Broken Happiness
It’s hard to avoid the sensation that the internet is the source of all our modern woes—and the best available solution. The internet gave mankind a place to do one of our natural activities without limits, that activity being to complain. Especially in our younger years, feeling good and being satisfied are unusual states for most of us, most of the time. Instead, we’re usually bothered by something, and if other people are present, they’re given credit for the irritation. If they aren’t, we think of the annoying things they do when they are.
Being happy and content is not a lasting state for the human psyche. Most of all, it isn’t something people spend much time talking and thinking about. It is a realm of being where thought evaporates. There’s no backstory to it: it is essentially boring. No one wants to read books and or hear stories about happy people. Being happy happens at the end of the story after all the unhappy events and complications are sorted out. While being happy isn’t something to be avoided, it really isn’t all that interesting for creatures with big, hyperactive brains. Being unhappy and dissatisfied gives us motivation. It gives us the urge to do something to improve conditions. Put differently, unhappiness gives us the urge to make things ever so slightly less unhappy and dissatisfying.
Taking all the above for true, the psychological effect of the internet is all the more understandable. The internet is a place we can connect with others when they and we are the least happy, when we’ve got lots on our minds to complain about. And since we can find some satisfaction—let’s not call it happiness—in other people’s misery, the internet allows us to tap into all that misery all day and all night. And that’s how today’s youth are growing up. That’s why they’re so unhappy.
I hasten to say about the above speculations that they entertain me—hopefully you, too—while having a marginal chance of validity. Ask me a challenging question about any of it, and I will discard and denounce the above forthwith. I’ve got better uses of my time that are less depressing, when it comes right down to it.
The main inspiration for this post (such that it is) came in reaction to reading Tove K at the Wood From Eden blog, who had a pretty good explanation for the recent run of teenage unhappiness, caused by social media (and what “media” aren’t “social”?):
Internet entertainment has helped adults to passivate teens, out of the real, potentially dangerous world, into their own rooms with entertaining screens. With those screens, teens can form exact pictures of what makes them sexually excited and what they fancy in a partner. Instead of eyeing someone of the opposite sex in school and getting a crush, they can choose from thousands of pictures how a sexual and romantic partner really should be.
This development has devalued both real-life males and real-life females. A culture of extreme individualism on the one side and the immense choice of the internet on the other side have created a culture that doesn't appreciate ordinary men and women. Extreme individualism taught us that our desires are always right. The internet supplied us with thousands of suggestions of what to desire. The result is that we no longer desire each other as before. Those who most of all live to be desired, young women without high career ambitions, are the hardest hit by this development.
The guilt of social media in this is self-evident.
Well, I try to stay upbeat and value anything happy, fun, uplifting.
But even I struggle with negativity, despair and lose hope, at least for short periods.
I have both online, and I try now to avoid a lot of the negative side when I can, sometimes I need to know, so I wade in.
I really liked the possibilities in the image of a broken heart spilling out more hearts, more possibilities for connections.
The text was not as hopeful.
FWIW: my son and daughter laugh a lot while they are on their computers. Gaming intensity is also pretty high.
On the other hand, the internet makes is so much easier to gain lots of information without having to interact with other people directly. I think that narrows the view of possibilities that can arise from face - to - face interaction.
Busy day today. Ya'll have a good Friday!