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Tech and social media are making us feel lonelier than ever:
You've had a social day. Two hundred Facebook friends posted birthday messages, your video of Mr. Meow shredding the toilet paper stash got dozens of retweets, and all the compliments on your latest Instagram selfie have you strutting with an extra swagger. Still, you can't help but notice an ache that can only be described as loneliness.
That we feel this way even when hyperconnected might seem like a contradiction. But the facts are clear: Constant virtual connections can often amplify the feeling of loneliness.
"Internet-related technologies are great at giving us the perception of connectedness," says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who's written about the intersection of psychology and tech. The truth, he says, is the time and energy spent on social media's countless connections may be happening at the expense of more rooted, genuinely supportive and truly close relationships.
If virtual socializing cannot substitute for the real thing, will social media prove out to be nothing more than a fad of the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday June 21 2020, @01:38AM (7 children)
Used to be close to 100% labour participation, people started working at perhaps 5 years old and worked till death basically. Now what is the labour participation? Looking it seems to be about 60% after subtracting people in school and retired but it is hard to find honest statistics. There's lots of people on disability, stay at home partners, people getting educated (not a bad thing but not working at a job), people who have joined the idle rich, as well as the idle poor, sure a lot of street people now a days.
Then there's all the jobs that don't really produce stuff, things like nail saloons that never used to exist. Sure they're jobs but compared to making something. Then as the AC said, the increase in middle management and other types of paper pushers that if anything decrease productivity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 21 2020, @05:06AM (6 children)
It's even higher.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday June 21 2020, @05:16AM (5 children)
So what, a 110% of the population is involved in jobs that are actually productive? Perhaps only 101%, but I sure know of a lot of people on disability.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:07PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:52PM (3 children)
I was talking about pre-industrial revolution for close to 100% labour participation. As you say, we're now lucky to get to 2/3rds labour participation, even with a far smaller pool of people in the labour pool.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 22 2020, @12:59PM (2 children)
I still think you're substantially exaggerating labor participation from those times.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday June 23 2020, @02:50AM (1 child)
Perhaps, or I'm considering all the home industry. Inefficient but some of it has entered our language, words like spinster.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:03AM
Sounds like we've reached a dead end then. I'm not seeing the point of your posts in the first place. Even if we take seriously your claim that we've declined from 100% employment prior to the industrial age to 63% pre-covid, that's not a significant drop.