Is Social Media Making Us Stupid?

[Sedalia Dave]

Thought provoking and very interesting reads.

 

Is Social Media Making Us Stupid?

 

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

 

The Man Who Built The Retweet: “We Handed A Loaded Weapon To 4-Year-Olds”

[Subdeacon Joe]

I think it was in the book and PBS series "The Story of English" someone said that the printing press took away our memories.  Before books became inexpensive enough for everyone to have them just about everyone could easily memorize things. 
Computers have taken away, to some extent, our ability to think things through, and we have lost the idea of process.  What do you mean you can't build it?  The computer model says it will work!  

Then came Twitter and so many people can't grasp what can't be said in 140 characters.

[Rye Miles #13621]

You can also say the internet is helping us. It’s a wealth of knowledge and we don’t need Encyclopedias anymore. You can look up just about anything you want. 

[Texas Joker]

Humans by themselves are brilliant innovative problem solvers capable of critical thought.

 

In a group they are limited in intelligence to the dumbest one there. 

 

Social media just exposed the stupid of the group. 

 

Remember that if you are of average intelligence HALF of the population is less intelligent than you.

[Subdeacon Joe]

1 hour ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

You can also say the internet is helping us. It’s a wealth of knowledge and we don’t need Encyclopedias anymore. You can look up just about anything you want. 

 

It makes more information available to more people.  That information is very often a gloss or summary.  We saw that in encyclopedia over the decades.  In the original Encyclopedia Britannica, and even in a 1912 Britannica, say you looked up "Ship."  It told you enough to build at least a small wooden sailing ship.  Look up "Shoes" and you got enough information to make shoes of a sort.  I say "of a sort" because I suspect that the first few tries at it would be pretty crude.

 

[Rye Miles #13621]

1 hour ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

You can also say the internet is helping us. It’s a wealth of knowledge and we don’t need Encyclopedias anymore. You can look up just about anything you want. 

Social media is what you make of it. I keep in contact with friends and relatives and lots of different groups on Facebook and Instagram including SASS, The NRA, Colt, S&W etc. How does that make someone less intelligent. I think the guy that wrote the article isn't very intelligent. 

[Subdeacon Joe]

3 minutes ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Social media is what you make of it. I keep in contact with friends and relatives and lots of different groups on Facebook and Instagram including SASS, The NRA, Colt, S&W etc. How does that make someone less intelligent. I think the guy that wrote the article isn't very intelligent. 

 

 

Thinking and reasoning are like any other skills, the more you practice them, the better, in general, you get at them.  If all you do is read a truncated version, or an opinion piece, and don't compare it with others, or don't try to trace it back to the source, your aren't really thinking.   I  don't know how many dozens of things that sound as if they are correct, when I tried to find the source, all came back to one satire site.  But every piece I read sounded reasonable.  

The flip side of that is that you can also trace things that you say to yourself, "No, that person can't be stupid enough to have said that!" and manage to find a video from several sources catching the person making that stupid comment.

[Chantry]

Social media just makes the stupidity far more apparent.  Pre internet, if you did something stupid, about the only people who knew about were your immediate circle of friends and/or family.  Now when you do/say something stupid online millions of people can see it.

 

As to memory, we don't "need" to remember, we can use our smartphones to "remember" things with.  I also think there is far more information out there and many people are suffering from information overload,

[Subdeacon Joe]

I was just going through my FB and I found a perfect example of the uncritical passing on of stuff.  The history of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  The tragic, but heartwarming story of a man with a young child, a wife who dies from cancer in December, and  is heavily in debt who writes a story for his daughter, springs the story on his employer (Montgomery Ward), who buys the rights to it, he gets out of debt, a few years later MW gifts the rights back to him, he becomes wealthy.  

Well, he did work as a copy writer for MW and his wife did die of cancer, but in July, not December.  MW had been buying and giving out coloring books as an incentive, but was finding it expensive, so they decided to come up with a Christmas book and publish it in house to cut costs He was given the task of writing a Christmas story and used his daughter as a test for it.  

But the tug at the heart strings version will be taken as truth and passed on.  Often I'll pass on stories like that, most often a story of a heroic deed or great philanthropy,  without checking, but usually include an introduction like, "I didn't check this.  I don't know if it's true or not.  But it ought to be."

[Dusty Devil Dale]

Does anybody ever take wrong information off of the Internet?

[Pat Riot]

I remember my Mom & Dad calling the TV “the idiot box”. They would say things like “It’ll rot your brain”, “it’ll make you stupid.”

 

I recall my Mom telling me that her mother said similar things to her about the radio. 
 

I think the internet is the TV and Radio of old only now EVERYONE can show off their intelligence or lack there of because the communication is not only two-way, it’s multi-way. 

[Chantry]

1 hour ago, Dusty Devil Dale said:

Does anybody ever take wrong information off of the Internet?

I think we all do at one point or another, that's one of the downsides of the internet.  There is a lot of bad information out there, especially information related to politics.  Some of it is intentional, some of it is unintentional and some of it is designed to get people to click on a website.  Lots of people, websites and social media platforms trying to sell outrage these days.

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

Social media is in many respects, a global gossip fence. 
 

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on.”  - Winston Churchill 

[Rye Miles #13621]

Yet here we are on the internet!!!

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

2 hours ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Yet here we are on the internet!!!

 

 .......... so, ...... in answer to the original question ........ YES, ........... with a very few exceptions .........

 

[Rye Miles #13621]

20 minutes ago, Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 said:

 

 .......... so, ...... in answer to the original question ........ YES, ........... with a very few exceptions .........

 

So we're all stupid here? 

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

Just now, Rye Miles #13621 said:

So we're all stupid here? 

 

 .... please note that I did allow for some exceptions ......... 

 

 (the words "social media" do not include "SASS Wire" in my interpretation)

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

I think , therefore 

 

  I DRINK , some times to excess 

 

   CB 

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

On 11/21/2022 at 2:52 AM, Rye Miles #13621 said:

You can also say the internet is helping us. It’s a wealth of knowledge and we don’t need Encyclopedias anymore. You can look up just about anything you want. 

 

Right. But 'social media' is a subset of the internet as a whole. I have met several people in person around the world that I never would have without the internet. One of the first things I did when I got an internet connection at the office in 1999 (I alread had 7 grandkids when the internet came to the masses), was enter the name of a little-known author of whom I was a great fan. I had no idea whether or not he was still alive (he was born in 1916). Seven months later, I was having dinner with him in Oakland. 

 

I've had other similar experiences. But I don't go anywhere near 'social media'. (I don't regard moderated dedicated websites like the SASS Saloon as 'social media'.) Never have. Everybody whose ravings used to be confined to family or the diner or bar down the street now gets to share their useless opinions with the whole world.....with bad effects on family and society as a whole.

[Utah Bob #35998]

Nothing can “make” you stupid.

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

10 minutes ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Nothing can “make” you stupid.

 

I've seen emotion do it. I've seen perceived threat to some interest do it. And I've seen love do it, too!

[Dusty Devil Dale]

On 11/21/2022 at 2:34 PM, Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001 said:

I think , therefore 

 

  I DRINK , some times to excess 

 

   CB 

You refer to the thinking part, right?

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

1 hour ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Nothing can “make” you stupid.

 

1 hour ago, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

 

I've seen emotion do it. I've seen perceived threat to some interest do it. And I've seen love do it, too!

I think that it just lets the stupid out. 

[Black Angus McPherson]

18 hours ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Nothing can “make” you stupid.

 

Years of dealing with drunks started me referring to beer as "stupid in a bottle".  

 

Angus

[PowderRiverCowboy]

Without a doubt maybe not so much stupid but lazy I will ask rather then ohh I will look for myself , Too many rely of a post of Fakebook rather than just calling ,or looking themselves 

[Kid Rich]

Laws protecting stupid people certainly lowers the average IQ.

kR

[Subdeacon Joe]

On 11/22/2022 at 7:23 PM, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Nothing can “make” you stupid.

 

Individuals, no.  But for society as a whole I think you could make a decent argument for it.  Some of it also depends on how you define is ...um...stupid.

[Buckshot Bob]

On 11/22/2022 at 10:23 PM, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Nothing can “make” you stupid.

Maybe alcohol in excess  beer goggles 

[Buckshot Bob]

I think the internet is a plus , the amount of information that’s easily available is amazing. No matter the time we’ve always had to sort the bs from the truth. Every time that technology has advanced and propaganda has got easier to spread people have said it will be the end of us. The things that are being said now were also said about the printing press, radio and TV . 

[Capt. James H. Callahan]

On 11/22/2022 at 9:35 PM, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

 

I've seen emotion do it. I've seen perceived threat to some interest do it. And I've seen love do it, too!

Love (or what I thought was love) made me do more stupid stuff than I care to recall!

JHC

[Utah Bob #35998]

6 hours ago, Buckshot Bob said:

Maybe alcohol in excess  beer goggles 

Makes you foolish. There’s a difference.

[Buckshot Bob]

18 hours ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Makes you foolish. There’s a difference.

Well then the decision to drink must be the stupid part. It’s got to start somewhere 

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

 

Social Media and the Internet aren't necessarily the same thing.  Social Media is simply "carried" by the internet.  Social Media is the Bane of Modern Society. 

[Rye Miles #13621]

14 minutes ago, Colorado Coffinmaker said:

 

Social Media and the Internet aren't necessarily the same thing.  Social Media is simply "carried" by the internet.  Social Media is the Bane of Modern Society. 

I totally disagree, I keep in contact with friends and relatives on various platforms, Facebook etc. I only "FOLLOW" what interest me like SASS, (Yes they're on Facebook and so are many local clubs, (Tusco, Sandusky, to name a few) all kinds of Gun groups etc. It's all about who and what you follow and what you respond to!

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

Ah well.  So now we have this tiny little segment of Society using social media for it's intent.  Then we have the Bazillion kids bashing one another.  And the politicians bashing everything, and the wacko's and ........