Maybe we’ll be explained as the era of self-idolisation or the age of materialism. Browsing through the archives of Facebook and Instagram would certainly support that.
I think aliens would be confused by our treatment of each other purely on silly things like sex and skin colour. They might wonder at how such a supposedly superior species could most value people based on their celebrity, measured by clicks and emojis, rather than revering those who leave an actual physical real-life impact on anything.
Throughout history, the types of people who gained fame have evolved, or perhaps in more recent times devolved.
In ancient times, religious and spiritual leaders like Jesus of Nazareth, Lord Buddha and Muhammad were most revered. Philosophers such as Socrates, Confucius and Aristotle also gained massive followings.
During the medieval and early modern periods, political and military leaders, including kings and conquerors, were worshipped. Explorers like Christopher Columbus were great heroes for their discoveries.
The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution shifted fame towards intellectuals and scientists like Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, as well as influential writers like William Shakespeare. In the 20th century, political leaders like Winston Churchill and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King jun gained fame for their significant contributions to society.
Today, fame can come from all those corners but most concerningly it can come from "influencers", whose contribution to society can be as trivial as being a rich socialite, makeup tutorial artist, or angry misogynistic podcaster. I wouldn’t call this progress: would you?
Popular culture has dumbed us down and it’s taken our eyes off what really matters. Maybe that’s what our era will be remembered for. In museums in 2000 years, like the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, there will be human skeletons with skulls that are noticeably smaller, demonstrating when human brains started shrinking because of social media programming.
If this article sounds a bit more negative than my usual attempts to be unfailingly optimistic, it’s because I am frankly peeved.
My husband Alex and I listened to the hype about Netflix’s latest drama. We watched Adolescence in the weekend.
For teenagers, social media is their reality. Thanks to that series poor Fin will now have to wait till he’s at least 21 to have a cellphone. Will that make him a weirdo at school? Yes. Will he get picked on while he’s at school? Yes. Can kids follow him home via his device and get in his head and torment him 24/7? No.
I mean can you imagine being a kid right now? I hated high school as it was. It was fraught with insecurity, cattiness and so much awkwardness. We weren’t any better than what kids are these days.
Girls could be vicious cows and boys could be filthy jocks back in my day too. We just couldn’t torment each other in real-time all the time back then. But stupid, thoughtless and seemingly heartless things were said on school grounds all the time.
We all know teenagers go through massive hormonal changes and their brains go absolutely crazy.
Teenage brains are not developed enough to fully comprehend the repercussions of what they’re doing. They think they’re adults, but they’re not. Yet we’ve allowed them to enter an adult world of social media, one they’re clearly not equipped for and they fail to distinguish fantasy from reality. They simply can’t regulate.
It’s a medical fact that their frontal lobes, which control judgement, reasoning, planning, organisation and thinking of consequences, don’t fully develop until they’re around 21.
Research monitoring a group of adolescents on social media for three years revealed those in the social media group vs the no-social media group had structural changes to the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the area of the brain responsible for judgement, reasoning and rewards.
So parents, we need to be our kids’ frontal lobe as they navigate the world of social media and help them exercise good judgement.
What if we thought of it as a drug? I remember when I was a teenager I didn’t really like smoking weed, because the fears had been put up me that weed under 18 is clinically proven to stunt brain development.
If we can actually prove to kids and parents that social media is making them clinically less equipped to succeed in real life, will that help do the trick?
• Sarah Ramsay is chief executive of United Machinists.
