this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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51
"Learned Helplessness" & the Tech Literacy Crisis | Internet Analysis by TiffanyFerg [25:54] (www.youtube.com)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

This is just a hypothesis, but I believe that one of the roots of the problem is a lower ability to retrieve information, caused by increased exposure to advertisement.

Regardless of the above, the problem is actually a big deal, once you consider things like meta-information (such as truth value and reliability of a claim) being also information; so if people don't get info on their own, it's easy to misinform them. So it isn't the muppet failing to see "this is a Lebbit story" and screeching at the "actress" of that video, it's also a similar muppet saying shit like "ivermectin cures covid" or "jet fuel is making the frogs gay".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is just a hypothesis, but I believe that one of the roots of the problem is a lower ability to retrieve information, caused by increased exposure to advertisement.

I'm not sure I follow where you're coming from here. Is the idea that over-exposure to advertisement is processed the same as being provided general information, reducing people's inclination to seek out information independently, despite the fact that advertising is only the provision of specific, narrow information?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think that we have a limited ability to process (absorb, analyse, retrieve what's meaningful, discard what's meaningless) information as a whole, that is used to process both general and narrow info. And, when we go considerably past our limits to process info, our brains start taking "shortcuts" to process the info that we're exposed to, such as:

  • simplifying meta-info, such as the truth value of the info
  • some types of fallacious thinking
  • disregarding bits of info that are highly visible, because they are not central or expected
  • using the "default" way to obtain new, relevant info (asking it), even when other means would be desirable

And that some things demand quite a bit of that "processing info" ability; for example

  • Discarding meaningless info, specially when associated with a stronger and/or repetitive stimulus
  • Look for missing bits of info on what's said, as the unspoken consequences of what you're being told to do.

That's advertisement in a nutshell - people telling you what you should do, without telling you all things that you need to know, in a flashy and repetitive way. And it applies specially well to online advertisement.

It wouldn't be just advertisement doing it, mind you; but I do think that advertisement plays a huge role.

If the reasoning above is correct, this should be affecting all of us, not just GenZ and GenΑ. And we could even hypothesise if it's affecting them more than GenX and GenY, as well as why:

  • perhaps GenZ+Α are more exposed to advertisement than GenX+Y?
  • perhaps it affects them the most because the way that you process info depends mostly on childhood+adolescence, so GenX+Y never had the chance to ingrain those "shortcuts" to begin with?

Just my two cents, mind you. I wouldn't be surprised if all the above was false; I still felt that it was worth sharing. [Sorry for the long reply.]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Thanks for elaborating!

I think I better see what you meant now. Potential degradations in processing ability possibly from a combination of cognitive overload and exhaustion from the volumes of information encountered, both of which may be more frequently reached from a mixture of a lack of self-regulation, not knowing & exceeding one's limits, and inadequate education and practice regarding the former two alongside reasoning abilities to more effectively navigate info without as often being overloaded/exhausted.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thought this was interesting coverage of a mix of different issues from inattentiveness, prompt resignation at slight effort, and tech and media illiteracy. It's difficult to determine what all the contributors to these behaviors are across different age demographics, as you see it both with the young and the old in different forms.

There's a sort of expectation from some of both to operate software more like simple machinery (appliances, more than applications) where you tap or click the buttons and it promptly and predictably responds (ideally), and when it doesn't...To simply give up and try to find a different app that works as desired, or a person to help them.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

On a very narrow section, for me, I’ve gotten really tired of crappy interfaces. Zero logic in how they are designed. No ability for the end user to use logic to figure out how to use it. Just blindly hit a bunch of keys and hope you get the result you want. Then memorize how you got there.

It just pisses me off.

I’m at the point where it works right and works logically or I’ll toss it/return it and find something that does work.

I used to the guy that people would ask, how does this work. Now I literally can’t figure it out most times without a ton of research.

Like I said, once I got to that point,, I just said screw it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, some interfaces have somehow contorted themselves to being utterly inaccessible in efforts to be maximally accessible.

Whether that's removing any immediately visible buttons whatsoever, only displaying vague icons (with no text labels) only to be seen in that software, or weirdly expecting a certain degree of old/new tech familiarity that may be too old for younger people or too new to make sense for many to be that familiar with yet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

On desktop/laptop computers I call it "appifying", a great example is Firefox, it used a classic customizable UI up untill version 29 when it launched a major redesign called Australis, making Firefox look like chrome, removing a LOT of cool and useful features, I hated it soo much I switched to a fork called Pale Moon, and only switched back to Firefox when they launched the Photon redesign a few years later.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I get what she's saying but I also think that a conversational format is in a lot of ways superior for communicating information. When something isn't explained initially, someone asks about it and then an answer to that question is provided, something about that is often just easier to read and absorb than having a longer and more comprehensive initial explanation IMO.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

@ElectroVagrant See also ~> help vampires https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=help+vampires