[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by EE-BO

A good question. The older I get, the more I resist the urge to talk about "the good old days" because I see that the state of life of each generation is so very different, with the differences becoming greater as technological advances accelerate. And for all the new perils that arise, there are also great advantages.

When I was growing up, the Apple IIe and Atari 5200 were the rage at a time when I was old enough to be able to play video games or use computers.

And back then, there were plenty of kids who played sports and avoided computers, and also plenty of kids who thrived on the arcades or on early versions of home video games.

But the majority fell somewhere in the middle- doing some of both.

I suspect there has always been a large segment of the population who are socially challenged, but in the internet age they are a lot more visible.

20 years ago- even 15 years ago- places like GreekChat did not exist. There was no completely democratic form of instant communication available to virtually everyone and visible by so many people.

And to make matters worse, a great many of the people who spend a LOT of time on the internet are those socially inept people. Those with full and rewarding lives are not going to spend hours a day on the internet.

There is the media to consider as well. Now that we have several 24 hour news stations making news into a profit business instead of a public service, we hear about all these really extreme stories.

In the wake of Columbine, there were several articles published showing that statistically speaking school shootings have been at a fairly constant level since the late 1800s.

But with all the media exposure now- Columbine became a story that was played up to create the illusion that school shootings were a new and dangerous phenomenon. Granted Columbine itself was an unusually grave situation, but that is not the same as using it to create the notion it was a sign of disaster in the newest generation of school children instead of just another isolated incident that is part of life.

My grandfather- a veteran of WWII and Korea- told me there were PLENTY of draft dodgers and drug addicts in those wars. But the media access to battlefields was different then and the wars were not as controversial as Vietnam- and so while there was certainly a more centralized effort to dodge the draft with Vietnam, the image of Vietnam compared to other wars regarding these issues is also more than a little skewed.

Long story short- I think technology just makes us more aware of the world at large, and a profit-driven media is going to bring us the most sensational and off the wall stories there are. And they are also going to invite political advocates and think-tank employees to talk about those incidents and portray them as signs of a negative trend in order to drum up support for political agendas.

This is why I pretty much only watch CNBC during market trading hours and sometimes Lou Dobbs after that. Even those broadcasts are tainted, but the rest are largely designed to inspire anger and emotion that is just not helpful or accurate.

You know it's sad when some of us havent hit 45 and we are already referring it to 'the good old days'


before I pop off anbother long assed post...pop over to the Alicia Keys thread....part of what you said is echod in that.