things like Black Mirror and Blade Runner are considered predictions of the future. >

Well to be fair black mirror seems to be late in the game since other countless books came first  about this stuff >

I compare this era of internet/tech/social media to a part of history where people thought cigarettes were either mostly harmless or even somewhat good for you. Then over time people started to become more and more aware of the harm cigarettes cause. Now it is a downright fact that cigarettes are bad. We’re at that apex point where more and more people are going to become aware of the negatives internet/tech/social media cause humans. >

The thing is, smoking is a just an action in itself, and nothing good comes from it. Internet is a platform where life itself transcurs, and has positive and negative aspects, but it's unavoidable. >

I understand they’re 2 very different things. I wasn’t trying to 100% directly compare the two. It’s the similarities as time progresses where people begin to figure out something that was originally believed to not be harmful, turns out to actually be harmful. >

True. I think this is like the gold rush of the internet since I hear the previous generation being called wild west of the internet alot. Since before it was all about exploring this new land now it's all about exploiting it and cutthroat profit. You even have the Rockefellers who are making the internet versions of big oil companies like Facebook, Twitter, etc haha. >

The Google-Meta-Tok-Verse will find ways more to intrude more in your life and control even more of what you see and think. They're not done yet. Not even close. >

Say “more” again. >

The Dark Age of Technology >

Praise the Omnissiah >

Yep, if you don't watch commercials for a long time and then you expose yourself to them, it's only then when you notice how toxic and stupid they are. >

I want to say the "dark age" of tech probably started with the proliferation of smartphones. That's probably about the time we kissed the last of our privacy goodbye, too.   We're probably 20 years in, living naked in glass houses.
Don't get me wrong- I love being able to bust out my phone and look up information when I need it, use it to stream whatever music my heart desires, and make handsfree calls from my vehicle. It's fun to go on Reddit and fuck with people when I'm bored, too.
Having grown up during the 1980s, I fondly remember life pre-tech. I could write a book on all the ways life was different, as could anyone from my generation. >

Since I’m a younger guy and only vaguely familiar with life before all this, at least as far as actually living it goes, would you say the “proliferation of smartphones” is a net positive or net negative to life? It feels like an unambiguous net negative to me, but maybe that also just comes with the angst of growing up. I’m interested to hear your perspective on it. >

It's such a massive net positive, honestly. Just a matter of people actively seeking out detrimental news and content and looping back into their perception of all that is bad now. That's before we're considering people actually and fully leveraging this stuff to live with disabilities of many, many colors, we're talking hundreds of millions of people who truly use their phones as prostheses. Google Lens for blind folks alone is such an inconceivable thing, we just magically put super intelligent agents into tiny boxes and make them spell out what we would be seeing.
There always are going to be drawbacks with anything novel, but man, you have to deliberately ignore all the good tech today does to think it is going for net negative. Not even remotely close, the Internet is a pretty good and needed equalizer, even before the great industrial revolution of the 2020s about to hit us like seven brick walls. 
Tech is barely to blame, it's bad policymaking and shitty assholes ruining it for everyone. Which intricately links into each other, of course, but that won't change the prospect of good, beneficial usecases, of which there are so very many.
A concept as old as time too, people always were skeptical about things that are unmitigated benefits for us. >

I don’t disagree with your assessment of the problems, but the “dark ages” were characterized by a lack of advancement and distribution of philosophy and art. It would be more accurate to say we are transitioning into the silver age of tech. The golden age saw the creation of the computer and the interconnected world, but it ended with the creation of social media and all the problems you mentioned. Once we figure out how to solve those problems we’ll enter a phase of rapid development tempered by a mistrust of corporate power. >

I desperately wish I could get rid of my smart phone. But I can’t. It’s just too convenient. There is no way I’m going back to printing out directions on a computer >

The smartphone isn’t the main problem. You can turn off useless notifications and even delete apps that don’t make your life any better. Navigation apps, however, do make your life better. >

I'm at the point now of not taking my phone into others homes when I visit. 
I just leave it in the car, come join me in this effort and change people who think they need there phone on them at all times. 
Happy holidays everyone! >

The only time I bring out my phone when I'm hanging out with others is to quickly look something up or to like add someone new I've met as a Facebook friend or whatever. And the people I hang out with have that same mindset. Just gotta find the right people, the ones you can sit around a campfire with and happily chat to for hours or simply enjoy the night sky in silence together. >

You sound like a great friend >

This social media thing is truly as addictive as hard drugs. I have had people walk into me on the street because they can’t look up from their phone for 3 seconds! It seems to be worldwide. Just as bad in the US as in Europe and I would not be surprised to find that this is true in every part of the world where smart phones exist. And I doubt there is a solution. >

I hate it that you are constantly getting content thrown in your face. Big franchises pump out content just to have content. Everywhere needs to be ads. Apps constantly push notifications about stuff I might be interested in. Clickbait title Battles just to get the extra click on your shitty written article. Quality drops.
Its just too much. But on the other hand I browse daily on reddit. >

agreed, I don’t think people understand the sheer extent of the gas lighting or the role something as seemingly innocuous as internet karma plays in shaping society. We’re so far gone, the only thing that could save us would be draconian social media regulations that would probably just doom us in other ways >

We only seen the beginning. This dystopia has just gotten started. >

The wealthy are creating a black mirror world and theres nothing you can do about it... >

And sooo many people worship them >

God 😒 The idolization of wealthy people is disgusting, I'll never understand it. >

I always liked to call it the "Misinformation Age" as opposed to the "Information Age." >

Oh aren't you so clever. >

I like when certain websites keep their old versions available for 'fun' and all it ends up doing is proving the old one is actually the better version:


No perpetual scrolling to screw with your limited data on a metered connection.


It doesn't beg you to sign-in or install an app just to click on the little "Read More" buttons. Which is completely optional(and more importantly: DISCREET) on the old version.


Not designed by people who are totally blind and think that half-a-sentence should take up the entirety of a 1920x1200 display and have 200+ pixels worth of padding between elements.


Isn't a minefield of javascript popups trying to tell you about the 'sale going on' .... on every single page-load. Just remember me the first time and don't bother me again all day pleasse.


 
It just makes me miss the old age more. >

Yeah, it'll be a shame when Reddit finally deletes old.reddit.com >

Don’t forget: you must have an account and include a payment method to start the free trial for everything! Oh and you bet they’re selling that info to a million spam bots. >

I work in IT. I spend millions of dollars a year of enterprise grade stuff that is supposed to run reliably 24/7/365.
It is all half baked shit that never works and the vendors ship it out barely working and fix it on the go. >

Not even to mentioned everything getting automated. Hard enough with regular jobs getting taken but even creativity such as art, writing, and music with generating A.I...
I feel like I have no clue what to pursue in life anymore.