A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Socrates bemoaned those young'ns who had the audacity to read their Homer, instead of memorizing it.
Eh, there is sufficient evidence to recommend children and teenagers having limited internet and social media access during their formative years at this point.
The tiktok algorithm of mindless doomscrolling funny little bits all short and digestible for a decaying attention span is just the most egregious example why restrictions should at least be considered.
You could say that about a lot of things, though. Video games and TV were commonly criticized this way. And it was a popular meme on Reddit that people would be so addicted to the site that they'd spend hours scrolling it.
Criticizing tik tok is just popular on sites like this because people here really don't like tik tok.
At any rate, parents can already try to restrict their children's access. But governments are gonna have a hard time doing so without hurting everyone as a whole (eg, see the attempts of some US states to require giving your ID to porn sites). Dunno if you remember being a kid, but I found my way around every restriction my parents set and I just disliked them for it.
Red Dead Redepmption 2 is not a video game.
"That's not a game at all. That's like fucking Shakespeare."
-Tenacious D
Tiktok definitely doesn't fall into anything intelligent that's for sure.
TikTok, Social media, video games, rock and metal music, rap music, Dungeons and Dragons, Rock 'n' Roll, movies, phones, bikes, novels, older generations will always chose a scapegoat to focus on
Eventually it will be our turn
They’re not wrong. Screen time is known to be harmful to children. And radio time may have been as well: hard to say, because kids aren’t listening to that kind of radio anymore. Two things can be true at once: pointing fingers at something that doesn’t apply anymore (when’s the last time you listened to a radio serial?) doesn’t invalidate the harms today.
Here’s what the actual experts say:
Talk radio still rots a lot of brains of all ages. It's insidious as a lot of folks still have that on in the background while driving to work or cooking etc, as compared to video and TV where you have to look directly at it and think about the message received with your whole brain.
I hope we can all agree that media, like drugs, exists on a spectrum of less harmful (books / weed) to very harmful (torture porn / bath salts). As time passes and more things are added to our lists we should no longer generalize and say everything in our once very small category is all good or all bad.
Tiktok is not comparable to these other technologies, as TikTok uses an individualized algorithm to manipulate its users.
The fact that people have been concerned about this for generations doesn't automatically nullify the point. Attention and focus are skills which children must develop through boredom and long-form focus. TikTok brain is making that harder and harder for children to learn.
Counterpoint: They used to be able to memorise the works of Homer.
and now they're able to memorize all the dances/emotes from a specific influencer/streamer. Almost the same, no?
No.
Like not even close. Even if we aren't judging each on the difficulty of memorizing a two second emote or dance versus an entire novel, things that are physical are more easily learned.
Ask yourself this, did they have to commit themselves to memorizing all of if? No, they casually memorized them all through watching it. No one has ever casually memorized a novel on accident.
Plus memorizing literature is unquestionably more valuable than learning what some micro-celebrity that doesn't fucking matter is making faces about.
Yeah I was being sarcastic
Youtube shorts, TikTok, Facebook Story, Snapchat Reel: they are all the same. If you block TikTok, then you need to block others as well.
Legal wise, it's very hard to target a very specific type of media consumed. How can you really restrict that? IMHO, the only thing that might have better effects is educating people.
Same for drugs, alcool and tobacco. They are a all addictives at different levels, and they have different consequences as well that neeeds to be taken account.
Worth pointing out here is that many of these criticisms all along have been totally on-target. The printing press brought on wars of religion and a multitude of poorly-thought out, often racist/hate-filled screeds along with advances in learning and science. Radio has brought us Father Coughlin and Limbaugh along with democratizing politics the way printed pamphlets couldn't. I'm sure I don't have to point out that both TV and the internet have their brain-rotting sides as well.
The fact that something won doesn't mean it's better. The fact that it's better doesn't mean it doesn't have serious flaws.
Social media in general and TikTok specifically have had major impacts to both our attention span as well as things like anxiety disorders.
Everything else in this list from reading to videogames is a different way to absorb a story, but social media isn't built for that. Its designed on FOMO, and the idea that you have to keep posting and engaging or you'll disappear. The algorithms are also toxic and designed like a gambling addiction. Books don't do that, even TV can't really do that. Videogames can, but not all are. Social media absolutely is, though. Everytime.
As always the issue is loneliness. This has been proven since the 1970's with the rat park experiment.
They're all mediums. The content on them can be anything from mindless to informative.It's all up to who's curating it. Do you leave it up to the algos and advertisers or actually provide something to your kids? Up to a certain age letting them do whatever on the internet is idiotic like letting them run around a bookshop that carries porn and mein Kampf.
Tiktok is digitial media, the attention span is the issue, not the media format.
I know a few people who admitted to me without me even probing them that they cannot handle watching or listening to a video over 1 minute long.
I am not for censoring Tiktok, however I will never used it since its horrible on privacy and has "back doors" to a powerful and malicious government. And I like videos that are long with good discussion or information.
No, tiktok is not digital media. It's a chinese cyber warfare weapon of mass destruction.
I think your right about that. It can be used to divide and subvert the west, but American big tech platforms do the same domestically and abroad.
Just so you know, newspapers used to be pretty terrible in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were ripe with exaggerations and sometimes downright lies. The issue with TikTok and social media in general is how easy it is for absolute idiots to spread lies and harmful information to children (and naïve adults).
Here's an article on the topic from the New York Public Library.
Is that even unique to social media? We have "news" sites that do the same thing (like the various alt right ones). If the goal is to tackle misinformation, we should tackle misinformation directly.
Social media amplifies their voice.
Argumentum ad antiquitum. Shame on you.
Full circle with the book banning.