This is really a monumental societal change.
3rd spaces are nearly completely destroyed, and online seems to be the main option for ppl now.
This is really a monumental societal change.
3rd spaces are nearly completely destroyed, and online seems to be the main option for ppl now.
I sometimes wonder if its even possible to have any healthy online social network. We can try to build in things to make social media less addictive, and try to use less of the psychologically damaging things capitalist software companies build in… but at the end of the day an online group of friends can never sub for a real one.
Making things less addictive helps.
I also recall someone once saying that privacy isn’t about maintaining secrecy around one’s inner life, but rather the capacity to regulate or control how one shares it.
Feeling a lack of control over privacy makes lots of people cagey about opening up to others, and that’s a killer for intimacy and trust. Some of the problem is tech that doesn’t respect privacy, but the prevalence of such tech has also changed culture, and so one has to be more cautious with people who have been trained by their tools that privacy isn’t to be respected.
That is true, a combination of both I think is the best. But, under Capitalism, the IRL experience is getting progressively worse and worse so people go into the Internet to escape that hell.