A thing I'm seeing with increasing frequency from the younger members of our community is this like ...
Let me back up.
I work with some folks in their early twenties, and I am having a hard time relating to some of them. Some of them are having a hard time relating to one another.
And the root of this difficulty is propaganda, I think. All of them are constantly bombarded with video propaganda via social media. A lot of it is anti-community propaganda. Most of the media they consume is just about strengthening their disaffiliation with various outgroups. Even the stuff that's about celebrating people is, at least in passing, also about excluding or dehumanizing people.
And, for each of them, the memberships in these various in and out groups is unique. One of them has fallen in to a real trad Christian, 1950s fetishization, one of them watches a lot of stuff premised on the idea that nuerotypical people are an evolutionary dead end, and nuerodivergent people are the path forward...
It's... The specific content isn't what worries me. Like, both of those things aren't great, but the particular contents of the propaganda is irrelevant to my current point (because content can be addressed and deprogrammed.) Regardless of what flavor of self-isolating purity test content they've fallen in to, there are some common themes:
- policing other people's behaviors and desires
- shame for basically any expression of sexuality
- an outsized importance on excluding people
I'm sure there's other stuff, and I know this isn't unique to folks under 25, but it seems to be especially pervasive with them.
Social battles that I thought were long settled are not only coming back up, but also going the wrong way.
And I have to assume that this is, intentional and coordinated or not, an attempt to break any kind of solidarity that might build between people who are dissimilar.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •And the worst part, for me, is that so much of this propaganda is being delivered effectively.
Effective propaganda designs itself so that any attempt to refute it instead reinforces it.
"Oh, you question the need for us to self isolate? Clearly you're secretly a member of that other group." No!
Fuck this.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •We aren't here on this green and blue and increasingly hot orb for any particular reason that I can discern.
But we're here, and we're here together, and we're stuck.
So we owe it to ourselves, and to one another, to hold space for one another, to experience what this life has to offer, and to work together.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Now, you may be asking yourself 'Why would there be a bunch of propaganda targeted at younger adults and teens which appears designed to isolate them, to make them hate one another, and to make them suspicious of anyone who tries to unify them?"
And the answer, I think, is simple. We're living through the dying days of a failing empire. People are easier to control when they're alone. People are easier to keep alone when you've cultivated an idea in their minds that they're correct, and special, and the only way to remain both of those things is to remove anyone who isn't correct and special from their lives.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I feel like that last bit needs to be unpacked.
I work with kids on a volunteer basis. I mostly do reading tutoring, which consists largely of giving these kids situations in which they are motivated to read, and then trying to remove obstacles.
The other part of what I do is focused on helping kids develop healthy and safe relationships with technology.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •A lot of the kids I work with are autistic or have some other kind of learning difference that has left them falling behind other kids their age, but some of the kids I'm working with right now are seemingly NT and reasonably well adjusted. They're smart, but also they're between the ages of 8 and 12 and reading on a first grade level at best.
I work with their teachers and their therapists and their mental health professionals and their parents to figure out what can be done, what motivates them, where they're doing well and what they struggle with.
I did this kind of work less before covid, but some. Since covid, I've kind of stumbled smack in to the middle of it. (One of my closest and oldest friends is dating the director of the special education non-profit affiliated with our local Montessori school. The director is my wife's best friend. Their kids are among the group I'm working with.)
Pre-covid I was mostly working with the children of affluent families as a result of the area that we lived in. These kids mostly didn't have access to technology at all, outside of a classroom setting. Within the classroom setting, that technology access was heavily mediated.
Now I'm working with a combination of fairly affluent kids (it is a private school, after all) and very much not (we're in rural north GA, and associated with a non-profit that provides various needs based scholarships.) It is like I'm living in a different universe though. I don't know how much is covid (I never worked with kids in this area pre-covid), but discounting that, the biggest difference between the DC area kids I was working with 5+ years ago and the kids I'm working with now is technology access.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I'm in a kind of unique position, because I'm not a teacher.
I'm mostly playing games, making puzzles, curating books and video games and movies, and helping parents build strategies for encouraging reading.
I'm doing this with access to these kids teachers, but also their diagnoses and IEPs, and occasionally support from other professionals.
And what I'm seeing is terrifying.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •The first thing I want to point out is that every parent tells me some variation on "oh he's so much better with this stuff than I am" w/r/t tech in general and it's just not true.
None of these kids are good with technology, not even a little bit. Some of them have grown adept at navigating the menus on a Nintendo switch, or have learned some tricks to cover their tracks when they're doing something they're not supposed to on a smartphone, but across the board they have a fundamental lack of understanding of even the basic principles of most of the tech they interact with.
What they're good at is getting to the thing that they want. They're good at this not because they are good at technology, but because they're desperate, and have nothing better to do.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
Over the years, I've done some work with some people who were addicted to various drugs. Meth is the big one around here, but I've worked around and with folks with various chemical dependencies.
Saying these kids are good with technology is like saying those folks were good at chemistry.
What they're good at is getting a fix.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •The tech of choice for most of these kids is YouTube.
That's what they want.
When they can get it, they use speech to text to search for what they are after, and then use pictures to pick which video they'll start with.
And then they just sit. Sometimes they'll skip a video or pick one off the list, but mostly they just sit and stare until they get caught.
None of these kids have intentional unrestricted YouTube access on any device, but they're desperate and they've got free time. They find all kinds of cracks and gaps that let them get to YouTube.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •When they aren't on YouTube, they're on whatever slot machine mechanics wrapped around a children's media franchise mobile game has attracted their attention that month.
Most of the kids I work with don't have smartphones or tablets (some of them do) but they've all gotten pretty good at giving mom a convincing reason to hand hers over.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I've been struggling, lately, because most of the tools and techniques that I've used to motivate kids in the past aren't working anymore.
Their TV shows are hyper-stimulating. Their video games are hyper-stimulating and have a dozen baked in slot machine mechanics. (Even the benign looking games, hot wheels racers and the like, are full of random draw lootboxes.) Everything is designed to maximize their attention and keep them coming back.
We used to describe video games as "addictive" as if that was a good thing, when it was rarely true in even extreme circumstances. Now it's just true most of the time, and obviously bad.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •When I was 8, I'd have rather done literally anything else than to sit quietly and do nothing.
I'd stare out the window, listen to music, read a book, draw, ask questions, tell stories, play solitaire. If I was going to need to be quiet and in the same spot for a long enough period of time, I would even do practice math problems to pass the time. Anything to keep things moving.
But these kids I'm working with now would rather sit and be miserable (and they are clearly, obviously miserable. Frankly, suffering to an extent that exceeds my expectations) instead of reading or writing or drawing or whatever.
I might be able to get their attention for a few minutes, but eventually it wanes and then they'd rather do nothing, when doing nothing is causing them a great amount of distress, than have to put the work in to do something else.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •At first I thought I might be imagining things, so I started talking to parents and teachers and therapists and support folks.
And all of them have noticed the same trends, but from a lot closer. They've been boiling the frog, you know? Setting a new baseline each year for how attention span work, and really only ever considering this year's group against last year, or this kid against where they were a year ago.
They all agreed the problem was increasingly bad, but none of them had really given a lot of thought to the extremity of it or it's source (because it's not what they're working on, most of the time. Most of what they're working on is improving, so the "short attention span" thing gets chalked up as a generational divide or an old man yelling at clouds situation, until they stop and pay attention.)
I, on the other hand, took a few years off from working with kids and then came back to the same age group and found it to be a fundamentally different experience.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •But then I pointed out the trends. I pointed out how these kids would rather do literally nothing than read a book. How the only thing that seemed to motivate them was the promise of access to video games or streaming services which, by and large, seem to be making the problem worse, and I started working with these professionals to build plans to dig out of this hole and ...
Nearly across the board they confided in me that they were also seeing these issues with older kids. The few who work with kids and adults mentioned that it was also starting to creep in to the conversation with the adults they work with, sometimes with seniors.
And that this increasingly dependent technology relationship seems to also frequently coincide with conspiracy theory belief, self isolation, etc.
Which is where we started the thread.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So we have a generation of kids growing up with a severe and frequently life impacting dependence on a dopamine reward cycle facilitated by technology, and getting fed to algorithms designed to maximize engagement at all costs, which generally means isolating them from their peers and pushing them towards more and more extreme content.
They would increasingly rather do literally nothing, in spite of the fact that doing nothing leaves them in a kind of discomfort that is akin to spiritual anguish, than anything that requires more than a minimal level of effort.
And we have a bunch of adults who are barely out running the same beast, who are falling victim to the same patterns. With the adults, they usually have at least some defence mechanisms against this stuff. They can usually read reasonably well. But the algorithms are more aggressive, and the gambling mechanics come with dollars attached, and it's not just that the things they're consuming are hyper-stimulating, it's specifically that these things are aggressively isolating them from their peers and alienating them from their own decision making.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •That last bit "alienating them from their own decision making" is the real crux of my concerns.
We're ceding our agency in the things we consume and the ways we communicate to machines designed to make a profit, and they profit off of us by alienating us further from our own intentions and agency.
And then "AI" enters the picture.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Most of the above to say this:
This is not an old man yelling at the sky. This is not "the youth are wrong, trust me a middle aged man."
People in their early 20s are struggling to form social bonds to a significantly greater extent than they were in the already socially isolated climate of 10 - 15 years ago, and are increasingly falling victim to technologies designed to capitalize on this.
People younger than that are developing such flawed relationships with these same technologies that it is fundamentally altering how they view and interact with the world.
And, all the while, we're being turned against one another.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Technology isn't a force for food or a force for evil. It's a force multiplier, an accelerator.
Right now, it's mostly being wielded by people who want to extract as much attention and value out of you as possible. Or by people with money who are trying to concentrate their power and squash dissent.
And, along the way, they're trying to convince you that tech is a young person's domain, too expensive and complicated for you to worry about, and that the current technological landscape is inevitable and inescapable.
And lots of folks are getting hurt in the crossfire.
It doesn't have to be like this.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So what's to be done?
Intention.
Right now, most people's relationship with technology is either transactional (I need to use this in order to accomplish this task, do my job, talk to this person) or impulsive (I got a notification, let me check tiktok) but rarely is it intentional.
We can do this at an individual level. I think that, for many of us, being on the fediverse is part of this quest for intentional computing.
For myself, I'm a Linux user because that allows me to preserve more of my own agency than Mac or windows (conversely, if also frequently demands that I exercise my own agency more than Mac or windows.)
I've disabled the vast majority of notifications on my phone. I will spend my attention where I choose to do so.
But this is a very 1960s hippie argument. This is the whole earth catalog argument. "I can fix this for myself, so that's good enough."
Nope. This is a community problem and it's going to take a community solution.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I'm not suggesting that we all turn off youtube and facebook and abandon windows and mac en mass for linux and the fediverse.
Well, I'm not *not* suggesting that, but I think it's unlikely to happen and even if it did happen, it's likely that we would just see the same dark patterns replicate themselves on other platforms.
I'm not even suggesting that we stop consuming Youtube specifically. I'm on youtube a lot, honestly. It's the closest thing we have to an ubiquitous community media platform.
The core of my hope here is that we can re-introduce some intention and agency to our relationship with technology.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So I'm working with a couple of professionals on the psychology/childhood development side of the house, and I'm standing in as a professional on the technology side of the house, and I'm trying to figure out what an intentional relationship with technology looks like, and what it takes to build a healthy relationship with a platform like Youtube when you're a kid with a deep and abiding obsession that dominates pretty much everything else in your life.
I'm trying to figure out how to motivate kids to read, when most of the methods I've used in the past aren't working at all.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I wish that I could wrap this in a neat little bow and say "here's a 5 step plan for fixing our current technological problems and encouraging literacy" but I'm still very much trying to figure it out.
I believe there is a path forward. I believe it starts with re-framing our relationship with technology to be more intentional.
What do you think?
Anthony
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I think this thread is very thought provoking and important, and I appreciate all you've written here. I felt compelled to respond in part because I have a young child myself and because my wife is an educator who echoes some of the same things. I'm not really getting at anything in particular with this, just sharing some thoughts that your thread kicked up in my head, for whatever it's worth.
What you're describing reminded me quite a bit of a talk by Sherry Turkle I watched recently (perhaps you've already seen it, but here it is: youtu.be/jy7bpyt_vnE). Here's a quote from it I wrote down and saved, but the whole talk is well worth experiencing:
She is, to some extent, implicating social media: it's trained people to have a computer mediate human interaction, thereby starving users of the experiences of human vulnerability that are necessary for us to develop empathy for one another. In short we've been trained to treat one another as if we were machines. A lot of bad things follow from this as I'm sure you well know.
I think there are broader currents, especially the austerity economics we've been suffering under for decades in the United States (and much of the neoliberal world frankly), that make all of these problems more pronounced. How can you have time and space for the give and take of conversation Turkle describes when you have to work two or even three jobs, or are saddled with extreme student loan debt you're worried you may never be able to repay, or you're caring for an aging or ill relative because there is no one/nowhere else for them (to name just three of the many deprivations people are struggling with)? On top of this, this economic arrangement encourages us to behave like machines, because that is usually what's rewarded in the workplace.
I don't think the cognitive impairment COVID infections cause, coupled with the mass death and therefore mass trauma of the pandemic, has helped matters either. All in all it looks to me like there's a set of forces either actively causing or at least exacerbating the trends you're describing. I think we need to grapple with this if we're to make any headway towards improving the situation for kids.
Anyway thanks again for your thread!
"Who Do We Become When We Talk to Machines?": Sherry Turkle in conversation with Audrey Borowski
YouTubeAndrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Oh, and as a side note, I've spent most of this thread talking about kids and young adults because those are the folks I work most closely with, but this problem is perhaps even more extreme with my grandparent's generation.
Folks who grew up without much tech access are now being forced in to situations where they have to use it, and figuring out many of the same methods that kids are using, and it's absolutely unraveling them. I'm less convinced that this can be fixed, but ...
Just check in on your parents and your grandparents and make sure they're not mainline facebook shorts conspiracy theories about the texas floods, okay?
LJ
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •this whole thread is terrifying & I'm watching it unfold with the twin 11 year olds of dear friends. These kids are the 1st generation kids who started school during covid lockdown & boy oh boy do they latch onto their dopamine hits in gaming & net access.
I know schools have taken hits to what was seen as 'non essential' but I wonder if there's a difference here between kids involved in misic/theatre/sports vs those who aren't.
Being part of something larger than self.
Digital Mark ฮป โ๏ธ ๐น ๐
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Ian K Tindale
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •about a decade and a half ago I (incorrectly) predicted weโd be in a similar situation but with VR โ that never actually came about, but I imagined it would โtrapโ people in an earphone/eyephone immersive world, and a lot of science-fiction writers had imagined this sort of outcome for much much longer. I think what saved it from being compulsive if not addictive was a couple of things: one; it isnโt as pleasant an experience as it should be, and two: there was never any such thing as an open VR platform which anyone could participate in freely all the time all day with everyone else, without โsigning upโ or paying money to participate, because what ended up happening was each of the VR manufacturers were isolated from each other (app stores, vendor lock-in, walled garden, whatever the buzzwords are) so there was no free interchange with anyone else you knew unless you were also on that platform.
I often wonder what would happen if YouTube had to shut down for a day, or a week.
hell
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I hope it's a comfort that, although I still struggle with just doing what's easiest, I'm surrounded by friends, very engaged with the world beyond what's in front of me, and I've basically taken anything algo driven off my own machines. Sometimes I fall into that trap, like you said, and just staring at a wall is better than doing anything that requires effort; but usually, after unplugging for a little while, reinforcing some good habits, that goes away.
Mayor Larry Vaughn
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Digital Mark ฮป โ๏ธ ๐น ๐
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •OK, grampa, thanks for telling me MTV is super bad.
Literally all '80s I heard my choices in entertainment were destroying my brain, culture was abandoning traditional values, is that a boy or girl?, games I played were either "not art" (fuck Ebert) or Satanic.
We weren't competent to fix cars or repair anything (actually because they were computerized).
Programming was called useless until suddenly it was in demand, now it's "useless" again. OK.
Luke O.
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •yep. "tech of choice" is an excellent phrase for this flavor of addiction behavior. Wherever the gap is, they'll work it - Pinterest? Ok, I'll take a hit - but to just sit blissed? YouTube, man.
And we can draw all kinds of lines between tech and behaviors and judgemental - my kid going to Scratch, or Ocarina of Time, same hunger, different, gateway? Idk. I'm replying to you instead of watching birds at dawn, idk.
AlisonW โฟ๐ณ๏ธโ๐โพ๏ธ
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Adam Dalliance
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
hard to become good at technology if all you have is an iPhone. Can't even program it without a license. Android isn't much better if you ain't got a laptop to plug it into you can't see it's file system properly or write a program for it to run.
Phones are the suck.
divVerent
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •> What they're good at is getting to the thing that they want.
This.
My kids may not be computer experts, but they sure can handle a touchscreen way better than I ever will.
And be it just because they play ultrabullet on lichess.org (although they're pretty good at the higher time controls too).
epicdemiologist
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Home โข Montessori Partnerships for Georgia
Montessori Partnerships for GeorgiaBrother Soul
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Kierkegaanks regretfully
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Brother Soul
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •yes, Yes, & YES at every single letter typed. Big up's. Boosted.
Brother
Arne Babenhauserheide
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I think that answer (falling empire) cuts too short.
Weโre also living through hybrid geopolitical battles, and polarization and isolation are also effective ways to weaken other countries.
And breaking people apart is also an advantage for some people within the country: international solidarity weakens hierarchies.
And you canโt have war against another country if most people in your society care more about their friends in that country than about their own government.
Lstn2urmama ๐จ๐ฆ
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sheogorath
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •something I wonder about, especially since the word propaganda is used: Is it really explicit or is it just an implication?
E.g. the creation of the ozone hole wasn't a bond villain sitting on ther boat laughing, but rather a side effect of using this useful chemical connection.
So is it here the same thing? Is it just marketing and advertisement causing this harm as a side effect of "effective campaigns"? And will good regulation help to stop it or reduce the harm?
Nicole Parsons
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •For me, I am endlessly fascinated by the "Divide & Conquer" fossil fuel funding behind such propaganda & addictive tech.
prospect.org/power/2025-01-29-โฆ
Climate denial
blog.ucs.org/elliott-negin/itsโฆ
exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/21/thโฆ
theguardian.com/commentisfree/โฆ
counterpunch.org/2025/03/21/taโฆ
Covid disinformation
jacobin.com/2021/12/right-wingโฆ
desmog.com/2020/10/26/americanโฆ
nytimes.com/2020/11/20/businesโฆ
Immigration & xenophobia disinformation
biasly.com/news/whoisbillionaiโฆ
politifact.com/article/2023/juโฆ
clarionledger.com/story/news/pโฆ
1/
To resist the climate crisis, we must resist the billionaire class
Peter Kalmus (The Guardian)Morten Grรธftehauge
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Excellent thread. I think there's two things:
Parasocial "relationships" are probably more successful when they isolate you from other people. Maybe we are selecting for the online equivalent of an abusive boyfriend/girlfriend.
And absolutely agree on the games.
Fish Id Wardrobe
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Do you think the kids you are seeing are the result of some sort of selection bias? Or are they typical?
Put another way: are these kids this way because for some reason you only get to see the kids that are this way?
edit: never mind, I think you answer this: no.
child of baphomet
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@Andrew (Television Executive)
Yup. This is Coercive Control 101.