this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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Yeah, I am a millennial, 39 this year, and my dad is far more addicted to his computer than I am, I even work in IT.
He used to sell railroad safety systems (and was a brilliant sales person who actually knew and still knows the technical details of the system)
You and me are pretty similar ages.
I do have some Gen X friends who I think are not doing much better.
I wonder it being a “digital native” gives some level of defense against this kind of stuff versus people who were born when information was newspapers, radio, and the TV news one hour out of the day.
Yeah, have family who 80% of their retired day is sitting in the lazy boy with an iPad locked on Facebook in one hand and cable news on the tv. We’re in Canada, but it’s a lot of CNN.
And it’s not just my family, lot of friends have the same.
It’s a Skinner box. We need to ban these companies, but the government doesn’t have the spine to ban the obvious foreign interference.
Part of the problem here is that too many people live to work, instead of the other way around. Once they retire, they have no idea what to do with themselves and take the least-effort path to occupy their time. Which makes them perfect targets for the addictive aspects of social media.
Maybe what we need to do is flood Facebook and Instagram and all the rest with material about the rewards of volunteering for charity.
(Sometimes I'm almost thankful my mother is a technophobe.)
The problem is that their only connection to the world is electronic. The generation before would go to bridge clubs and the VA. They just talk to some Russian disinformation bot on facebook and it takes the place of socializing.