The young generation (and social media)

[Sherlock77]

I'll try not to ramble too much here, plus I have to leave for the day shortly anyway...

I have long contemplated why I seem to be so much of a luddite with technology and social media, at the ripe "old age" of 46, plus my tendency to be a loner...

Came across this group of local fellow photographers, doing stuff I would dislike, what they are doing on this Instagram video is not my thing at all!

YYC INSTAMEETS on Instagram: “Another video from last night as @mikey__travels from @lightworkers_union teaches us how to ‘cat walk’ on the bridge. To my lovely friends…”

I guess my biggest question... Is it not my thing because I'm 46? Or is it not my thing because I'm a loner Aspie? Because I do enjoy photo walks when it's one or two other people, but I'm not a big fan of larger group walks for photography

Plus this social media notion of being an "influencer", especially on Instagram, I have no hope of ever being an "influencer", but do I care? I enjoy my photography but on a much more modest level

Alright, I'm off for the day, but will keep an eye on this discussion, if anyone even bothers to respond... I would like to hear some thoughts on millenials vs. the older generations, on whether being Aspie has an influence on either one... That's an order, if you feel like it...

 

[Graphin]

I stuck out by not being on any "proper" social media and not caring to discuss all of that really hard.

What are you even trying to ramble about I actually don't understand?

 

[clg114]

Is it because you are 46 or because you are a loner Aspie? I would say that it is both. I say that because I am the same way. The only real difference is that I am a lot older than you are. This forum is the only form of social media that I participate in. While I do not dislike NTs, I do not understand them. Consequently if I am not with my family, I am almost always alone. To a NT this would be a bad thing, but I need my alone time. I am very, very lucky to have a wife that has put up with my weirdness all these years.

 

[TheFreeCat]

I talked to a historian yesterday who is 81. There is no comparison in his level of recall and understanding. I felt like i was listening to Socrates who would not write anything down and that gave him a steel clamp memory. This man who like that. No smart phone. His brain is his smart phone.

But I also talked to his grandson who is a genius!! And he does have the smart phone and all of that......

I don't know.

Socrates and Plato, both so smart, one wrote, one feared writing......

I don't even know what to think but it is certainly a huge and massive shift in the way we absorb and utilize information.

Are we stupider? Or smarter in ways?

I went without a computer or anything for a year and I became almost psychotically depressed. A cold, horrible feeling fell over me. I was isolated and alone. I thought I would be an uber-researcher, but it hurt so bad, like going back to a place I did not want to go.

My room was a steel ball, things looked different, I notice EVERYTHING again, ached, and the world shifted.

No thanks. I will stay plugged in for life. It was scary and I did not like how it felt.

 

[Pats]

When we were going through Yellowstone this past summer there was a photo tour group. I didn't get it. I don't want the exact same photos 100 other people are taking, and I definitely would not want to go along with a group or anything anywhere - that part is probably the ASD, since I've been like that all my life. I even remember going on girlscout hikes and my brother and I kept sneaking away from the group, or staying way ahead or way behind - but never WITH the group.

 

[Judge]

If one grew up without all these technologies, I'm apt to think that such people are much less likely to depend on them in general. Not necessarily to do without them, but not to truly depend on them, or become a slave to what may amount to mere convenience.

I still don't own a mobile device of any kind. Though in the absence of public telephones while traveling, perhaps eventually I'll cave in and purchase one.

Social media? This is the only interactive forum I frequent on the Internet.

 

[Graphin]

Just seeing the stares when I told people I didn't have a TV or a smartphone

Since we are getting new parents, it's often also really the parents who demonstrate and rationalize many of those disliked behaviours today

 

[Mr Allen]

Meh, I have accounts on most of the main social media sites such as FB, Twitter and Instagram, but I hardly ever use them, I don't Facebook as much as I used to and my Twitter account almost never sees the light of day.

 

[Progster]

I'm 47 and most definitely not into social media. I have Facebook, but don't use it much, I just use it as a means of communcation and don't post on my profile. I don't think I would like to take part in a group photo walk, that's not my kind of thing. I don't talk about my life on social media - firstly, why does anybody need to know about my life, why should I post things about my life? How is that interesting to anybody else or even relevant? And secondly, my private life stays private. But it's ok - I just do my thing and they can do theirs. You are free to engage in and enjoy your photography as you choose, as are they, if that's what they like.

 

[Sherlock77]

And I'm also thinking of their antics... Link in first post... That is not me! Or all millenials like that?

And I know one of the photographers in that group... And it seems like he only ever goes out photographing with his group of friends... Highly social... Something I am not...

 

[Progster]

And I'm also thinking of their antics... Link in first post... That is not me! Or all millenials like that?

And I know one of the photographers in that group... And it seems like he only ever goes out photographing with his group of friends... Highly social... Something I am not...

Yes, that's not how I act and talk, either. I don't know that many millenials. I don't suppose that they are all like that, but clearly quite a few of them are.

 

[oregano]

I've always been an early adapter of new technology. I had a CFL light in the lamp in my San Francisco apartment in 1994. I got internet access in January 1995, 9600 bps dialup. I've had a cell phone since 2002.

But there's something about the smartphone, and the way youths use it, that is DEEPLY unsettling to me. I still don't have a smartphone. I don't like the idea of going somewhere fun only to spend the whole time snapping selfies with a phone. I don't like how smartphones have made it cool to be "in the in crowd" and how kids without lots of friends, such as aspies, get bullied because they have no friends.

When I was a teen in the early 90s, it was ok if you were a loner, if you were a little strange. Now, if you don't have a giant group of "friends" on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter who all do the same things and dress the same way and like the same stuff, you are considered evil and are mercilessly bullied, including physical beatdowns. Teens now live their whole lives on social media. They rarely go out with their friends in the physical world, everything happens via phones.

The smartphone is warping the very fabric of our society in very disturbing ways, ways in which the personal computer, the early internet, and other big technologies didn't. Even the iPod was simply a Walkman that got its music via the net instead of cassette tape or radio. The smartphone is a whole different ballgame.

 

[Mr Allen]

23 years ago I fell for the hype for the first Play Station from Sony, and then my little Cousin conned me into getting in "altered" to played copied games, big mistake and that's partly why I now hate Sony, their consoles are too easy to modify.

 

[ftfipps]

@oregano

I used to hang out with some people who were born a decade before me and I really enjoyed hanging out with them because they would just sit on their front patio and talk and play music. They did have smart phones but they weren't buried in their phones. Back in 2013, I saw people watching videos on phones and I couldn't believe people were watching videos on their phones. I thought it was unnecessary to watch youtube on a phone. I just got a smartphone a couple years ago. warren buffet doesn't own a smartphone, he has a flip phone.

 

[Graphin]

@oregano Even worse, I do not even have any accounts on those. The way I use smartphones, it barely made a difference when mine broke and I used none for 2 years.
This pretty much set me up as an outcast, and considering how crazy the crowd seemed to me I don't think I missed out on much.

 

[oregano]

@ftfipps, yeah I myself use a flip phone, it's 4GLTE or whatever so I don't have any compatibility problems with infrastructure, but all it does is talk and text, which is cool. I noticed that it has internet capability for some unknown reason, but of course I don't have an internet connection for it. The whole reason for the latest infrastructure upgrade, 5G, is so people can stream videos and share selfies faster.

Today, the youth are constantly buried in their phones, they won't look up to do simple things like interacting with a cashier at a store, they simply text right through everything. I read a while back that a city in Germany, a country that is more advanced than the US in some tech aspects, had to put lights in the sidewalks so that youths would know when the light was red and not walk right into the street and get flattened due to their phones. They can't even look up from their phones long enough to check a red light!

There are many many cases of people walking in front of cars and getting killed because they were engrossed in their phones. Maybe 5 or 6 years ago a young woman got killed by a freight train, she was apparently texting and listening to music on her phone and walked right in front of the train despite the engineer frantically blowing the train horn. How hard is it to miss a train?

It seems as if their world is the phone, they don't seem to realize that the outside world exists. In the 80s the first hackers jokingly called the non-computer world the SCReW, for "so-called real world". It doesn't seem so funny now.

 

[Mattymatt]

The only social media I do is Reddit, Pinterest, and Mastodon. Mastodon is an open source, corporation-free, alternative to Twitter. Pinterest gives me some good ideas when I am in a subject search mode. Reddit is good for questions and answers tech and life related. I am 13 full months free from Facebook and Twitter. Good riddance to those guys! I will be one less needle in that haystack.

 

[Gracey]

Everything breaks.

A second hand (almost broken) smart phone is the only way I can access the internet.
It needs its battery replacing- No point taking it out of the house.

Funds are that tight at home, paying to fix a smart phone isn’t a priority.

When it breaks completely, which it will,
I’ll go back to sending smoke signals or something

I’m sure I’ll manage without it,
I’ve had about 30 years practice at life without the internet. I know how to.

My children on the other hand don’t.

They don’t use their own memory to recall,
They use phones.

No problem at 20 something but working on ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ when thinking how the brain works,
I have to wonder if by the ages of 40 or 50 they’ll have no recall at all.

I won’t be alive to find out.

 

[rollerskate]

I'll try not to ramble too much here, plus I have to leave for the day shortly anyway...

I have long contemplated why I seem to be so much of a luddite with technology and social media, at the ripe "old age" of 46, plus my tendency to be a loner...

Came across this group of local fellow photographers, doing stuff I would dislike, what they are doing on this Instagram video is not my thing at all!

YYC INSTAMEETS on Instagram: “Another video from last night as @mikey__travels from @lightworkers_union teaches us how to ‘cat walk’ on the bridge. To my lovely friends…”

I guess my biggest question... Is it not my thing because I'm 46? Or is it not my thing because I'm a loner Aspie? Because I do enjoy photo walks when it's one or two other people, but I'm not a big fan of larger group walks for photography

Plus this social media notion of being an "influencer", especially on Instagram, I have no hope of ever being an "influencer", but do I care? I enjoy my photography but on a much more modest level

Alright, I'm off for the day, but will keep an eye on this discussion, if anyone even bothers to respond... I would like to hear some thoughts on millenials vs. the older generations, on whether being Aspie has an influence on either one... That's an order, if you feel like it...

I'm actually quite antisocial for a "xenial", and most of my online communication is either related to business, school, or special interests. Influencers typically (note I said typically, not all) are either marketing majors and/or highly social extroverts with large social networks backing them. I have yet to hear of an artistic photographer influencing. Usually influencers start out with marketing and then get into photography to improve their photography skills. It's not a job I envy, at all, though - unless you just have the natural knack for it and gain a huge following, the financial gain is almost zilch. Especially when you factor in the middle man companies, that work directly between the advertisers and the influencers. It's very much like doing PPC advertising.

Social photography trips sound horrifying to me. Part of the beauty of photography or any artistic endeavor for me is getting out alone with myself to take my own pace and time to make my own discoveries.

You're not as unusual as you think. Most artists I know like to be alone to create.. not just photographers, and not just older people, and not just aspies.

 

[Sherlock77]

...

But there's something about the smartphone, and the way youths use it, that is DEEPLY unsettling to me. I still don't have a smartphone. I don't like the idea of going somewhere fun only to spend the whole time snapping selfies with a phone. I don't like how smartphones have made it cool to be "in the in crowd" and how kids without lots of friends, such as aspies, get bullied because they have no friends.

When I was a teen in the early 90s, it was ok if you were a loner, if you were a little strange. Now, if you don't have a giant group of "friends" on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter who all do the same things and dress the same way and like the same stuff, you are considered evil and are mercilessly bullied, including physical beatdowns. Teens now live their whole lives on social media. They rarely go out with their friends in the physical world, everything happens via phones.

The smartphone is warping the very fabric of our society in very disturbing ways, ways in which the personal computer, the early internet, and other big technologies didn't. Even the iPod was simply a Walkman that got its music via the net instead of cassette tape or radio. The smartphone is a whole different ballgame.

Well said, I agree with that, smart phones can be very useful, but are easily taken to the extreme