this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago (6 children)

it's the kind of material that keep a monkey occupied.

I think that's kind of the point. There was an article a while back that said the CCP/Bytedance intentionally serve up braindead content to everywhere outside China, while promoting educational and uplifting content at home.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

I have one 50 year old friend with very little tech know how and his kids set him up with a good smartphone. I saw his family about a year ago and his kids noted that their dad often sits up until about 2 or 3 in the morning at the kitchen table just scrolling through tiktok videos. He sent them to me about once a day until I had to block him and tell him directly to stop sending me this stuff. He's since become 'aware' of his addiction and stops sending out videos as often as he did before. He still scrolls through thousands and thousands of videos a day.

It would all be funny if it wasn't so frightening at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

No kidding. I just find it ironic that the generation that kept saying "TV will rot your brain" is now completely consumed by social media.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

50 is still too young. Endless scrolling should only be for old people who literally can't do anything. Kids need to do physically stimulating things like playing outside, adults need to do mentally stimulating things like playing video games. Old people don't need to do anything, they can veg out to short form.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Legitimately, when I was quitting nicotine, I would scroll on my phone when I was getting withdrawal pangs, and it helped.

Nowadays I have to watch myself, or else I'll potentially lose hours. I know exactly what addiction feels like: going without and satisfying what feels like a need - it feels right. And these apps are definitely addictive. I didn't really notice until I tried to stop.

[–] kofe 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've had no trouble curating my feed to mostly professionals, psychologists and pet behaviorists. Occasional cute animal videos

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Nice. I'll be honest, I never bothered with tiktok, only Instagram. And even that got to a point where I just gave up and tossed it. Even Reddit was weird like that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

that sounds way too bizarre to believe without seeing a source. and i know there's gonna be people replying saying it's not that bizarre, because China, but really....?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

60 Minutes did a spread on it way back when, it's on YouTube I believe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Absolutely reasonable thing to ask.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tristan-harris-social-media-political-polarization-60-minutes-2022-11-06/

Grep for "Companies like TikTok" to find the relevant portion.

The guy talking isn't exactly a scientist and this ain't a rigourous peer-reviewed study, but it does seem like he knows at least a little about what he's talking about. Take it with a grain of salt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I want to see a sampling of this "educational and uplifting" content.

[–] markon 3 points 10 months ago

Just don't forget Blackrock owns a very sizable portion of Bytedance. Just saying.