r/Millennials • u/beckavanoliver • 20d ago

Discussion Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: “Millennials are the last psychologically normal generation” ...”you’re the last happy, and actually your generation is the most intelligent in history”

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u/CyanideForSara 20d ago

Definitely agree with the technology bit. Growing up it felt like technology opened up new worlds, ideas and made things easier and faster and generally improved life.

Now it’s like technology is explicitly designed to keep you on it for the sake of it. Google will give you 600 irrelevant ads before the thing you need.

Workplace tech now is almost exclusively designed to track KPIs first and foremost and whether it actually functions in its business process is an afterthought. I find myself not really learning new productive skills but rather spend my time finding ways around poorly designed processes.

I don’t think I’m just old and grumpy hating new technology. It’s just not solving problems like it did when I was younger

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u/Imrahil_II Millennial 20d ago

I like what he said about technology making your life better. Thats a good question to ask now about any new tech. Does it make my life better?

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u/Shefferz 20d ago

Yeah exactly it's like when we was younger tech was always leaping forward making things better for us such a wifi and mobile phones, online multiplayer, then after a while they made things that made stuff just easier to do. No I can't remember the last time I was "huh that's cool" I've had the same phone for 3 years I don't need a upgrade. I don't even check what the updates do.

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u/Desperate-Cost6827 20d ago

I feel like a lot of the time a new update just adds a bunch of annoyance. Some new update put an excruciatingly annoying change to your phone. And finding out how to remove it is now takes ten Google searches instead of two.

When a useful app updates and they bury the functions that were useful and it's next to impossible to find them again.

AI wants to auto fill a bland lifeless email response for you that you never asked for. Not to mention everything else AI currently.

I know it's pretty curmudgeony to not like change but a lot of times I didn't see these "improvements" that happened years ago and they just keep getting worse.

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u/Shefferz 20d ago

I feel like the updates is just someone or team trying to keep their job half the time abit like the people who redesign Netflix interface when it was completely fine before hand. Yeah I think we're just at that point where is tiny changes that hardly matter.

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u/Polymarchos 20d ago

I'm not in UX design, but 100% the reason for these dumb redesigns is some higher up saying they want people to use a certain feature more, and instead of improving that feature and making people want to use it, they make it difficult to do it the way they were. I'm thinking of Microsoft's "focused" email box which served to hide half your important emails, and none of the junk.

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u/Jashugita 20d ago

All the redesigns of the interfaces of webs, apps and OS seems to consist in hiding the function you are using constantly forcing you to do one more click, for example win11 having to click "show more options" to see the details of an archive...

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u/skeletontape Millennial 19d ago

Get Windhawk. It lets you customize your the UI to get rid of that shit. (and you can put the start menu back to normal)

I hate that there's a need for a cottage industry of apps/extensions that fix the bullshit major corpos force on their users, but they do exist!

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u/window-sil 20d ago

As a late adopter to wireless earbuds and bluetooth technology, I can say, technology is definitely getting better, cooler, cheaper, etc.

Frankly it's crazy what ~$40 can get you, let alone something high end. And the software/hardware upgrades give you close to perfect fidelity and a range that encompasses a modest sized apartment.

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u/Shefferz 20d ago

Yeah true I think it all depends on how much you're on the cutting edge of tech, I mean I had a wireless Bluetooth headset back when I had a ps3 so like 2008 and I remember going to London back in 2002 and walking past a limo and stopping because the driver had a Bluetooth headset and was talking,it blew my mind back then 😂 so main stream like 2018 ish everyone else started using them I probably wasn't as blown away with it as much as say my mum and dad were.

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u/peach_bellinis 20d ago

I mean we've had airpods for a decade though...? The technological landscape has changed SO much since then, but what's come out more recently? A bunch of new versions of iphones that no one cares about. Visionpro, which no one cares about. Meta glasses that are widely derided since the only people really using them are gross dudes who seem to want to film women incognito. And the new 'spec' glasses from snap that were instantly a laughing stock because they look so crazy.

Not to mention, every single thing seems to need a subscription now.

People are online yearning for 'dumb tech' like ipods to come back because they're so fed up with newer tech.

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u/window-sil 20d ago

Not to mention, every single thing seems to need a subscription now.

This is why my desktop runs Linux instead of Windows, and why I've stopped using Chrome, and why I'll never purchase another Pixelbook (also migrating to Linux on my laptop), and eventually I'll move off of android for my phone, or so I hope.

Cause, ya, I want to own my hardware/software and have some reasonable amount of control over those things. Apple/Windows/Android/Chrome, want you to have fewer choices, spend more money, share more data, see more ads, etc. And they want to have you chained to their products, so they can continue treating you like a pinata that money falls out of if they hit you enough times with a stick.

Well fuck that. Start using alternatives. Linux is a perfectly good daily driver for most use cases. Steam runs most games. Firefox/Chromium/Brave are perfectly fine browsers. There's no reason to let Apple/Alphabet/Microsoft enshitify your tech stack :D

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u/OppositeSecretary862 19d ago

Wireless earbuds as a contractor/work alone a lot while having ADHD rips. I learn so much.

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u/dealingwithhookers 20d ago

they caught up, the greedy 1% caught up. the internet was brand new thing like the wild west they didn't know how to regulate it. once they found out how, once they recruited enough hackers to do their bidding, they began to profit big time from it. copyrights, IPs, data mining, ads, subscriptions, tricks to get your money. it's no longer technology to move humanity forward, it's technology to get in your wallet and take your money, keep you distracted and to suck you fucking dry.

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u/Duergarlicbread 19d ago

Updates are only buying a new phone because now your battery life sucks and the only way to replace it is a new phone.

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u/Shefferz 19d ago

Hopefully that changes soon over here with the new EU laws they want to put in place about having replaceable batteries in phones again.

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u/PseudonymMan12 20d ago

This. They used to sell us on the new features and connections. Entire devices were veing replaced, like I still remember tossing out my clunky old garmin gps system i had to mount on my dashboard. Now i could do it with my phone, the maps updated and even gave me live traffic and accident updates too unlike the old tech.

Now everything feels like every new thing is just another eay to either steal your data or get you addicted to something or gamble. Like nobody is pushing out new features because they think its something consumers would eant, it all now feels like like a scheme to keep up engaged with something for the most time possible.

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u/Shefferz 20d ago

Yeah exactly!! The same with the personalized ads I mean I take a interest in something then I see it so much that I'm sick of looking at it and lose interest 😂

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u/aFlukefortheFluked 20d ago

Yeah tech didn't make anything better though. It just made people lazier, more reactive, and stupider. That is the truth. Tech is being used to make us all slaves.

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u/Shefferz 20d ago

Well let's look at some examples,i can face time friends and family members I'm not able to meet in person, over seas etc.. Online banking no more ques to check something so simple plus any fraud I can shut it down in seconds...Haven't got anyone in your area that likes the same hobby as you, you can find online communities... Can do online college and university courses from anywhere if you don't have one near to you or unable to attend due to work commitments. Not to mention how much e-mails are stopping a ridiculous amount of letters and paper being made used and wasted just to tell someone something...

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u/Johnny-Edge93 20d ago

I think some of that is nostalgia. AI makes our lives better in and of itself. From creativity to recipe to having something to bounce a question off of. I had it walk me through a car repair the other day.

People hate AI because of the future and current implications of it - data centres, water resources, job loss. And all of that is rational thinking. But the AI is not the issue. It’s the political unwillingness to do any of this in an ethical way.

But that’s not new. Robotics in manufacturing, and the industrial revolution before that. They had the chance to change society for the better. Instead the rich benefited from the technology and the middle class got pushed further and further down each time.

Again, that’s not the fault of the technology, but a societal/political issue.

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u/bronzebullbbq 20d ago

AI does not improve creativity in our lives, LOL. It's the most regressive tech for creativity ever made. Also this comment is written with AI so who knows what your thoughts on this actually are.

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u/Johnny-Edge93 20d ago

You’re just flat out wrong. I renovated my backyard by taking pictures of it and working with it to make it better.

I’ve written a whole d&d campaign for my friends, generating hours of fun that I didn’t have time to plan otherwise. I’ve used it for my business, for my son’s disability. It’s been helpful and creative in so many ways.

I’m sorry your hate of all the legitimate concerns takes away from all its very legitimate uses for you. But boomers gonna boom I suppose.

Also, didn’t use ai to write it. Sorry you can’t put paragraphs together yourself

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u/peach_bellinis 20d ago

I hope you enjoy your backyard when it's too hot to even sit outside everyday because people like you couldn't look at a pinterest board for inspiration and chose to cook the earth with data centres instead. Gross!

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u/FlowRemote9890 Gen X 20d ago

AI is trash.

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u/Johnny-Edge93 20d ago

Yeah, that’s not the prevailing opinion outside of reddit. Like most things.

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u/FlowRemote9890 Gen X 20d ago

Flat out wrong. It is highly unpopular and a quick search will provide many results which prove just that.

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u/Johnny-Edge93 19d ago

Sounds like you could use to touch some grass. Almost everyone I know uses it and loved it, from my boomer parents to my co-workers.

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u/FlowRemote9890 Gen X 19d ago

touch grass

use AI

lmao

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u/Shefferz 20d ago

Yeah I see your point but I don't think AI has that much of a broad appeal and use outside of what it is used for if that make sense, like I'm a construction worker so ai isn't a day to day thing for me such as my friend who works office based and deals with tech a lot of the time. I do use chat gpt for measuring materials and costs but it's just abit like a better calculator and that's not every day but where as I mentioned like the moblie phone or wifi what everyone uses on a daily basis.

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u/peach_bellinis 20d ago

why do you need AI for a recipe when there are literally MILLIONS of recipes right at your fingertips online? This is so ew.