Social media divides us, makes us more extreme and less empathetic, it riles us up or sucks us into doom scrolling, making us stressed and depressed. It feels like we need to touch grass and escape to the real world.

New research shows that we might have largely misinterpreted why this is the case. It turns out that the social media internet may uniquely undermine the way our brains work but not in the way you think.

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  • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
    3·
    1 year ago

    Right, but if the person I was talking originally to had said “I’m not from the US so I know nothing about it” it woulda been fine and I would have immediately apologized and we’d go from there. Having a nice chat.

    That’s not what happened. Someone new chimed in with a pretty rude non-sequitur in the vein of ‘stupid Americans’. I don’t think I was particularly defensive or angry, but maybe it came off that way.

    • flora_explora@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      The phrasing of “more civilised places” in the comment you mention seems highly problematic to me, yes. I think the “stupid Americans” is your biased interpretation though.

      Oh, btw I wouldn’t call people from the USA “Americans”, because it is just one of many countries in the Americas. Another blind spot in the US perspective.

        • flora_explora@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Oh, OK. Yeah, I understand now why the other person got defensive. I obviously also get your anger at US people. But why would you then throw “civilised people” around? Imo this reinforces colonialist viewpoints of civilised vs uncivilised people.

          ETA: oh wow, scrolling through your recent posts you seem to have a lot of oppressive and conservative opinions.

          • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Wouldn’t describe them as oppressive, I’m just a constitutional monarchist and I recently started a flame war over why I don’t think religion should be destroyed lmao.

            Also the white Europeans living in America are colonialists and those are the ones I am referring to as uncivilised, not indigenous. So I apologise if you thought that I was referring to indigenous people.