Regarding your last point on dopamine and the addiction to quick bites of content, we need some sort of medical or psychological breakthrough to help us there. Addiction of all other sorts is so poorly treated in society at large that I really worry this new kind, whether it's social media or "being on my phone too much", will go not only untreated, but totally undiagnosed as we adapt to its existence and admit that we have a problem. There are flashes of these admissions in books and blog posts and such lately, but very few people seem to be doing much about them.
Just last week, I got multiple ads on Instagram (which I make it a point to only open on my computer, once or twice a day at the most) for a company that is adding a new layer of business and profit to the mess: Make money off people who need to recover from their addiction to the thing you're marketing to them on. And beyond that, today my friend remarked that he wanted to start a group called "14 hours", where the goal is to spend 2 hours per day on your phone and 2 hours per day doing some sort of physical activity. He said this could be a Discord community. And immediately I saw its failure, because solving the problems of the Internet with the tools of the Internet is, to me, is like trying to use a car to fix a car. It's an ecosystem of technology – not a tool. I wish I could think of a better analogy, though.
Does anyone have solutions? Is there any hope? Perhaps the third generation of Ozempic will be our savior, til it's not.
Regarding your last point on dopamine and the addiction to quick bites of content, we need some sort of medical or psychological breakthrough to help us there. Addiction of all other sorts is so poorly treated in society at large that I really worry this new kind, whether it's social media or "being on my phone too much", will go not only untreated, but totally undiagnosed as we adapt to its existence and admit that we have a problem. There are flashes of these admissions in books and blog posts and such lately, but very few people seem to be doing much about them.
Just last week, I got multiple ads on Instagram (which I make it a point to only open on my computer, once or twice a day at the most) for a company that is adding a new layer of business and profit to the mess: Make money off people who need to recover from their addiction to the thing you're marketing to them on. And beyond that, today my friend remarked that he wanted to start a group called "14 hours", where the goal is to spend 2 hours per day on your phone and 2 hours per day doing some sort of physical activity. He said this could be a Discord community. And immediately I saw its failure, because solving the problems of the Internet with the tools of the Internet is, to me, is like trying to use a car to fix a car. It's an ecosystem of technology – not a tool. I wish I could think of a better analogy, though.
Does anyone have solutions? Is there any hope? Perhaps the third generation of Ozempic will be our savior, til it's not.
https://donotresearch.substack.com/p/john-menick-the-narco-image -- an interesting complement to this essay