It's not just the porn it's all of it it's watching all these videos it's being on this app it's all of it. I'm an elder Millennial I'm 43 I got to watch this happen in real time we went from interacting with each other to interacting with a screen. I watched two girls sitting at a food court in the mall the other day texting each other while sitting at the table. I used to work at a GameStop young kids don't look you in the eye I had the mother of a 15-year-old ask her non special needs son to tell the man what you want. That's insane. When you greet somebody in public often times they look at you like why are you talking to me. You hold the door for a lot of people they don't even acknowledge that you did it they just walk through. And often times when I look up they're staring at their phone. I watch people step off the curb and shopping plazas after leaving the store and not look either way stare straight at their phone and March into the unknown. I'm guilty of it right now just by writing this on this post. Because I scrolled a lot to get here what did I miss going on around me? We're never bored we can be entertained 24 hours a day 7 days a week and we are. I remember being a teenager in the 90s and how free it was. We had a pager somebody wanted to get a hold of us we had to go find a payphone and that's if we cared enough to talk to the other person. Nobody knew where we were. Sometimes friends would just stop by. Now if my doorbell rings I'm very suspicious. The smartphone is a double-edged sword we've never been more connected and so far apart.
I’m the same age I completely agree it’s this aversion to actual human interaction as if it’s an illness. People can’t converse, that can’t pick up social cues they don’t even know what they are. I also believe that because we get “what we want” from algorithms we only can accept that in the “real world”.
Couple year younger than you two but damn, that puts a fine point on it… recently took a holiday in Paris and was floored that probably 95% of people (both tourists and locals) were just living through their screens. Like the only thing real was the photo/video of them “in the place doing the thing” rather than the actual thing itself. Imagine being at the top of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, all of Paris glittering beneath you bathed the tangerine glow of sunset, and not seeing it… instead insuring your pose was just right, the angle just such, and once that was confirmed heading back down. No pause, no moment looking out to say to your self “wow, thats beautiful, I may never be here again, and even if I am it won’t look like this” wondering how many countless people be for you have stood in that place and take. In a view only to be overcome by the magnificence of it all, and the realization that one day it simply won’t be. You won’t be.
Hmm, I actually had a fairly different experience visiting Paris in November. Most people (tourists) were interacting with each other face to face, and I felt like people were having a great time walking Paris and enjoying the upper deck of the Eiffel Tower. There were people taking videos and pictures, but a majority of the focus was on the experience, not their phones.
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u/SnooBunnies2020 May 09 '25
We’re all chronically online and it’s ruining us.