Was it worth it ?

I would worry about taking David Bowie’s views on anything seriously….especially music.  Not, and have never been, a fan.  But I do take your point.

Unfortunately any leap forward through technology (as Audi would say) is fraught.  Think of the luddites and the original sabot-eurs reacting to their loss of jobs.

As with any technology it is how you use it.  It’s unfashionable I know, but that is a matter for personal responsibility.  I applaud you for your approach to your children. It’s the (unfashionable) approach one of my friends has taken with his children and they have a balanced usage and seem to be ‘riding the storm’ pretty well…..gaining from its benefits but getting limited negative impacts.   Another friend has taken a rather more laissez faire approach and I fear for his daughter as she seems to be disappearing down a rabbit hole.

It is very telling that most if not all of the creators/controllers of social media strictly controlled/control their own children’s access to it…….

This is such a complex topic, and I can see both sides. On one hand, the internet has undeniably changed the world in ways that were unimaginable even a few decades ago. The ability to access knowledge, create communities, and innovate at such a scale has been a monumental advancement for society. It has given rise to countless opportunities that simply didn’t exist before—whether in business, education, healthcare, or even in fostering global social movements. In that sense, Bowie was right—it was revolutionary.

But then, Bowie’s other perspective, calling it a "monster," also rings true. The internet has accelerated the pace of life, disrupted traditional industries, and fundamentally altered how we interact with each other. The sense of social disconnection in a hyper-connected world is real. The internet encourages surface-level engagement, and the anonymity it offers can bring out the worst in human behavior. The toll on mental health, especially among younger generations, is deeply concerning.

In the end, it's a double-edged sword. The internet has brought both immense good and significant harm, and whether it's worth the trade-offs might depend on how we, as individuals and society, choose to use and regulate it. I think the answer isn’t clear-cut—it’s more about finding balance, acknowledging the risks while maximizing the benefits.

It's both a blessing and a curse.

Just one example.

I can watch whatever television programmes I want, when I want, from anywhere in the world.

But we've lost the shared experience of all viewing something together, which doesn't happen now outside of sport and big live entertainment events like the Strictly final or Eurovision.

Plus I'd argue there's TOO much choice now, even compared to the early days of digital telly 20 to 25 years ago.

The days of Vicars moving Evensong services to avoid The Forsyte Saga's Sunday night transmission are long gone.

Edited by JME Studios

JME Studios said

It's both a blessing and a curse.

Just one example.

I can watch whatever television programmes I want, when I want, from anywhere in the world.

But we've lost the shared experience of all viewing something together, which doesn't happen now outside of sport and big live entertainment events like the Strictly final or Eurovision.

Plus I'd argue there's TOO much choice now, even compared to the early days of digital telly 20 to 25 years ago.

The days of Vicars moving Evensong services to avoid The Forsyte Saga's Sunday night transmission are long gone.

Edited by JME Studios

The internet has given us a lot, and with fiber optic speeds and 5G, everything is instant. But is it really helping us? Kids are more cut off from reality than ever. Here's a simple question: on Christmas Day, how many kids do you see playing outside? Here, my answer is zero—Christmas is like a ghost town. All the kids are inside on their new iPads or Xboxes, talking to people they will never meet on Call of Duty or some other game. Before the internet, on Christmas morning, the whole town’s kids were outside, no matter the weather, playing with their new toys. Kids knew every other kid within a 10-mile radius, knew their addresses by heart, and a lot of their phone numbers too. Kids now know neither places nor people; smartphones have made remembering anything redundant. With instant messaging, we don't even store addresses or numbers in our heads anymore—we just ask again and again on instant messages. 

Instagram and Purpleport is infuriating, you are constantly checking to see who has looked at and liked your pics.

I think I need to go to rehab :-(

Edited by tandi

tandi said

Instagram and Purpleport is infuriating, you are constantly checking to see who has looked at and liked your pics.

I think I need to go to rehab :-(

Edited by tandi

Exactly, which in turn makes people feel a sense of lower self-worth, even though they’re probably very nice people in reality. But they’re being judged by a picture or the fake lifestyle they portray online. How can kids live up to that? It's like an addiction that keeps us plugged in, watching for anything happening 24/7, constantly feeding our dopamine centers. he sais answering a post on the internet ;-) 

Edited by ANDY00

You're right of course, I'm signing out for the rest of this hour. I'll be back at 11am :-)

The title reminds me the Queen song!

I love the Internet. The endless stream of information, the possibility to learn whatever your heart desires and the chance to gain any skill in the sortest time if you put time and effort in it. Priceless.

But the social media as is is a Dopamine pit and an open buffet for the advertisers.

Violence and Sexuality are pushed to the extremes where normal human nature is seen as explicit and normal human interaction as superfluous.

All the natural, biological boundaries are vanishing, so does accountability, punctuality and real empathy.

I remember how appointments were hold without any constant asking each other if it was still actual.

That said look at what we do! From all around the world, we enjoy each other's art, creation, opinion, wisdom, tricks and tips, constructive criticism without limitation. 

We just find a way to protect the kids from Dopamine traps and bullying. We also need to make natural things like nudity, courtesy and accountability normal again. At least from my perspective, who grew up in Western Germany. We had natural woman take shower for a shampoo ad and her nudity was normal. We would be courteous to all and we took responsibility for our actions. The realities of human biology and human nature are vanishing from our social structures. A made up, promised land,  easy to manipulate norms and thinking patterns are created.

It has reduced attention spans, especially in Gen Z.

As I've said before, on longer form video (3-4m) the creator will now clip the payoff and place it at the start of the video. So the payoff is the first thing you see, never mind how we get there.

JME Studios this isn't necessarily a gen z thing , movies have been doing similar things for years.

Lenswonder true but the influence of TikTok is fascinating. In commercial radio, the talent has been trained for 30 years now that "if you can't get it away in 30 to 40 seconds, don't try." It's amazing it's taken that long to bring that thinking to video.

It's lowered a lot of barriers to entry. Suddenly, anyone can become a YouTuber or a Content Creator. I think we used to call that job a television presenter! 😂

No more do you need Equity and a TV network to make you famous on the screen.

Platforms like PP, MF, AF, MM etc. have made finding models to shoot much easier. Finding local models must have been much harder 30 years ago.

I don't think it's worth it for children, maybe even teenagers. It's interesting that some forms of consumption are regulated but for one of the biggest the internet dangers are not. Of course some parents who have been affected strongly and had their lives changed through it have been campaigning for more protection and more online business responsibility. At the moment you can say it depends on how you educate your child and how much they use the internet.

Of course it also affects adults, sometimes not too different from the effect on children and I'm guessing like any other problem these will be faced as it happens. The future internet may be vastly different from today.

If you think about the riots we just had , many wouldn't be able to communicate like that without it but many also would not have been arrested. Though I assume most of the arrests had to do with CCTV and any filmed footage.

The internet has killed the TV industry, especially for actors, killed the film industry, flooded the author and book industry—few books become best sellers unless you spend millions on advertising, so no more rags-to-riches stories there. The fashion industry is dead, thanks to the internet and that giant farm known as online shopping, with clothing superstores laid to rest and town centers turned into ghost towns. We enjoy the convenience of easy returns, all while funding slave labor in Xinjiang. Just last year, Tesco got caught using slave labor in Thailand.

And of course, the media and news have gone mad—nobody can trust the news anymore. They’re all bought and paid for, swinging narratives and stirring up riots and protests over things we would have ignored before.

JME Studios I don't think there's anything wrong with anyone being a youtuber that's the beautiful side. It's how you as a youtuber regulate yourself , since we have seen some big names in the past and just recently this week have an ugly fall.

Those falls are not because of the internet but failures in people's character.

PP and sites similar do indeed make finding models easier but even in the internet age I have had a go at finding models face to face. Probably very little in comparison to if the internet didn't exist , it probably also makes it easier for those who are not extroverts which some could say is a good thing.

As a techno-nerd I should perhaps point out that the Internet and the World-Wide Web aren't the same thing ...  :-)