As I get older, explicitly political questions interest me less and less, and I’m motivated more and more to write about human conditions that are, in a sense, pre-political. I feel that intensely when it comes to the various conversations that we’re having about the role of digital technology in our lives.
This piece is what finally got me to upgrade to paid. It’s an important piece that expresses the inchoate fear and sadness a lot of Gen X folks have thinking about the lives of our younger friends and children.
The extent to which we are automating our own dehumanization, and doing it first on our children, terrifies me.
Agree. Gen X is in the remarkable (and rather unfortunate) position in human history to be the last generation to grow up in an analog world. We remember what it was like before the internet itself, and I feel like we need to preserve and protect that existence somehow. If what some people say is true, that this digital online world will be a sea change for humanity, then we might carry the old world of fully physical human interaction to our graves with us.
Unless someone gets careless with the red button and we all are nuked back to the stone age. Rather lousy cure though lol.
There was plenty of isolation and dehumanization back in those days, too. I shifted to online socialization because that was the only place I could find people to talk to; people with my interests, who wouldn't just cluster with their friends and leave me standing alone, feeling even more solitary for being in a crowd.
Wonderful piece. The photo of the kids doing jumps on their bikes really hit home.
The optimist in me says that the pendulum will swing back, and the importance of in-person interaction will be recognized again. With AI flooding the internet, not knowing who is who (or if it is a "who" vs "what"), elaborate scams, fraud, lack of digital security, etc etc—people wont let things stay that crazy forever. This is all so new and moving so fast; I suspect that if we take the patient long view, we will see human nature reassert itself, and most people will realize they don't find the 100% digital life ultimately fulfilling. There will always be some people will disappear into the AI internet and only interact with computers and trying to live out their own personal Black Mirror episode, but those people have always been around and will look for anything to distract them from existing.
One of the things that’s so frustrating about everything you’re describing here is that everyone you talk to seems to understand almost instinctually that it’s bad, but no one seems to want to do anything. Everyone understands it’s probably bad to have six hours of screen time a day, they understand it’s even worse for people to experience that basically from childhood. They know it’s bad because they know personally how empty it is. But we haven’t found a way to meaningfully “opt out” of any of it for the most part.
Because I lack self control, and because I finally realized what all this was doing to me, I switched to a flip phone. There are some people who get it, but almost everyone else treats me as if I am denying reality--the reality being that there is no escape from any of this. I really hope as time goes on I meet more people like the kids from that recent NYT article, people who are doing all they can to remove theirselves from the pit of hedonism you described so perfectly here
Yes. I tell my libertarian dad this all the time, although yes technically it’s a “choice” to get a cell phone, not buying one puts you at a such a supreme disadvantage it’s functionally impossible. It’s like not having access to a car (outside of the handful of walkable cities with excellent transit). If you have a business you don’t really have a choice either. I’m a musician and took a break from social media for 6 months and it essentially erased alll momentum I had gained over the previous 3 years. I never got gigs after that. At this point it’s basically infrastructure.
I used a flip phone for all of 2021 and I had the same issue. Eventually the lack of group texting capabilities and not being able to call an Uber drove me back into the waiting arms of my iPhone (that evil device). I so so so wish it were more feasible to go through life without a smartphone.
Just FYI though, for anyone reading this: you can easily avoid the 2FA problem - just buy a physical security key like a YubiKey. You can use it even with apps that don't natively support security keys because Yubico makes their own authenticator app that spits out six-digit codes just like Google Auth - you just have to tap the security key to generate a code. I highly recommend this strategy if you like being able to put your phone away and avoid distraction during the work day.
The best thing I've ever done to set limits for myself on my smartphone was to have one of my friends set my screen time passcode so I can't bypass the restrictions. I still find ways to waste time on it (and on my computer) though...
It’s insane, but I have actually seen a number of people who are unconvinced. That was the whole theme of this NYT article! They will literally say things like “we need more data” or “we need to do more studies” as if this is a variable that it’s possible to isolate over the long term. Nothing infuriates me more than people think peer reviewed journals are the only pathway to knowledge, when common fuckin sense is right there.
If they want peer-reviewed studies, point them to the book iMinds, which is stuffed with them, and also so depressing I had to stop reading about a quarter of the way through.
I remember seeing a lot of people justifying that screenshot up there with, "oh they're just introverts. It's fine."
I am what they'd call "an introvert", and let me tell ya, those answers do not sound like me when I'm in a healthy mood. Just spitballing here, but I would even posit that "being pleasantly alone" has suffered as much as "making meaningful human connections". There's just that grey fugue, interacting with a screen, not quite alone, not quite with others.
I'm an extrovert and the world has become an extremely lonely place for me. I feel like I have had a couple days of just weeping recently because I am so god damn lonely.
Nicely put. In my experience, extroverts are much more inclined to a very active social media presence than introverts are. Introverts tend to prefer more intimate social interactions with less people and deeper connections. Introvert is not a synonym for social anxiety lol.
As someone who spent much of the last 15 years in a fugue (between depression, social anxiety, the pandemic, and other issues), I agree with you. But what else is there? I've lost what little ability I had to socialize, and I have literally no idea how to make friends as an adult. I go to meetups, but just wind up feeling more alone. At least the screen doesn't judge me...much.
During the tail end of covid social distancing, my two nearly teen kids would gather outside with friends after having been stuck in the house for way too long. But the vibe of the peer group had shifted and my son shared a perfect summary: I always push to ride bikes because my friends with smartphones have to talk instead of looking at their screens.
A couple of those kids have fallen in to the world of online games, endless videos, and porn. Fewer teams and clubs, more isolation. I find it baffling that their parents allow the unfettered access but I think they see it as a social surrogate rather than the actual cause of the problem.
I remember when the phenomenon of children being babysat by tablets at restaurants and on road trips started to be a thing, and I was always like, how could those parents just let their kids constantly zone out on those tablets all the time? And then one day it hit me it was really for the benefit of the parents, not the kids. And then I got depressed.
I think that kind of stuff has its place; I'm not saying any parent who ever lets their kid use a tablet is shirking their duties (God knows I don't have kids because I don't want any of it, so I can't judge), but it does seem a bit like for many people the tablet has become a third (or second) parent. But it's also just become so normalized, I really do feel for parents who feel caught in the technology trap/conundrum.
When my son was really young (like toddler age) we would do this and it was absolutely for our sanity. I am not ashamed of it, especially because his screen time is still extremely limited and supervised. There is a lot to be said for being able to just eat a meal outside of your home and talk to your spouse.
Yeah, I totally get that. I also think that kind of culture has changed a lot since I was a kid. For my family in the 80's, "going out to eat" generally meant fast food, or fast casual stuff. I realize some people now are only able to go out because the kid can now be preoccupied, whereas if they couldn't, the going out probably just wouldn't happen. So, I understand that.
On the flip side of that, though, I guess as a kid I was just bored a lot. I don't think kids are ever allowed to just be bored now. Every summer my family took a road trip from Arkansas to Florida to go to the beach. I read books in the car, and I listened to my Walkman, but a lot of the time I was just BORED, and staring out a window. My dad tried to make it fun by stopping at historical sites and whatnot, but my parents didn't bend over backwards to make sure I was entertained in the car every moment. I do think that has been completely lost, and I think that worries me more than anything.
I think the other big difference is most of us had siblings so we could occupy ourselves. Many children are only children now and need mom and dad to be that playmate for them. Sometimes I wish I had a second just so my son wouldn't be so lonely and dependent on us.
Yeah, I agree with that. I had two brothers, and while I may have wished many times I was an only child because I was the youngest and felt tormented by them, in the end, yes, they were playmates.
I was an only child in the pre-internet age and both my parents worked, but even when they weren’t working they weren’t particularly interested in keeping me company - not because they were bad parents or neglectful, they spent plenty of time teaching me to bake and do algebra and plant snapdragons and things like that, and we ate dinner together every single night. But I just don't think it would ever have occurred to them - or me - that I might want their company purely socially, just to hang out. If I hung around pestering them I got sent away to 'find something to do', which as it was the 90s usually meant rollerblading up and down the street, playing board games against myself or spending five hours at a stretch in the local library (I did visit friends too, but not every day). As a result I'm totally fine both in my own company and being bored, more so I'd say than most people my age.
I don't think the issue is only children, it's that parenting and the world have both changed. Lots of parents I bet would feel guilty these days for sending their kids off to amuse themselves, as though the only way to love yoir child is to centre your life around them entirely and delight in every minute of their company. And any child who was left to their own devices would quickly end up with a youtube addiction and develop no tolerance for boredom at all.
I don't think the issue is only children either. I often didn't WANT to play with my younger sibling or cousins as a kid because they were all too young to do the things I wanted to do. It felt more like babysitting than playing with a friend. Siblings aren't built-in entertainment and all kids have to spend some amount of time amusing themselves alone regardless (or at least they did in the 90s). I think you're right about the real causes.
I wonder how many parents now a days are afraid of a whining, crying kid, or two kids fighting in the backseat. Is it seen as a failure rather than just normal kid behavior?
We listened to music and audio books in the car. We also talked.
It's a family joke amongst the kids that no one admits to being bored. I always had work for anyone bored. But I'm of a different era...with kids ranging from 43 to 19.
No reason to feel ashamed- you are creating a balance that works for you and your kid. (Although rare, the no-phone, no-computer, no-TV parents are setting their kids up for a very weird life transition as well.) Helping our kids learn how to effectively deal with all of this is a central parental task these days.
Had a bit of an aha moment when I was out to lunch w/ my brother, a friend, and that friend's young son. It's always disturbed me to see kids locked in to a phone, but it dawned on me that him having something to do other than demand attention from his father is sort of a requisite to him being there. The adults are talking, and I'm not sure how much insight the seven year old can provide in a conversation about building out Eastern Bloc AK receivers. Besides, I know this guy takes his kids fishing and does more than just feed them an endless stream of phone-conveyed entertainment. All must be balanced.
> I always push to ride bikes because my friends with smartphones have to talk instead of looking at their screens.
Having taken up running with others, this is an interesting dynamic I've noticed among my Zoomer peers. Sports in general are of the few activities that are immune to phone-related distractions or a move to Zoom. Sports, of course, have other virtues that seem to run counter to these problems of the 21st century: peer camaraderie, physical activity, time outside, healthy competition, etc. What I think is happening is that it's growing the gulf in mental health between, in crude terms, nerds and jocks. In broad strokes, this becomes a divide between the liberal-coded, bookish and online, and the conservative-coded, so to speak.
Of course, there are plenty of athletes who struggle with mental health and social media and porn. (Anecdotally, many athletes funnel their competitive obsession into hours and hours of video games.) But using the gist of the argument from The Coddling of the American Mind, I feel like this is all connected--a certain liberal sensibility, obsessed with politics (which for many Zoomers is nothing more than doing Discourse on TikTok or Twitter), relentless focus on academic performance to get into an elite college, and a kind of helicopter parenting that forbids spontaneously going to the park to shoot hoops with friends. All of this is disastrous for mental health.
Studies show that the mental health crisis hit left-leaning teens earlier and harder than their right-leaning counterparts. I think the dynamic of athletic vs. online activity is part of the reason, and is creating classes of haves and have-nots when it comes to having a healthy social life and sense of self. (When more broadly considering types of arrested development among Zoomers, I bet this is connected to the decline in young men having sex, which seems to involve a portion of the population having little to no sex, rather than a decline across-the-board.) In today's world, if you aren't involved in some rigid activity that forces you to get outside and socialize every day, you can really fall into a bad place, relying on all of the ersatz stimuli described by Freddie.
This is all to say the jocks will inherit the Earth.
The stereotype constantly pushed in media that jocks are mean bullies fighting against the hero nerds has been a significant negative for society overall. I say this as somewhat of a "nerd"
Wow, what a beautiful piece. I am very thankful my parents were pretty hands off and understood that part of growing up was making my own mistakes and experiencing the highs and lows of life. I had to get punched in the face, try to hit on a girl at a party and get shut down, get dumped and have my heart broken, drink until I threw up all over myself, take too much acid and have a bad trip, get fired from a job, say something dumb and get made fun of by a big group. But I eventually learned through trial and error and built resilience. And when the highs did come - getting laid, falling in love, camping and seeing the beauty of nature, hugging random strangers at a concert, partying with friends until sunrise, getting truly good at a few skills, reading something beautiful that stirred my soul - I appreciated the highs.
I tell my young one before things like cleaning a cut "it IS going to hurt, AND you'll be ok" in an attempt to teach her some things are painful and she doesn't need to be protected from that truth, and that she's strong enough to come out the other side. Hopefully this remains helpful as she is confronted with more existential issues as she grows
I love this piece. I've struggled a lot with coming to accept myself as who I am. I had a rough childhood and learned to disassociate from who I was/who my family was in order to make myself feel safe. This was before the social media era, so it's hard to imagine how it would be for a teenager today with all the tools at their disposal to get outside of themselves.
I recently started dating again, and something I've learned in my acceptance journey is to not take someone else not being interested in me as a personal failing. Learning that you can just not be a good match with someone and that that doesn't have to be interpreted as a reflection of your own self worth was very difficult, but I only got there by going out into the world and interacting with people. Hiding behind a screen and making online relationships can be an easy way to avoid in-person rejection, which is of course much harder to deal with then an online ghosting but I think if you are going to find the connection you seek, you have to put yourself out there whether it is painful or not.
But...I am an adult that sleeps with stuffed animals, and I won't give that up.
My wife also got a stuffed animal recently. I asked her, "Hey, why did you start sleeping with a stuffed animal?" She said, "I've been sleeping with a stuffed animal since we got married!" I tell ya, I don't get no respect.
You are one of my favorite writers and this is one of the best articles you have written. I am grateful; you articulate what so many of us feel (and know) about being online.
Because the willfully unhappy and self-absorbed will do anything to substitute a philosophy of true introspection for one of projection.
I think part of this all lies on a metaphysical level that some people struggle to come to terms with.
In hindsight, Aldous Huxley may have been something of a sunny optimist...
This piece is what finally got me to upgrade to paid. It’s an important piece that expresses the inchoate fear and sadness a lot of Gen X folks have thinking about the lives of our younger friends and children.
The extent to which we are automating our own dehumanization, and doing it first on our children, terrifies me.
Same boat, I had to upgrade. This shit is too real to not throw a few bucks Freddie's way.
Agree. Gen X is in the remarkable (and rather unfortunate) position in human history to be the last generation to grow up in an analog world. We remember what it was like before the internet itself, and I feel like we need to preserve and protect that existence somehow. If what some people say is true, that this digital online world will be a sea change for humanity, then we might carry the old world of fully physical human interaction to our graves with us.
Unless someone gets careless with the red button and we all are nuked back to the stone age. Rather lousy cure though lol.
There was plenty of isolation and dehumanization back in those days, too. I shifted to online socialization because that was the only place I could find people to talk to; people with my interests, who wouldn't just cluster with their friends and leave me standing alone, feeling even more solitary for being in a crowd.
Yes, thank you for this.
Wonderful piece. The photo of the kids doing jumps on their bikes really hit home.
The optimist in me says that the pendulum will swing back, and the importance of in-person interaction will be recognized again. With AI flooding the internet, not knowing who is who (or if it is a "who" vs "what"), elaborate scams, fraud, lack of digital security, etc etc—people wont let things stay that crazy forever. This is all so new and moving so fast; I suspect that if we take the patient long view, we will see human nature reassert itself, and most people will realize they don't find the 100% digital life ultimately fulfilling. There will always be some people will disappear into the AI internet and only interact with computers and trying to live out their own personal Black Mirror episode, but those people have always been around and will look for anything to distract them from existing.
There is a balance somewhere.
One of the things that’s so frustrating about everything you’re describing here is that everyone you talk to seems to understand almost instinctually that it’s bad, but no one seems to want to do anything. Everyone understands it’s probably bad to have six hours of screen time a day, they understand it’s even worse for people to experience that basically from childhood. They know it’s bad because they know personally how empty it is. But we haven’t found a way to meaningfully “opt out” of any of it for the most part.
Because I lack self control, and because I finally realized what all this was doing to me, I switched to a flip phone. There are some people who get it, but almost everyone else treats me as if I am denying reality--the reality being that there is no escape from any of this. I really hope as time goes on I meet more people like the kids from that recent NYT article, people who are doing all they can to remove theirselves from the pit of hedonism you described so perfectly here
Yes. I tell my libertarian dad this all the time, although yes technically it’s a “choice” to get a cell phone, not buying one puts you at a such a supreme disadvantage it’s functionally impossible. It’s like not having access to a car (outside of the handful of walkable cities with excellent transit). If you have a business you don’t really have a choice either. I’m a musician and took a break from social media for 6 months and it essentially erased alll momentum I had gained over the previous 3 years. I never got gigs after that. At this point it’s basically infrastructure.
I used a flip phone for all of 2021 and I had the same issue. Eventually the lack of group texting capabilities and not being able to call an Uber drove me back into the waiting arms of my iPhone (that evil device). I so so so wish it were more feasible to go through life without a smartphone.
Just FYI though, for anyone reading this: you can easily avoid the 2FA problem - just buy a physical security key like a YubiKey. You can use it even with apps that don't natively support security keys because Yubico makes their own authenticator app that spits out six-digit codes just like Google Auth - you just have to tap the security key to generate a code. I highly recommend this strategy if you like being able to put your phone away and avoid distraction during the work day.
The best thing I've ever done to set limits for myself on my smartphone was to have one of my friends set my screen time passcode so I can't bypass the restrictions. I still find ways to waste time on it (and on my computer) though...
I should clarify I meant the kids from a recent NYT article who have started a “Luddite” club, not the ones from the screenshot
I loved that article. Those kids rock. I hope they can keep it up through college and adulthood!
It’s insane, but I have actually seen a number of people who are unconvinced. That was the whole theme of this NYT article! They will literally say things like “we need more data” or “we need to do more studies” as if this is a variable that it’s possible to isolate over the long term. Nothing infuriates me more than people think peer reviewed journals are the only pathway to knowledge, when common fuckin sense is right there.
If they want peer-reviewed studies, point them to the book iMinds, which is stuffed with them, and also so depressing I had to stop reading about a quarter of the way through.
I remember seeing a lot of people justifying that screenshot up there with, "oh they're just introverts. It's fine."
I am what they'd call "an introvert", and let me tell ya, those answers do not sound like me when I'm in a healthy mood. Just spitballing here, but I would even posit that "being pleasantly alone" has suffered as much as "making meaningful human connections". There's just that grey fugue, interacting with a screen, not quite alone, not quite with others.
Right - neither alone nor together
completely agree- the erosion of ever actually being alone is a huge loss
Great point. I'm an introvert, and as I near 40 I've been reflecting on how much more difficult it's become to find solitude and silence.
Not an introvert here, but this seems to be a phone-based problem?
What about just reading a book? Going for a walk alone? Watching a movie by yourself?
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Pascal was on to something.
I'm an extrovert and the world has become an extremely lonely place for me. I feel like I have had a couple days of just weeping recently because I am so god damn lonely.
Why not throw a party? Everyone else depends on the extroverts to do it.
What do you do for a living? A good fit career and/or employer can make a difference here.
Yeah, the feeling I get from taking a long walk in the woods, say, is nothing like the feeling I get from spending two hours scrolling on my phone.
Real introversion is reading a book, taking a walk alone, fishing by yourself.
What's described here is ersatz socialization.
Nicely put. In my experience, extroverts are much more inclined to a very active social media presence than introverts are. Introverts tend to prefer more intimate social interactions with less people and deeper connections. Introvert is not a synonym for social anxiety lol.
A sociologist friend of mine once put this as "always connecting but never connected"
As someone who spent much of the last 15 years in a fugue (between depression, social anxiety, the pandemic, and other issues), I agree with you. But what else is there? I've lost what little ability I had to socialize, and I have literally no idea how to make friends as an adult. I go to meetups, but just wind up feeling more alone. At least the screen doesn't judge me...much.
Personally, the screen judges oh so harshly.
During the tail end of covid social distancing, my two nearly teen kids would gather outside with friends after having been stuck in the house for way too long. But the vibe of the peer group had shifted and my son shared a perfect summary: I always push to ride bikes because my friends with smartphones have to talk instead of looking at their screens.
A couple of those kids have fallen in to the world of online games, endless videos, and porn. Fewer teams and clubs, more isolation. I find it baffling that their parents allow the unfettered access but I think they see it as a social surrogate rather than the actual cause of the problem.
I remember when the phenomenon of children being babysat by tablets at restaurants and on road trips started to be a thing, and I was always like, how could those parents just let their kids constantly zone out on those tablets all the time? And then one day it hit me it was really for the benefit of the parents, not the kids. And then I got depressed.
I think that kind of stuff has its place; I'm not saying any parent who ever lets their kid use a tablet is shirking their duties (God knows I don't have kids because I don't want any of it, so I can't judge), but it does seem a bit like for many people the tablet has become a third (or second) parent. But it's also just become so normalized, I really do feel for parents who feel caught in the technology trap/conundrum.
When my son was really young (like toddler age) we would do this and it was absolutely for our sanity. I am not ashamed of it, especially because his screen time is still extremely limited and supervised. There is a lot to be said for being able to just eat a meal outside of your home and talk to your spouse.
Yeah, I totally get that. I also think that kind of culture has changed a lot since I was a kid. For my family in the 80's, "going out to eat" generally meant fast food, or fast casual stuff. I realize some people now are only able to go out because the kid can now be preoccupied, whereas if they couldn't, the going out probably just wouldn't happen. So, I understand that.
On the flip side of that, though, I guess as a kid I was just bored a lot. I don't think kids are ever allowed to just be bored now. Every summer my family took a road trip from Arkansas to Florida to go to the beach. I read books in the car, and I listened to my Walkman, but a lot of the time I was just BORED, and staring out a window. My dad tried to make it fun by stopping at historical sites and whatnot, but my parents didn't bend over backwards to make sure I was entertained in the car every moment. I do think that has been completely lost, and I think that worries me more than anything.
I think the other big difference is most of us had siblings so we could occupy ourselves. Many children are only children now and need mom and dad to be that playmate for them. Sometimes I wish I had a second just so my son wouldn't be so lonely and dependent on us.
Yeah, I agree with that. I had two brothers, and while I may have wished many times I was an only child because I was the youngest and felt tormented by them, in the end, yes, they were playmates.
I was an only child in the pre-internet age and both my parents worked, but even when they weren’t working they weren’t particularly interested in keeping me company - not because they were bad parents or neglectful, they spent plenty of time teaching me to bake and do algebra and plant snapdragons and things like that, and we ate dinner together every single night. But I just don't think it would ever have occurred to them - or me - that I might want their company purely socially, just to hang out. If I hung around pestering them I got sent away to 'find something to do', which as it was the 90s usually meant rollerblading up and down the street, playing board games against myself or spending five hours at a stretch in the local library (I did visit friends too, but not every day). As a result I'm totally fine both in my own company and being bored, more so I'd say than most people my age.
I don't think the issue is only children, it's that parenting and the world have both changed. Lots of parents I bet would feel guilty these days for sending their kids off to amuse themselves, as though the only way to love yoir child is to centre your life around them entirely and delight in every minute of their company. And any child who was left to their own devices would quickly end up with a youtube addiction and develop no tolerance for boredom at all.
I don't think the issue is only children either. I often didn't WANT to play with my younger sibling or cousins as a kid because they were all too young to do the things I wanted to do. It felt more like babysitting than playing with a friend. Siblings aren't built-in entertainment and all kids have to spend some amount of time amusing themselves alone regardless (or at least they did in the 90s). I think you're right about the real causes.
I remember my dad telling me as a kid, "Only boring people get bored" when I complained about the 14-hour car trips!
My mom would say, "An intelligent person is never bored" :)
I wonder how many parents now a days are afraid of a whining, crying kid, or two kids fighting in the backseat. Is it seen as a failure rather than just normal kid behavior?
We listened to music and audio books in the car. We also talked.
It's a family joke amongst the kids that no one admits to being bored. I always had work for anyone bored. But I'm of a different era...with kids ranging from 43 to 19.
No reason to feel ashamed- you are creating a balance that works for you and your kid. (Although rare, the no-phone, no-computer, no-TV parents are setting their kids up for a very weird life transition as well.) Helping our kids learn how to effectively deal with all of this is a central parental task these days.
Had a bit of an aha moment when I was out to lunch w/ my brother, a friend, and that friend's young son. It's always disturbed me to see kids locked in to a phone, but it dawned on me that him having something to do other than demand attention from his father is sort of a requisite to him being there. The adults are talking, and I'm not sure how much insight the seven year old can provide in a conversation about building out Eastern Bloc AK receivers. Besides, I know this guy takes his kids fishing and does more than just feed them an endless stream of phone-conveyed entertainment. All must be balanced.
> I always push to ride bikes because my friends with smartphones have to talk instead of looking at their screens.
Having taken up running with others, this is an interesting dynamic I've noticed among my Zoomer peers. Sports in general are of the few activities that are immune to phone-related distractions or a move to Zoom. Sports, of course, have other virtues that seem to run counter to these problems of the 21st century: peer camaraderie, physical activity, time outside, healthy competition, etc. What I think is happening is that it's growing the gulf in mental health between, in crude terms, nerds and jocks. In broad strokes, this becomes a divide between the liberal-coded, bookish and online, and the conservative-coded, so to speak.
Of course, there are plenty of athletes who struggle with mental health and social media and porn. (Anecdotally, many athletes funnel their competitive obsession into hours and hours of video games.) But using the gist of the argument from The Coddling of the American Mind, I feel like this is all connected--a certain liberal sensibility, obsessed with politics (which for many Zoomers is nothing more than doing Discourse on TikTok or Twitter), relentless focus on academic performance to get into an elite college, and a kind of helicopter parenting that forbids spontaneously going to the park to shoot hoops with friends. All of this is disastrous for mental health.
Studies show that the mental health crisis hit left-leaning teens earlier and harder than their right-leaning counterparts. I think the dynamic of athletic vs. online activity is part of the reason, and is creating classes of haves and have-nots when it comes to having a healthy social life and sense of self. (When more broadly considering types of arrested development among Zoomers, I bet this is connected to the decline in young men having sex, which seems to involve a portion of the population having little to no sex, rather than a decline across-the-board.) In today's world, if you aren't involved in some rigid activity that forces you to get outside and socialize every day, you can really fall into a bad place, relying on all of the ersatz stimuli described by Freddie.
This is all to say the jocks will inherit the Earth.
The stereotype constantly pushed in media that jocks are mean bullies fighting against the hero nerds has been a significant negative for society overall. I say this as somewhat of a "nerd"
Great essay, thank you for putting this out in the world. Let's live real human lives instead of pining for some techno-fused simulacrum.
Be the shit you want to see in the world 😂
"into a pit of hedonistic distraction"..... great line.
Nice one Freddie
Wow, what a beautiful piece. I am very thankful my parents were pretty hands off and understood that part of growing up was making my own mistakes and experiencing the highs and lows of life. I had to get punched in the face, try to hit on a girl at a party and get shut down, get dumped and have my heart broken, drink until I threw up all over myself, take too much acid and have a bad trip, get fired from a job, say something dumb and get made fun of by a big group. But I eventually learned through trial and error and built resilience. And when the highs did come - getting laid, falling in love, camping and seeing the beauty of nature, hugging random strangers at a concert, partying with friends until sunrise, getting truly good at a few skills, reading something beautiful that stirred my soul - I appreciated the highs.
I tell my young one before things like cleaning a cut "it IS going to hurt, AND you'll be ok" in an attempt to teach her some things are painful and she doesn't need to be protected from that truth, and that she's strong enough to come out the other side. Hopefully this remains helpful as she is confronted with more existential issues as she grows
Jesus Christ I love this- you've completely touched on my problem with this kind of content and my malaise of the growing trend of AI.
I love this piece. I've struggled a lot with coming to accept myself as who I am. I had a rough childhood and learned to disassociate from who I was/who my family was in order to make myself feel safe. This was before the social media era, so it's hard to imagine how it would be for a teenager today with all the tools at their disposal to get outside of themselves.
I recently started dating again, and something I've learned in my acceptance journey is to not take someone else not being interested in me as a personal failing. Learning that you can just not be a good match with someone and that that doesn't have to be interpreted as a reflection of your own self worth was very difficult, but I only got there by going out into the world and interacting with people. Hiding behind a screen and making online relationships can be an easy way to avoid in-person rejection, which is of course much harder to deal with then an online ghosting but I think if you are going to find the connection you seek, you have to put yourself out there whether it is painful or not.
But...I am an adult that sleeps with stuffed animals, and I won't give that up.
I also sleep with a stuffed animal, and I think I'm pretty emotionally okay, and married, and it doesn't really feel like a problem to me.
But do you, as the NYT advises, explicitly do it to regress into childishness?
Not that I am aware of
Oddly enough, clinicians have noticed that sleeping with a stuffie may be a reliable predictor of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Whaaaat, really? That's so strange. I must know more!
My wife also got a stuffed animal recently. I asked her, "Hey, why did you start sleeping with a stuffed animal?" She said, "I've been sleeping with a stuffed animal since we got married!" I tell ya, I don't get no respect.
Based on that one statement I can tell she's too good for you. She may be too good for any man.
You are one of my favorite writers and this is one of the best articles you have written. I am grateful; you articulate what so many of us feel (and know) about being online.