We have destroyed our public spaces, removed places for people to gather, made it illegal for youth to be unaccompanied in many public places, created helicopter parents and insufferable busybodies that call the police if a child so much as wanders outside the home, and have made any kind of IRL socialization either impossible or extremely difficult.

We have influencers and brands flooding social media to show you how worthless you are and how you need to look better, act different, dress this way or that. It creates a sense of anxiety, self-loathing, and hopelessness.

Especially if you're young, you look around at the state of the world and wonder what fucking hope you have for any kind of future: loans for college that will be a boat anchor around your neck for basically the rest of your life, a climate catastrophe in progress, a fascist coup in progress, the absolute impossibility of home ownership, a job market that's being torn apart by grifters, and rising inflation and costs of living without any increase in salaries.

The major social platforms are all dominated by algorithmically generated "content" that feeds on rage-baiting. Outside of YouTube, none of the platforms allow for any kind of long-form posts, so you're limited in what you can say on a given topic, so you reduce it to the most distilled and condensed version. Something is mildly upsetting? Well, 280 characters isn't enough for nuance, so rage-posting it is. And the more inflammatory, the more engagement it gets, which gets it in front of even more eyeballs.

YouTube actively pushes users down the alt-right rabbit hole.

So you're already isolated, alone, separated from any kind of sense of community, and you try to find a replacement in social media. But it's not the same. You're already feeling hopeless about the world and the future. And this algorithm you've been swallowed by is fed by, and rewards, the worst impulses.

It's not a "kids these days are so addicted to their phones these days and it's making them depressed or violent" kind of issue. It's an interconnected web of shit that's feeding back and forth making everything worse. We've made a fucking awful world, and then the place where people are taking refuge is exacerbating all of it.

Oh, it's not video games and heavy metal anymore?

I cannot believe this has to be said over and over again: It is easy access to guns!

Could it be waning opportunities, falling wages, rising prices, the erosion of democratic institutions, and the proliferation of fear-based marketing to maximise gun sales? No, surely social media is to blame. The US never had social problems, desperation, or poverty before the demonic internet.

People should really read the article. It feels like I'm reading broken records in these discussions because people take a headline, refuse to read what the article has to say, and then say "but what about x?" When the article has a section literally dedicated to say, how social media can contribute to rising violence in the presence of easy gun access. Like that's literally a component of the thesis here.

Clickbait headlines 101: if something was confirmed they wouldn't use hedging language. If social media caused homicides they wouldn't put "Could Be" in the headline.

!designporn (can't remember what instance)

Are homicides up in the rest of the developed world among youths? I feel that here in Australia, while we have our own fair share of domestic issues, it doesn't seem anywhere near as widespread that Aussie youths murders/homicides are higher than say, 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't have any sources for that, I am writing this up five minutes before I go to sleep, but I think it's a potential talking point, and if data does corroborate with my hunches on this, maybe it's not the social media alone and maybe something USA does differently? Maybe the lax gun control?

What the heck

Sensational bullshit

When keeping it real goes wrong... Wasn't this covered 20 years ago

Really no different from youth culture for, well, forever I guess. It just moved from in person social cues and "turf battles" to online.

It's the same stuff that made the kids throw down in West Side Story 66 years ago, and that was based on the same stuff that made the kids throw down in Romeo and Juliet 426 years ago.

https://youtu.be/SEzskNtFnIY

Suuure. I believe you THIS time

Yeah, it is more complex. Hence do not put social media in the title. I read the article. It is superficial and scratches the surface.

I reay do not understand what you are trying to tell me buddy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have you ever said something to yourself like, "Wow, that clown is lucky I can't reach through the friggin' screen and smack his face off?" If the technology keeps on advancing, maybe one day there will be mass homicides all over the place.

Little insecure posers pretending they're the stars of their own show. Like the bitch boys of /r/phillywiki