I've been of the opinion that the web itself has already done this to a large degree. Web surfing (when is the last time you heard that phrase?) has never been a group activity.
Mine as well. Trolling pedos on AOL who thought they were meeting up with teen girls was our past time. We got quite good at looking up locations, organizing places to meet, and more. We were Chris Hansen, in bored teen boys form.
For the younger crowd, A/S/L? Was a typical introduction between people who were taking their chat to the next level. Like a handshake introduction in a room of crowded people where up to that point you were just throwing responses into the group discussion. This was in the days of IRC and Yahoo! Chat.
It was the standard greeting in AIM chatrooms too. It was still a novelty to chat with someone unknown from somewhere else in the world, so it was neat to know where they were.
There’s also doomscrolling. I genuinely think a large portion of Gen Z would rather stay in bed watching Instagram reels than go out to a bar or club.
I’ve been wondering recently what impact banning social media would have on birth rates. I’m confident it would be positive but I’m not sure on what magnitude.
Not gen z but I just don't drink(i worked in clubs and didnt like that scene either). I think there's a growing portion of gen z that is like that if I recall what I've read correctly. They drink less.
I genuinely don't know what to do in my smaller suburb where the verbs aren't "look" "eat" or "drink". I wanna do. Museums are mostly boring to me, there's little interaction. I don't meet people at the library or gym. The volunteer things ive done had a weird gap where younger people and older people have more free time than middle aged workers and parents so I had few peers at those too.
I'm open to any and all ideas. Feels like things never truly changed back after covid as far as community events and social opportunities.
Sports and games. Really depends on what you're into but there's lots of different levels of interaction, physical activity, mental work, competition, etc. Just need to find your people.
Sure, but kids don't drink as much these days anyways anymore. At least in Germany, and we have drinking at 16 year old. I'm not at the age, but I wouldn't know an alternative to hang out at weekends. I mean, I do, but I can't think of a popular alternative. In my teen years people already haven't had any hobbies. With social media this surely has gotten worse.
I agree. On the other hand, I don't want to give away all the responsibility. There is plenty of space for doing sports or going in nature. Art is pretty affordable in cities. Public transportation is pretty cheap (at least for the youth and in Europe). But still, I agree.
Same here: I agree. On the other hand, it's a pest upon humankind that we can't leave public spaces clean and respect public property. We need money to pay people to make nice things, because apparently there is no critical mass that cares about the community. It's always individuals that burden it on their shoulders. And that's obviously not sufficient. Solution: money. Yeah, I hate it too.
> On the other hand, it's a pest upon humankind that we can't leave public spaces clean and respect public property.
Toxic individualism and an intolerance towards collective ownership is killing community. We should not blame humankind on a problem easily solvable by hiring a few people to clean and fix things. Somehow, this (the public bearing any cost whatsoever to have and maintain high quality public property) has become unacceptable to the public!
It didn't become unacceptable. The general public does pay already.
What becomes more and more unacceptable is the way those who already have a lot avoid to participate in this collective maintenance.
Besides that, there are things you can't solve with money. Sure you can sand "a few people" to clean up a place but the fact that people didn't use the trash bins (if the community was able to afford some) won't go away. It will create more and more costs while the collective money to patch over this will get less and less.
There will be a point when it snaps and some will be surprised it did because their bubble was kept clean all the time. They paid extra for it and your kids are not allowed on the loan.
I see that they come as a bundle. But I am not so sure about "educated". You yourself hinted that it's inherent to humankind. People have been "educated" in several different ways all across the globe and I wouldn't know where to look to see a difference.
You need to be greedy and selfish to be really successful in this system and being successful in our system begins in school and ends at your workplace where it spoken out loudly and clearly for you to learn. If you are successful, you can buy more things for yourself. Maybe even a few things others not only, don't have, things they might not be able to get at all because they're unique. You don't even have to do anything with those things. Just put them in storage and let them generate you even more money so you can buy even more things.
As someone who grew up under Socialism, this system we have here in the West is a paradise and hell in one.
Buying the cheapest shittiest liquor and pregaming at someone's house before going out wasn't invented by GenX and I'm sure Gen Alpha can figure out how to do that for themselves.
I think public discussion of whether you are having "enough" sex and "enough" babies to satisfy some oligarch or technocrat's vision of how the world should be, while not specifically deterring people going out, contributes to a general gross vibe which I could imagine doesn't help people want to get out there and mingle.
But I do think this is overstated. I have a small number of children and the main reason that we don't have more is that its incredibly expensive over the course of a lifetime to raise a child who isn't going to be some wage slave somewhere or worse, end up in poverty and treated like shit by the world. If our society was genuinely dedicated to allowing a slower pace of life and ensuring the unconditional dignity of human beings, we'd probably have more kids, but having more now feels like pitching them into the meat grinder.
In the past, women who didn't really want children didn't have a great deal of choice, particularly if they wanted to follow any kind of socially acceptable life. It was considered a failure to many if they didn't get a husband and children.
Therefore there was no particular evolutionary pressure to select for women who actually had a strong biological urge to have children.
But there is now, so after a few generations you end up with mostly those women having children, that genetically passed on desire becomes more prominent, and birth rates increase again. Until overpopulation becomes a new version of the problem people thought it would be previously.
no, it doesn't. With the labor productivity and automation, it is not obvious we need to maintain the current population, especially because the current social contract seems to be working class being exploited by oligarchs, while their taxes go fund boomers' retirement and overseas wars
This is as absurdly linear a vision of history as any traditional Marxist might conjure up.
Society has a lot of feedback systems in place which make a total collapse sort of unusual. A slow down of technological progress while society re-allocates labor towards other ends seems like a much more reasonable outcome.
It’s my perception that’s there’s been a negative reaction to pressure on younger people to have kids for a while now.
As a mid 30s millennial, it sure did feel weird back in my early 20s when older people from my rural hometown asked why I hadn’t found someone to marry and started a family yet. I had yet to even figure out who I was and how to be responsible, upstanding adult but somehow I’m supposed to take on a partner and N children too?! How does that make any sense? The chances of it ending in disaster of one sort or another are just too high, and that was obvious to me even in the midst of the naivety of a freshly minted adult.
Flash forward to today, and yes I’d like to do those things but I’m now in so much better of a position to do so that it’s difficult to even express. I’m glad I didn’t succumb to the pressure.
Because early 20s is biologically the best age to have kids. You are at your most fertile, best chance for no complications and having healthy offspring, you still have pretty boundless energy to take care of them.
Sure, but that’s one of many factors to consider. Are the improved chances of healthy kids really worth it if it comes at greatly elevated risk of financial duress, where all that extra energy is spent working multiple jobs to keep a roof over everybody’s heads? Is it worth the risk of divorce when you or your spouse get a better feel for yourselves in your late 20s and figure out you’re not actually that well suited for each other?
I’m sure that there are individuals who have all that sorted before their mid-20s, but that’s anything but a rule and nobody should feel pressured to make the leap at that age.
Yeah but the people who have kids in their early 20s are largely not people who worry about having life all figured out. They are more go with the flow types. There's something to be said for it. The best intended plans do not survive first contact with reality.
I agree that plans rarely work out, but this isn’t about planning nearly as much as it is about avoiding worst case outcomes and unnecessary struggle, which getting started later is generally conducive to (divorce rates in couples married in their late 20s/early 30s are lower than those who were wed in their early to mid 20s, as an example).
As someone in their mid 20s, I agree with you. I think we're mostly more worried about our material conditions, having a future and a roof over our heads and surviving in the long term.
I'm not even going to think about potentially having kids before I feel that those concerns are somewhat addressed.
ditto. I have talked about it before with someone who shared the opinion that falling birth rates is the end of the world, but to single that out is creepy indeed. I do understand that it can be seen as a symptom of decay, but when I them people on why exactly birth rates are so important, it does seem like they implied a sort of existential thesis where procreation is supposedly the end goal.
No one implied they would, but the thread you're commenting on literally begins with an abstract discussion about using the law to coerce you into having a more "positive" birth rate.
So what is it that you’re saying is keeping younger people from getting out? Just the knowledge that there may be people out in the world with them who are creepily obsessing over their birth rate?
Apathy resulting from being treated and talked about like cattle, raised and bred to feed the machine of capitalism while they watch it destroy the world around them.
The comment I responded to was specifically talking about "banning social media" and their confidence this would have a "positive" impact on birth rates, despite the clear preferences of younger people. I'm "bringing up" coercion because I'm not sure how to describe such policies and intentions otherwise?
The reason for it might not have been made explicit but we both understand what they were driving at and why they weren't "merely" asking the question of what effect a social media ban might have on chocolate sales or something equally arbitrary.
But the assertion was not that young people have a 'clear preference' not to have children, it was that they just have a clear preference to engage in a behaviour that, as a side-effect, lowers birth rates.
> we both understand
I'm assuming that you're not doing this intentionally, but by asserting that I "understand" the commenter is trying to 'coerce [me] into having a more positive "positive" birth rate', a notion that I still disagree with, you're suggesting that I'm being intentionally obtuse. Please don't do that.
> the assertion was not that young people have a 'clear preference' not to have children,
No, and the comment indeed ignored the very visibly growing "child free" movement popular with the younger generations in a way that framed it as unintentional.
> it was that they just have a clear preference to engage in a behaviour that, as a side-effect, lowers birth rates.
I understood this as well but if we're going to be picky about what was actually said then your use of "just" is unfair here. They actually didn't go one way or the other in it being coincidental or intentional.
> by asserting that I "understand" the commenter is trying to 'coerce [me] ...
I haven't implied this. I asserted that you understood that singling out the effect on birth rates over the effect on chocolate sales wasn't done arbitrarily. Did you understand that? Framing it as "just asking questions" obscures the obvious socio-political undertones and feels dishonest.
> No, and the comment indeed ignored the very visibly growing "child free" movement popular with the younger generations in a way that framed it as unintentional.
Not really. There are still young people who don't intentionally choose not to have children. Their birth rates might or might not increase without social media.
> your use of "just" is unfair here.
Fair enough, I'll concede that.
> I asserted that you understood that singling out the effect on birth rates over the effect on chocolate sales wasn't done arbitrarily.
Because birth rates are much more relevant to the topic at hand than chocolate sales, no? More loneliness almost necessarily translates into lower birth rates while you can eat chocolate alone or with others.
Ok then use an example of tandem bicycles. Lonelier people are less likely to buy those. Why aren't we talking about that? Why aren't we asking the question of whether or not banning social media could have a positive impact on the tandem industry?
Mostly because cedws is apparently more interested in birth rates than in tandem sales. Personally, I can't say I fault them for that and don't understand why that's a problem because, going back to my original point, they're not suggesting that people who don't want children should be forced to have children.
They're suggesting using the law the limit people's alternatives. You might not call it coercive but it's paternalistic at best. It's using the state apparatus and the monopoly of violence to limit people's choices in such a way that they're encouraged to choose to breed. I'll stand by what I said: it's creepy.
>I’ve been wondering recently what impact banning social media would have on birth rates. I’m confident it would be positive but I’m not sure on what magnitude.
Sex is decoupled from birth rates, due to access to 100% effective birth control (IUD/morning after pill/abortion). Hence there is no reason to think it would have any positive effect. I would be surprised if even a single person I know had had an unplanned kid.
This doesn't really track. People still get pregnant accidentally all the time. And people also still decide to have babies on purpose if they meet someone they like. Social media may be screwing up the latter process somewhat and getting rid of it could improve birth rates.
Birth Control isn't the whole problem. I would argue its not part of the problem at all - if people are choosing to not have kids, you don't have a birth control problem, you have a society problem. Unless you just think more human agency is bad? Seems like a weird take to me.
Upon second read, I may have misinterpreted the comment. I assumed cedws meant birth rate increasing from one night stands due to going out to bars or clubs, but they may have meant increased chances of forming relationships.
But that didn’t occur to me, since as far as I know, pretty much all relationships don’t happen like that anymore, and are usually planned prior to going out using dating apps or other personal networks. In which case, it’s not just instagram reels that would have to be gotten rid of, but also matchmaking services.
I’m not sure it’s one or the other. Firing off a prompt to Claude Code and letting it rip can be great for productivity but I won’t pretend I’m reading every line it writes unless I have to.
And yet if I’m inquiring into a subject matter I have scant knowledge about, and want to learn more about, I voraciously read the output and plan my next prompt thoughtfully throughout.
The dividing line is intellectual curiosity. AI can stimulate the mind in ways people may not have thought possible, like explaining subjects they never grasped previously, but the user has to want to go down that path to achieve it.
Social media doomscrolling, by contrast, is designed to anesthetize, so the result should not surprise.
To me AI feels like the early web. I can get information without sifting through heaps of SEO trash, and it’s like having this weird magic thinking mirror to explore ideas. Unlike social media it’s not a sea of culture war rage trolling and slop.
I am not trying to use it as a companion though. Not only do I have human ones but it feels super weird and creepy to try. I couldn’t suspend disbelief since I know how these things work.
I mean, even in my younger years going to a bar or club was not an everyday activity. People watched TV most of the evenings. Or read junk books, which was popular before TV came along.
> I’ve been wondering recently what impact banning social media would have on birth rates. I’m confident it would be positive but I’m not sure on what magnitude.
People can and do use anticonception. They do not have kids just randomly out of bored stranger encounter anymore.
Ha ha, def. took the kids out geocaching (2000's). In the 90's I was MUD'ing and in USENET forums — but I don't really consider those "group" activities in the same way going out bowling is.
