The Social Dilemma part 2

I am worried about the youth today.

I don’t have a Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, how many etceteras do I need nowadays?

I’ve really tried to follow the advice I wrote about from my first post on The Social Dilemma (Netflix).  For a while I turned off suggested videos in YouTube, but I found the blank pages and the difficulty in finding what I was looking for to be too much to deal with.  Instead, I only go to YouTube with a purpose and try as best as I can to watch only the video I go there to watch. As of this writing the suggested videos in my YouTube has ballooned to 273 (273 videos!) since I’ve stopped looking at suggested videos. That’s a little red 273 on my phone home screen. That’s 273 times YouTube has said, “this video is just right for you.” That is countless hours (or hours I don’t want to count) of video footage YouTube has suggested to me. Yikes. I’m going to continue to avoid those videos and see how ludicrous that 273 number can become.

I’ve also tried not to use Google which I’ve found to be way harder than I anticipated.  There’s a reason Google has the best search results, and that reason is they don’t care about your privacy.  With my job in IT support, I’ve found it impossible to use other search engines.  I still have the Qwant extension installed in my Google Chrome but find myself searching through Google anyway. 

Like YouTube, I avoid Facebook as much as I can. As I write this, checking my battery usage, Facebook is still 11% of my total battery used.  When I do get on Facebook, the worst thing that can happen is I watch a video.  It’s the same reason I avoid YouTube as much as possible.  Facebook I find to be much worse than YouTube, at least for me.  Let me explain what happens when I get on Facebook and if I watch a video:

1. I stumble upon a video title that I can’t avoid watching.  Something like, “The reason Donovan Mitchell will never win a championship for Utah.” 
   • Now I’m stuck.
2. That video ends and is followed by, “I gave $1,000,000 to a stranger on the street!”
   •  I’m losing my free will.
3. Next video, “I bought 10,000 black widows and put them in my mom’s bathroom!” 

I’ll emerge from a sequence of videos like the above hours later and think to myself, “what just happened?”

The above is only a slight exaggeration.

The disconcerting, uncomfortable, and completely frightening truth is – once I watch that first, then second, then third video that has clearly been sent because they know it catches my attention – it’s really difficult for me to get away.  I’ll feel it happening.  Like, I’ll be on minute 6 of a 9-minute video and think, “after this one I’m done.”  Then as minute 8 starts to end I get this feeling, this urge.  Like – I have to watch another one.  I’ll feel this urge.  I’ll fight it.  And somehow, I end up watching another video.  I may sound dramatic, but it’s truly terrifying.

Am I the only one?

Beth and I have gotten into a routine with Ivy’s sleeping where I’m usually up briefly with Ivy around 11pm and Beth is up with her briefly around 4am. 

Every once in a while (not often), I wake in the morning to a 4:15am text from Beth with some video or article.  I realize that, in a stupor, she was drawn to her phone.  This likely happened while she was lying in bed watching the baby monitor, waiting to see if Ivy would fall back asleep so she could go to sleep.

Recently Beth took a picture of Ivy and I together on the couch.  I watched Beth open Facebook to share the picture.  I watched Beth somehow end up finding herself watching some video.  10 minutes later, talking to herself, Beth said something like, “what was I doing?…”

I told her she likely looked at her phone to post a picture.

“Oh yeah…” was her reply.

I’m not the only one.

Beth and I aren’t the only ones.

Back to the first sentence I wrote for this post.  I am AFRAID for the youth today.  How do they survive in a world where advertisers know what they want to see, then put it directly into their hand over.. and over…and over…..and over……

Something needs to be done for our youth, but I’m not sure what.  It’s too easy for them to be completely enveloped in this digital world.  We are frighteningly close to a Black Mirror-esc existence where kids only exist in their phones.  Maybe the only way we can help our youth is leading by example.

I try to only be on my phone to read the scriptures. I’m not even great at responding to messages, as some of you know.  I read physical books.  I’m aware of Facebook’s and other social media companies’ pull on my attention, and I try to fight it.  I think it’s important we teach our kids the same thing.

This must be the way we can help kids today. Lead by example. Read books. Show that the phone can be set aside. Go on day trips where the phone is not allowed to come. Set a requirement where there are no phones after dinner. I don’t know, anything! Something needs to be done and this is the first place to start.

Otherwise the below picture is every family’s future. And that is a sad future.

*Credit to photographer Eric Pickersgill who took these pictures depicting people with their mobile phones and devices removed from the photo.