All the talk of identity verification got me thinking about what I’ll actually worry about my kids accessing. Perhaps I’m odd, but sex is normal and porn is just exaggerated sex so I feel like I can make it clear it’s as realistic as Lord of the Rings.
What worries me is the brainrot from getting stuck in a media bubble. We are so incredibly vulnerable to being swayed by both propaganda and fringe thinking these days and it’s only easier to create echo chambers with all the AI content flooding the web now.
What do you think is the most dangerous part of the net for those ignorant of the threats?
From personal & anecdotal experience, I think exposing kids (and adults) to a life of wide variance helps inoculate from echo chambers. My parents dragged me to my grandparents’ place in the countryside one weekend a month or more where cell service didn’t exist and internet was dial up. It got annoying at times and I don’t think it was perfect but spending so much time playing in the woods helped get my energy out, fostered a different kind of creativity, and often made me get out of my own head. Whatever was going on at school, drama via texting, or me just raging bc I sucked at video games didn’t seem so important when I was so far away. One of the most valuable parts of the Army was the people, the opportunity to truly meet and learn to work with people you wouldn’t have otherwise. Even in public school, you tend to stick to your clique and at its most diverse you’re really only meeting people you live in the area with. But the Army was different; the US is a freaking huge country with a ton of different subcultures. I learned a lot at an early age just by asking people where they grew up and what it was like. It introduced nuance and spoke against stereotypes in a way a lot of people need, and that diversity of experience helped a younger me appreciate that things aren’t always what they seem.
It’s easy, as a young man especially, to be in one place doing one thing and get really worked up about something, and echo chambers work towards that in many ways. It helps to physically move to somewhere else and burn off some energy. I find it much easier to reframe things when my physical environment is changing and I don’t have such a huge pile of energy to act as fuel to the online flame wars. It helps to know in the back of my mind, however worked up I get, that “I’m angry now, but there is a place I can go where none of you losers matter and however big and loud and frustrating you are here, you are so small and quiet and barely existent when I go to that place.” And if I can go somewhere else and have those loud, dumb, frustrating things shut up, then maybe they’re not that loud or intimidating or big or even frustrating at all. At least not big enough for me to spend so much time thinking about it.
TL;DR: In the short term, moving around (physical motion/travel) helps. In the long term, moving around (longer term trips and travel to new places & experiences) helps.