I'm in my late 40s, so sometimes I think this is just a consequence of my age -- everyone at this age, for a thousand years, has started thinking things were better when they were kids (get off my lawn!), and the cause is technological changes.
But frequently my much younger acquaintances will agree with me... on the other handn they didn't actually experience it, maybe they just think that's what they're supposed to say.
I still suspect I'm right, and all of this OP matches my thoughts/observations.
Especially that it's about social isolation -- and that the technology of connection in our pockets, despite everything 1990s techno-utopian Mondo 2000 me would have thought -- has led to drastically increased social isolation.
Covid hasn't helped.
I really believe that if we didn't have the internet, we coudln't possibly have isolated as much as we did -- as much as we, on the whole still are, with social changes that seem permanent -- in response to covid -- no matter the dangers. (They couldn't possibly have isolated to the level we did in response to the early 20th c flu epidemic, can they?)
The internet is what made it possible to have that level of isolation.
Or to seem possible.
In fact, it is disastrous for us personally and socially and continues to be -- what seemed possible is not in fact possible as a successful way to live and have a society.
It's the irony of modern world, we are more connected than ever before, and we are more isolated than than ever before.
The same tools that connect us, isolates us.
I'm in my late 40s, so sometimes I think this is just a consequence of my age -- everyone at this age, for a thousand years, has started thinking things were better when they were kids (get off my lawn!), and the cause is technological changes.
But frequently my much younger acquaintances will agree with me... on the other handn they didn't actually experience it, maybe they just think that's what they're supposed to say.
I still suspect I'm right, and all of this OP matches my thoughts/observations.
Especially that it's about social isolation -- and that the technology of connection in our pockets, despite everything 1990s techno-utopian Mondo 2000 me would have thought -- has led to drastically increased social isolation.
Covid hasn't helped.
I really believe that if we didn't have the internet, we coudln't possibly have isolated as much as we did -- as much as we, on the whole still are, with social changes that seem permanent -- in response to covid -- no matter the dangers. (They couldn't possibly have isolated to the level we did in response to the early 20th c flu epidemic, can they?)
The internet is what made it possible to have that level of isolation.
Or to seem possible.
In fact, it is disastrous for us personally and socially and continues to be -- what seemed possible is not in fact possible as a successful way to live and have a society.