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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Absurd Pirate's Internet Blog asks, is gen alpha screwed? [absurdpirate.com]:

However, I do think there is a STARK contrast between a curated show from the 90s-00s and a show like Cocomelon that is designed to be like heroin for babies. I walked in on my MIL and daughter watching Cocomelon together one time, and it was jarring seeing how, for one, low effort the animation and songs are, and two, how stimulating this show is, between the incredibly saturated colors to the jump cuts every second. What I learned was that this show uses focus groups of children to make it so there is not a break in the concentration. If a kid shifts his eyes away from the screen, the scene gets edited to address that.

Companies are literally designing everything for addiction these days. Trying to get you hooked on whatever they can profit off of as early in your development as possible.

The points raised there are discussed further by Andre Franca [afranca.com.br]. He adds,

The author also mentions the "mental death" of parenting under modern life, and I totally get that. There are days when I’m so drained that a screen feels like a life raft, so the comparison of high-stimulant shows to "baby heroin" makes total sense to me. That crap is bad enough for an adult; for a child, it can be devastating. I’ve watched my oldest son’s behavior shift in real-time depending on what he’s consuming. When it’s junk, he turns into different person - more reactive, less patient. It makes me realize that parenting today is largely about shielding them from a culture that wants to outsource their development to an algorithm.

What happens when a substantial portion of a whole generation achieves an age of majority with an nearly complete substitution of life experience for exposure to mindless digital heroin?

Previously:
(2025) Ban Social Media for Under 15s, Says French Report Warning of TikTok Dangers [soylentnews.org]
(2025) Social Media Is Dead – Here’s What Comes Next [soylentnews.org]
(2015) Kids These Days: Six or Seven Nicknamed Generations [soylentnews.org]

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