Dark Age Two

Positive Feedback Loops & You

Hinging on correlations and skewed by subjectivity, fields like social psychology and evolutionary psychology can seem like fallacy built out of Occam’s razor to an empiricist. Easy answers to any questions regarding the fascinatingly complex interrelations that exist between the technosphere and humanity are rare. These all-encompassing considerations ripple from overarching concerns to impacts felt by the individual. The health and wellbeing of each human life is of importance; the wellbeing of individuals affects communities, societies, and humanity. Both top-down and bottom-up views are necessary for any semblance of circumspection.

When futurists wager valid predictions, present societies must be considered. Focusing on individuals is the key measure of those qualities – often relayed as “quality of life,” or the average “happiness” of individuals. Contemporarily, the ubiquitous use of connected devices, screen time, and social media are often implicated for social and mental health concerns of young people in the connected world and affect groups of people as a result.

An article about Mental Health and Social Media Use in girls lends some immediate gravity to an emerging cultural-wide awareness of what might prove to be a still-growing concern. A comprehensive site called Better Social Media (corresponding to a book of the same name by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt) provides yet more background information as well as advice for harm mitigation. The site may come off like an advertisement for a book, yet links through this site will reveal a startling depth of noble efforts.

Jonathan Haidt also maintains a public-facing Google Document called Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review. This appears as a comprehensive, unbiased, and peer-reviewable work of journalism. The contents are fascinating.

The document ethically features a PSA-style disclaimer that cites the reproducibility crisis existing within many professional fields. The reproducibility crisis describes how the peer-review process is regularly unable to reproduce supposedly valid results of studies, and how such studies are regularly published before veracity is established by the peer-review process. Considering how a large portion of published academic/scientific studies cannot be reliably reproduced under the necessary ethical, scientific, or academic rigors, the presence of this disclaimer also points to a form of decay that exists within the professional communities of which all progress should be evidence-based.

Haidt lucidly points out how certain patterns of smartphone use, screen time, and social media aren’t to be demonized outright. Social media and the web can and do provide benefits for individuals in many scenarios. All effects of social media use depend on the kinds of social interactions which occur. Defining “screen time” is a difficult task as well, frustrating these efforts substantially.

Concern – Not Cataclysm

Importantly, Haidt references the moral panics of the western world of past generations. The Satanic Panic of the 1980’s (in the USA, involving rock musics and harmless tabletop role-playing games), the worries shared globally regarding video games in the late 1990’s and 2000’s (the ‘moral panic’ inspired by early firs-person shooters and the gore featured in two-dimensional fighting games), and the fears that much older generations had regarding the proliferation of televisions. Those historical qualms were unfounded – even if watching too much TV, mindlessly, is not constructive. In hindsight, these worries seem irrational. It is possible that a generational phenomenon occurs in aging generations’ that includes a more rigid worldview, making criticism about the statuses of younger generations something that is very human and thus commonplace. Similarly, rumors of ‘the end of the world’ seem to happen once a decade, anecdotally speaking. Y2K, The Cold War, and the 2012 Phenomenon involving the end of the ancient Mayan calendar come to mind. Haidt’s disclaimer ethically acts to minimize overreaction.

 A History of Media Technology Scares helps to quantify this trend of how people can sometimes be found collectively worrying. Haidt, however, has identified many trends as a figurehead in this prescient sociological niche. Haidt’s projections are very much that of a futurist. Facets of fields like sociology and psychology must be factored in to the influences of the technosphere, politics, economics, environmentalism, et alia.

Other camps of thought are less generous – despite causality do being difficult to prove. These opinions suggest that a connection between internet and social media use and the mental health concerns of individuals are obvious. This pragmatic approach regarding the effects felt by individuals who spend large amounts of non-constructive time using connected devices suggests that if reducing screen time produces better mental health, resilience, and coping, then those results require no formal evidence-based proofs. Causality is irrelevant when the ends justify the means.

Many perspectives indicate awareness of some potential form of decline or decay of individuals, a de-sophistication of the average end-user, the individual consumer. The subject matters of such views encountered are generally negative and seem to hold bias, often foregoing the dialectical inclusion of the benefits of the related technologies.

Prominent Causes for Concern

As troubled as academic disciplines like social psychology or evolutionary psychology might be in terms of empiricism, correlations and trends nonetheless are apparent. Professionals involved in issues of social concern, mental health, and resilience, often note additional problems enabled by the mass adoption of the internet. One such concern involves how a growing number of younger people are likely to “doomscroll.” Doomscrolling while lounging, eschewing routes of personal growth, is an addictive behavior that is highly self-reinforcing (the “infinite scroll” feature of many sites/apps is known to have initially been engineered to encourage extended, recurrent use). Another concern is self-reported overuse of internet pornography, affecting social relationships and decreasing the drive to form real relationships. A third concern claims young people are more likely to socialize online or through online video games, eschewing “IRL” (In Real Life) connections in favor of their preferred online communities. A decrease in literacy and an increase in forms of bullying are other hallmarks that professionals cite regarding declines. These may parallel the expressed concern of a key factor: a diminishment of critical thought.

There are some startling statistics about the mental health of teens in the affluent connected world regarding attempted suicide that demands attention. The technosphere’s current state affects these figures; online platforms have anonymized voices, enabled bullying, and increased hopelessness, anxiety, and despair. The presence of studies that show some increases in Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among High School Students should cause alarm.

A November 8, 2023 Wall Street Journal article highlights this emergent trend on the front page: Children in Mental-Health Crisis Surge Into Hospital E.R.s.

Focus: Fallout from the Socialized Web

Influencers are a newer social phenomenon catalyzed by mobile versions of social media platforms. Unmoderated and largely unregulated, influencers are feared to sometimes act as negative role models and neo-tribal figureheads, selling their facades, opinions, and ideologies. Another proposed fallout of socializing via web is that “IRL” social skills are underdeveloped, coping skills are undeveloped, resilience is minimized, a normal maturation process is stunted, and positive feedback loops of these concerns exacerbate each other at the level of the individual. The distractions of yet other platforms lend to even more non-productive uses of time, potentially (and very likely) compounding these problems yet further. These are merely the negative effects, however. Digital detoxes, forest bathing, mindfulness, authenticity, living in the moment, and many other commonly-echoed remedies abound.

The conquests that can be found in video games are purported by evolutionary psychologists to satisfy innate primal evolutionary psychological needs. Some studies support this supposition while others refute this underlying supposition. Though slightly dated from 2017, a nautil.us article about Video Games and Primal Needs is an introduction to this line of thought. Gaming can provide players with a sense of victory, accomplishment, and generativity. The senses of belonging and self-esteem can be built or diminished in online gaming communities. The sense of agency or self-determination are easily assignable to a list of gaming’s benefits. Still, these affects are difficult to prove due to subjectivity – the subjective nature of self-reports. The mainstream adoption of gaming over the past two decades also serves as a common distraction – like binge-watching television or doomscrolling upon social media platforms – though the interactive nature of gaming is sometimes judged as being less mind-numbing in sum. Why playing video games can be good for you explains many of the benefits, combating some myths.

The time that could be spent on constructive personal growth (e.g. learning or creating) is sometimes lost to screen time; games and the internet are irrefutably impactful sources that vie for attention spans. The neglect of personal enrichment and the detriments affecting mental health, when or if these occur, is sometimes thought to become more pronounced and noticeable at the level of communities and societies. For the purposes of futurist theory, even mild declines at the level of the individual are hugely impactful when the quality of the lives of billions of people are considered.

The normalization of soft-drug use and over-prescription of drugs can be viewed as another trend of concern. The increase of the identification of mental health concerns (either wholly real or exaggerated by pathologizing everyday life), produce the same current statistical trends. Regarding the over-prescription of drugs, there is a tendency to “slap a bandaid” on mental health concerns with pharmaceutical interventions instead of addressing the root causes via evidence-based treatments. This is particularly true wherever a reductionist “chemical imbalance” model of mental health is championed. Medications are temporary adjuncts to talk therapy, talk therapy can be more effective than pharmaceutical therapy, and talk therapy is generally longer lasting and more curative. The normalization of soft drug use is featured heavily in media, legislation, and extends to major societal concerns like widespread substance abuse, escapism, self-medication, et alia. Increased access, and fewer barriers, to ethical care and harm reduction among responsible parties are counterpoints.

Social Media use is notably associated with the phenomenon of Neo-Tribalism – a term which is sometimes contested and potentially offensive. Massive numbers of young people, who find hope and camaraderie by and through virtualized environments, can be a kind of social life raft that should not be discarded or demonized by default. The book Hivemind, by Sarah Rose Cavanagh Ph.D., is a popular book on the subject. Largely framed in the author’s personal anecdotes, she does not claim outright objectivity and it can serve as a fair primer for the related subject matters. In the industrialized/connected/affluent world, downplaying the benefits of social media could seem careless within some perspectives. These trends, quite plainly, have benefits that are not treated with the same kinds of sensationalism as those which are detriments.

The Japanese culture-bound syndrome Hikikomori, sensationalist yet emblematic and telling of current times, is a barometer in the minds of many. Marked by severe social withdraw, the syndrome is usually noted when people are younger. Nicknamed “hermits,” people labeled or diagnosed as Hikikomori live in a state of severe social withdrawal. Depression, anxiety, a pronounced lack of self-agency, and nihilism often accompany this diagnosis. The cluster of associated symptoms could be an exaggerated reaction to the weights and demands of an honorable and highly-sophisticated culture that prioritizes work, self-sacrifice, prestige, and conservative etiquettes. The Hikikomori diagnosis features more-severe manifestations of the reactions that individuals can have to the trends of their affluent and connected societies. In Japan, access to psychiatry, therapy, and social forms of support (e.g., group therapy, support networks of friends) are sometimes thought to be limited due to cultural stigmas – to the views and perspectives of people who grew up in individualist cultures. Many disorders are unrecognized or left untreated and unseen, or, a communal and caring culture additionally produces people with better average mental wellness. People who suffer from a lower magnitude of any associated constellations of symptoms of a Hikikomori diagnosis or judgement are unlikely to seek help, hypothetically skewing the results of surveys which seek to assess the true numbers of depression, Hikikomori, anxiety, etc. While the true magnitude is unknown, the socially-maintained schemas that are projected upon (or interpreted of) Japan are not conducive to healing.

In the Western affluent/connected world, psychiatry carries less stigma. Latin American cultures tend to carry more stigma, though major exceptions like Argentina (with the some of the highest number of therapists per capita) exist as outliers of progress. The proliferation of a what could almost be viewed as “proto-hikikomori” seems to be an end-result of the proliferation on the internet, smartphones, and social media.

The collective romantic world is similarly affected. For many younger people, being unable to find living-wage jobs in rapidly-urbanizing environments that lack affordable housing is one reason that people go on fewer dates. Fewer people enter long-term committed relationships. Fewer people get married. Fewer married couples have still fewer children. Trends in depopulation coupled with trends of dissatisfaction or malaise are not enough to predict long-term trends in society, yet set the stage whereupon any such forecasts are made.

The decline of “society?”

As evidenced by recent lawsuits implicating the algorithms of Meta products like Facebook and Instagram, school districts and states have felt the presence of mental health and developmental concerns in schools. The lawsuit claims the “safe experiences” purported to be in place are false and misleading. Jaron Lanier’s outspoken work regarding the aspects of human psychology – how addictive user experiences were woven into social media platforms – have thus entered the mainstream media and the cultural zeitgeist. The lawsuit is over 200 pages. An article on decrypt seems like a fair primer on this major 2023 lawsuit addressing social media and youth. If other such lawsuits are to come, it only seems just to regulate or modify other social media platforms as well. The X platform, formerly known as twitter, and TikTok come to mind. TikTok is of the greater interest. More recent shifts in Western governments bring the potential for rapid change to any future and within any hypothetical zeitgeists.

Concerning data gathering, for AI to evolve and function, massive datasets are necessary. Datasets must be large in scale, as seen in the “large-language models” of newsworthy AIs like Alphabet’s Bard or OpenAI’s various iterations of ChatGPT. To have limited datasets is to bottleneck the creation and evolution of any AI. Any general AI will require even more data to be sourced. TikTok’s data-gathering, as reported by 60 Minutes Australia, could happen to carry the guise of advertising and user metrics. Justifiability and intent are a matter of perspective; from what anyone can tell, Meta gathers gobs of user data, too. Over the past 20 years (and more), even the mouse position and keystrokes within the web browsers of end users are known ‘gatherable’ data-points and are easier to analyze for corporations with sufficient resources. Cookies are the small stuff in comparison to modern techniques. This shouldn’t come as a surprise so many years after web 2.0. The purpose of this contrast is a reminder to always wonder “Who is asking, writing, reporting,” and “Why?” All similar questions, like “For what purpose,” or, “For which audience?” are valuable base layers for one’s own critical thought. How else is technology affecting the fabric of societies and the wellbeing of the individual?

“There’s only one instant, and it’s right now. And it’s eternity.”

– Pinball Playing Man, from the film “Waking Life”

When writing of the future or determining if another dark age will occur, the setting must be considered. No matter the setting, the sophistication of society is needed to stem the tides that are feared of the cautiously hopeful. Intelligence, empathy, creativity, love, care, truth, peace, literacy, solidarity, hope, and rational, critical thought seem requisite to enter better futures. These traits are present in humanity. The overall quality of society is the measure of any age, past, present, or future. Have we already entered the next dark age, or are we actively avoiding one by exercising the inherent good in ourselves for our own kind – and our singular home within the cosmos?

A Reflection

This article has been most difficult to write of the six in the series. It seems obvious that futurists would consider present statuses of individuals – they do comprise the fabric of societies – yet linking these to outcomes into the near future is much easier when evidencing population declines in the Western world in the prior article. Mental health concerns, when negatively impactful, clearly affect romance as well as replacement rates of populations. A focus on mental wellness, early interventions, and harm reduction are self-evidently wise in any society. Everything is everything, as the platitude goes: all is connected. It’s arguable that these driving forces will affect the trajectories, as major factors, against a counterpoint – that the state of the average individual is negligibly impactful to massively-big picture of potential futures, mere footnotes in humanity’s yet-to-occur & potentiated histories. Nonetheless, the intrinsic qualities of the definition of a society are the clearest measures of a dark age. Hope must be encouraged to abound – in addition the conclusions that anyone might choose to draw.