Dangers of the Internet

[PlayerRep]

This discussion started in another thread last week. Thought I'd keep it separate and not continue there. Could anyone who doesn't want to look at this, please never open this thread again. I'm not really intending to have a discussion. Just presenting some interesting facts and views. Anxiety levels in the US has gone off the charts, coinciding with the rise of the internet. For the most part, I don't think this impacts forums like egriz to any significant extent.

From an opinion piece entitled: "The Deep Dangers of Life Online
The El Paso and Dayton mass murderers reflect a modern epidemic of self-obsession."

"It’s remarkable to think that across millennia, even after Freud popularized the idea of neurosis, most people managed to stay below 50—until about the year 2000. Then, as surveys suggest, it appears that masses of people—especially in the U.S., for some reason—started finding themselves drifting past 50, into deeper and more dangerous levels of anxiety. It now seems clear that one consequence of more people hitting 100 is more mass murder by young men who simply break down."

"“According to data from the 2013 National College Health Assessment,” said one of these stories, “nearly half of 123,078 respondents from 53 colleges and universities across the country felt overwhelming anxiety over the previous year and a third had problems functioning because of depression.”

A third had problems with depression?"

This is an opinion piece in Wall St. Journal. Most people can't access it, so I didn't provide the link.

 

[poorgriz]

That's a very interesting read. Thanks for posting it.

 

[hokeyfine]

perhaps the depression was self diagnosed.
The rise of the internet and social media have gone a long ways to expose how lazy the modern electorate has become. How easy is it to post an easily discredited article but watch it take off on social media. It's a joke.
Most of the american public is easily manipulated by what they watch and read. They are unwilling and incapable of doing a little research to find out if something is true or not. People love drama, and if you took this away from them they wouldn't know what to do with their lives. They have become slaves to their paranoid beliefs and thats their comfort zone.

 

[Merkleman]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

 

[argh!]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

gee, and old man castigating younger generations for not being like him, that's a first.

 

[fanofzoo]

I blame reality tv. The American dream today is to win the lottery and be like the kardashians and you expect what ?

 

[Merkleman]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

gee, and old man castigating younger generations for not being like him, that's a first.

Thanks for making my point snow flake.Its mind blowing that you got that out of what I wrote.

ps 49 isnt that old

 

[AZGrizFan]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

gee, and old man castigating younger generations for not being like him, that's a first.

Here's the catch, argh: the younger generation is like they are BECAUSE of us. WE implemented the "participation trophy" generation. WE failed to teach them how to cope. WE allowed them never to experience failure. WE are the helicopter parent generation. WE are the generation of parents who abdicated parental responsibilities in the name of being our kids' "friends". WE are the generation of parents who got our kids diagnosed in record numbers with ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, etc., etc and drugged the FUCK out of them to make our lives as parents easier. WE are the generation who used iPads and iPhones and TV's as babysitters to make our lives "easier". And I use WE loosely, because it's obviously not ALL parents from our generation (although I'm guilty of many of these things I guarantee you my kids experienced a lot of failure :lol: ) but as a generation my generation pretty much failed at parenting.

 

[BadlandsGrizFan]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

gee, and old man castigating younger generations for not being like him, that's a first.

I think theres much more to it than that... you cant use past generations experiences to try and figure out whats affecting the younger generations. You're telling me that some 60 year old who had to only compete with the people in his own community for a great paying job, that put his 3 kids through college and wife could stay at home to raise a family, he could buy a house, always had food on the table, had sooo many built in assurances in his life.......

Youre telling me that guys^^^^ experiences apply to the now 25 year old who is not only competing with every single human on the planet, whether they be in India, or China...or a freaking ROBOT for 35k a year, shares an apartment with 3 other roommates his age, and has basically been guaranteed he will not be able to afford to retire unless he invents an app and makes his millions.....

We are fools for trying to compare the two...and sadly those 1st scenario guys are all of our politicians running this country.....we make fun of other countries, and Europeans for being soft mean while they are dying laughing about us watching us vastly fall behind.

 

[alabamagrizzly]

So are we blaming millennials or senior citizens? I’m blaming both to be on the safe side since I’m neither.

 

[alabamagrizzly]

...also, I have nothing serious to add to this discussion since I don’t think there is a definitive answer to what plagues America. Whatever it is though, it definitely seems to be only an American issue.

 

[AZGrizFan]

I think theres much more to it than that... you cant use past generations experiences to try and figure out whats affecting the younger generations. You're telling me that some 60 year old who had to only compete with the people in his own community for a great paying job, that put his 3 kids through college and wife could stay at home to raise a family, he could buy a house, always had food on the table, had sooo many built in assurances in his life.......

Youre telling me that guys^^^^ experiences apply to the now 25 year old who is not only competing with every single human on the planet, whether they be in India, or China...or a freaking ROBOT for 35k a year, shares an apartment with 3 other roommates his age, and has basically been guaranteed he will not be able to afford to retire unless he invents an app and makes his millions.....

We are fools for trying to compare the two...and sadly those 1st scenario guys are all of our politicians running this country.....we make fun of other countries, and Europeans for being soft mean while they are dying laughing about us watching us vastly fall behind.

I'm not quite 60 (57) but that description does not even BEGIN to describe my experiences in the work force. Maybe an 80 year old, but not anybody my age.

Oh, and at 25 I had 2 roommates. in 1987. Thinking that's NOT normal is the problem.

 

[horribilisfan8184]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

gee, and old man castigating younger generations for not being like him, that's a first.

Ever read the crap they exchange on social media. Got a kid with 12 years of college, several undergrad major degrees and graduate degrees, and she wants the gov't to pay her student loans off and free health care, because she thinks the gov't has "all this money". Screamed bloody murder when she saw her deductions on her first real paycheck but thought the employer was taking her money, not the government. I blame the public schools and universities that graduate kids now with no command of basic economics. And she believes AOC, but not what is on her pay stubs.........

 

[reinell30]

The society we live in today was created by all of us. The only difference between our kids is the way they were brought up. If you have a troubled child or one who is an adult now, maybe you ought to look at yourself first.
It is really sad to go to a business, pay with cash and watch the person receiving the payment try and make change.
I am not judging anyone, I am fortunate to have my son grow up to be a great father and husband and a responsible adult all around.
I have mentioned before that I an Instructor for the Air Force, the troops these days are so much more reliant on someone else it makes you sick. There are reasons we have to fight wars the way we do now.
If we ever had to fight like they did in WWII, we as a nation would be in trouble! Thank god for technology!

 

[getgrizzy]

There isn’t anything wrong with the internet or this generation. People are always looking for an excuse. When the Vietnam War was lost people blamed that generation and Rock Music and drugs.

This generation is very tough. You have crank, sex trafficking, huge financial gap, terrorism at it highest level both domestic and foreign and they see teen suicide regularly.

If anything the internet makes these kids tougher and more resilient.

The everyone gets a trophy excuse is BS. Kids don’t go out for sports as much because they just don’t find them that interesting. Probably because their parents think sports are so great, but mostly because they have other interests.

Currently this generation is trying to solve global warming and end mass killings in schools. Pretty big undertakings.

 

[getgrizzy]

You can find all kinds of problems with older, non-internet generations without looking too hard.

 

[CDAGRIZ]

I don't have macro ideas; I just have anecdotes. My older relatives were tradesmen who had no trouble living comfortable lives with one parent staying to raise the kids in the nice homes they immediately bought at 21 for the same price as a new Silverado. Us kids got new bikes, birthday parties, and vacations. Parents had retirement plans, some union, and got to become full-time golfers/fishermen at 62, and most continue to live very comfortably to this day.

I also know my wife and I went to a combined 21 years of college/graduate school (none wasted), got great jobs, saved for four years, and bought our first house next to great people who had the buying power to get into that neighborhood 25 years prior as elementary school teachers (nothing against that profession, obviously) for ~15% of what we paid. In my wife's group alone, people made about 10% less in 1985 than at present. Real estate has more than quadrupled since then.

We're not millennials or boomers, and I'm not complaining. We have a great life and have been very fortunate. But, it really pisses me off when people act like any millennial should be able to do the same as my older relatives these days when my wife and I can't even make it happen. It just doesn't pencil.

EDIT: to say I know the disparity hasn't widened as much in Montana as it has where I'm located, but I'd imagine some people would still realize they'd have a tougher time buying the house they bought 25 years ago based on their current income.

 

[Yukon]

Good post.
I believe the internet is just the match or the trigger for what has been a sweeping change in society where people at a young age don't learn how to deal with adversity. The old saying "you learn more from losing than winning" is much more important than many realize. More than a generation of people in this country and probably many counties have fallen victim too" the everybody is a winner" mantra. In real life there are winners and losers but when more than a generation of people that from an early age are rewarded as winners in failure bad things are sure to come. They simply never learned how to cope.
I remember playing team sports as a kid and throughout my early twenties(In team Sports) I got one trophy over that time. What did it do? It made me fight harder and work harder to make myself and my team better and try and help my team be the best and win that championship trophy. While I only ended up getting 1 I certainly learned how to deal with losing and adversity.
Coincidence or not this change certainly coincides in timeline going back to Columbine. There have been vastly more mass shootings from Columbine forward than in our entire history before despite the fact that there are many more gun laws on the books now than prior. That tells me in my OWN opinion that it has more to do with where we are as a society than anything else.

As I said the inter is the match or end result. Regardless of your opinion on anything you can find many many on the internet to justify yourself even if its not true as the poster above alluded.

Most of our younger generation(and unfortunately some of the older) have become sheep.
If this current younger generation was the generation during World War II we would all be speaking German right now.

gee, and old man castigating younger generations for not being like him, that's a first.

Here's the catch, argh: the younger generation is like they are BECAUSE of us. WE implemented the "participation trophy" generation. WE failed to teach them how to cope. WE allowed them never to experience failure. WE are the helicopter parent generation. WE are the generation of parents who abdicated parental responsibilities in the name of being our kids' "friends". WE are the generation of parents who got our kids diagnosed in record numbers with ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, etc., etc and drugged the f*** out of them to make our lives as parents easier. WE are the generation who used iPads and iPhones and TV's as babysitters to make our lives "easier". And I use WE loosely, because it's obviously not ALL parents from our generation (although I'm guilty of many of these things I guarantee you my kids experienced a lot of failure :lol: ) but as a generation my generation pretty much failed at parenting.

+1 yup

 

[PlayerRep]

I don't have macro ideas; I just have anecdotes. My older relatives were tradesmen who had no trouble living comfortable lives with one parent staying to raise the kids in the nice homes they immediately bought at 21 for the same price as a new Silverado. Us kids got new bikes, birthday parties, and vacations. Parents had retirement plans, some union, and got to become full-time golfers/fishermen at 62, and most continue to live very comfortably to this day.

I also know my wife and I went to a combined 21 years of college/graduate school (none wasted), got great jobs, saved for four years, and bought our first house next to great people who had the buying power to get into that neighborhood 25 years prior as elementary school teachers (nothing against that profession, obviously) for ~15% of what we paid. In my wife's group alone, people made about 10% less in 1985 than at present. Real estate has more than quadrupled since then.

We're not millennials or boomers, and I'm not complaining. We have a great life and have been very fortunate. But, it really pisses me off when people act like any millennial should be able to do the same as my older relatives these days when my wife and I can't even make it happen. It just doesn't pencil.

EDIT: to say I know the disparity hasn't widened as much in Montana as it has where I'm located, but I'd imagine some people would still realize they'd have a tougher time buying the house they bought 25 years ago based on their current income.

Try looking outside of your gated community. Joke, just kidding.

 

[BadlandsGrizFan]

I think theres much more to it than that... you cant use past generations experiences to try and figure out whats affecting the younger generations. You're telling me that some 60 year old who had to only compete with the people in his own community for a great paying job, that put his 3 kids through college and wife could stay at home to raise a family, he could buy a house, always had food on the table, had sooo many built in assurances in his life.......

Youre telling me that guys^^^^ experiences apply to the now 25 year old who is not only competing with every single human on the planet, whether they be in India, or China...or a freaking ROBOT for 35k a year, shares an apartment with 3 other roommates his age, and has basically been guaranteed he will not be able to afford to retire unless he invents an app and makes his millions.....

We are fools for trying to compare the two...and sadly those 1st scenario guys are all of our politicians running this country.....we make fun of other countries, and Europeans for being soft mean while they are dying laughing about us watching us vastly fall behind.

I'm not quite 60 (57) but that description does not even BEGIN to describe my experiences in the work force. Maybe an 80 year old, but not anybody my age.

Oh, and at 25 I had 2 roommates. in 1987. Thinking that's NOT normal is the problem.

Ohhh so its just younger generations are lazy and entitled?? Got it...never heard that argument before.