autumnhobbit:

worst part of adulthood so far is definitely the fact that people have the ability to contact me and i have to respond in a timely manner

mens-rights-activia:

I mean not to espouse baby boomer rhetoric that shits on millennials and minimizes our real problems but social media really can contribute to general unhappiness and exacerbate mental illnesses, among other things. Social media can be very good for connecting people and learning about new things and perspectives but its negative effects and aspects should also be a point of discussion among milennials and genZ more imo

One notable way this has affected a lot of young people is in a way of body dysmorphia. Last year, plastic surgeons reported an increase of what they call “Snapchat dysmorphia” where people want to get surgery to look like their faces with Snapchat filters on. Among this, it can also aggravate eating disorders for people.

There’s also the instant gratification that our generation has increasingly become used to which worsens our dependence on our various social media platforms and can greatly increase dissatisfaction when we don’t get new notifications or interactions with a post we make. Which may have a negative effect on people’s self esteem when their posts don’t get enough likes or desired attention.

Another thing I think that social media has done is that it has normalized a lot of otherwise alarming and rare things. For example, images of gore or videos of death are just not out of the ordinary anymore. I’m not saying it’s everywhere you turn but it’s just not exactly as shocking anymore because of how common it has become.

Additionally, I think that social media has also normalized advertisements. Advertisements used to be confined in very limited spaces: billboards, television, magazines and newspapers, and radios. But now they’ve become more pervasive and we’re increasingly desensitized to it. I mean look at Instagram, half your friends are trying to. Convince you to buy things under the guise of being an “influencer.” Your favorite youtubers are constantly selling you things and we’ve accepted this as just fairly normal. But imagine what people trying to sell you things looked like pre-social media? It was the Avon lady your mom avoided at supermarkets or the telemarketer you hung up on; it was less invasive and we could opt out.

And don’t even get me started on our data being harvested and used to finetune our advertisements. And this is getting increasingly accurate hence why there are times that you were just thinking about something and bam, you see an ad for it and it feels like they’re reading your mind. Nah fam, their profile on you is just so precise that it can almost predict what you’re thinking and it’s only going to get more precise.

Am I saying social media is flat out bad? No, I mean I’m posting this on a social media website, hoping to reach and interact with people on this matter. But what I am saying is that I feel like as people more directly affected by social media then previous generations, we should really start having more conversations about how it’s potentially negatively shaping our generation’s society and subsequent ones before it’s too late to change things

kaijuno:

In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. They’ll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. They’ll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didn’t know how to do it.

I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.

In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.

In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.

And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.

When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.

But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.

You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.

dankmemesreasonforliving: