How would your life look like if you were part of the current generation alpha?

[noname223]

I think the circumstances for the youth becomes worse and worse. I am quite happy I didn't have social media as teenager. I was pretty late with getting a smartphone. My TV raised me.

I don't know how my life looked life if I was born 10 years later. Maybe my parents would have been a little bit more sensitized when it comes to physical abuse.

I think my life would have been even worse. Bullying would have been even more traumatizing with deep fake and class chatgroups. My parents were both right-wingers when I was a teenager. I fear I might would have become an AfD voter. And with the extreme polarization my friends would not have wanted to become friends with me because of that.

I am glad I didn't grow up with AI chatbots. I think it helped me a lot to study hard as teenager. It taught me lessons about life and I had something to look forward to. Actually I was pretty disappointed how my life turned out. But a teenager needs dreams. And with AI aspirations might spiral. I can understand where people are coming from when they think AI is suprior in literally everything. Personally, I see AI more as a tool that has to be used in the right way. However, I cannot work and I don't fear that AI will take my job.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Definitely worse. I'm also glad I didn't grow up with the internet and social media. I was in my early 20's when I began to use it. Bullying was bad enough in real life. If it had continued online, there would have been nowhere to hide.

I'm grateful I didn't have the distraction of things like YouTube too. I end up wasting so much time these days.

Plus- while computers have always been a threat to the creative industry I always wanted to work in- it's nothing like now. I feel hugely sorry for youngsters born into this.

We hardly ever heard things about the environment too- in my youth. All our rubbish went in one bin. I just think it's got to be so bizarre for children born now. At what age do they become aware that they are living in a world that is effectively dying because of us? Plus- that they are the generation that needs to fix it! What a burden to put on someone.

What's so strange is what we were content with too. Sometimes, I buy retro games and I'm amazed at what used to hold our attention. How tedious they were!

I watched an interesting documentary clip on YouTube once about how- even through games- Generation X were taught patience. By being sent back to the beginning when we died in a game, we (apparently) learnt the value of working on learning skills.

I also think there's something weirdly valuable about not having everything on hand. We had to visit the library for books and research. We only had 4 channels of TV to watch. We had to wait for our favourite shows to be on.

While it's incredible now- to be able to get pretty much anything we want instantly, it means it isn't so special. Plus- I think it screws with our attention span. I rarely just focus on watching a movie now. I'm messing about on my phone at the same time. Our minds are all over the place. I expect- growing up like that, the effect is even worse. I'm sure that our modern, fast paced lifestyles are why so many are suffering with things like ADHD.

Life's still shit for me but, I think it would be even worse- had I been born later.

 

[gottagorightnow]

Way worse. I saw a social media post about a mom whose kid had to budget out their dream job in their dream place to live and even though the kids dream job was a trauma surgeon, it was literally impossible. I can't imagine a childhood of knowing that whatever you want to do will be next to impossible and unless your family has generational wealth you're completely screwed

 

[Pluto]

 

[ghost-shock]

I think the fear mongering is exaggerated. They do it for every single generation, you probably don't remember it for your generation because you were a child. We had the beginning of social media as teens, so it is not exactly the same, but most people live average lives. Humans catastrophize so much in their minds, it is like we always imagine the worst case scenario, even though most people are not living like that. I remember adults doing the same thing for my generation, they had this over the top image of what the online world was like, when as kids we were just busy trying to get through the next day. I wonder if people think about this due to boredom, because i have too much to worry about to spend time worrying about what some random kids in the younger generation are doing or maybe its a bit of biology since humans naturally think of the negative easier.