The Kids Aren't Alright: The Internet has Taken over Culture
It’s hard to explain internet culture to people who haven't experienced it. The entire premise of trying to explain a meme to our parents’ generation is an experience so universal that it's become a meme itself. Even the phrase “meme” is an outdated one. Merriam-Webster defines a meme as “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online, especially through social media,” but at this point in culture, only half of the content we’re consuming online can be classified as such. Yes, we’re looking at things that make us laugh, but we’re also looking at things that make us feel sad, affirmed, hopeful, overwhelmed, connected or angry. Now, we don't only get our humor hand-delivered through the internet, but we can be made to feel any emotion.
Of course, the dilemma of explaining internet culture to people outside of it is rapidly becoming irrelevant, as each successive generation is only becoming more and more immersed in the online world. When I was in elementary school the iPad was just released, but some elementary kids now are issued individual rental iPads through their school to do homework on. I was forced to listen to (even outdated at the time) lectures about online safety when I was in middle school— middle schoolers now are encouraged to become YouTubers as a “side hustle.”
Even as I’m writing this I know I risk sounding like a “Boomer” —a term once used to neutrally describe a generation that now colloquially simply means anyone who is old enough to be out of touch. It doesn’t feel cool to question the online sphere that most of us exist in. And don’t get me wrong, I spend hours every day scrolling through recycled TikToks on Instagram Reels, but sometimes I catch myself looking around and wondering how we all got here, and even the more worrying question: what’s going to happen next?
An online discourse began a few years ago around the idea of an “iPad baby,” — a kid who can only be quieted by placing a glowing iPad in front of their face. People in our generation are now old enough to be conscious of the fact that maybe unlimited internet access at a young age wasn’t the best for us— that watching grown men talk about conspiracy theories or play video games wasn’t exactly the content that 12-year-olds should be watching. People from our generation are now starting to worry about the future kids; if we think our brains are altered from constantly being online, what’s going to happen to the impressionable toddlers already learning how to scroll through YouTube shorts?
Image Courtesy: ABC News
Another big topic online right now is the collective awareness that part of the reason young people feel so lonely nowadays is that many of our community-building spaces are now virtual. Instead of going to a rec center to play card games, friend groups can do it through Discord. Instead of attending concerts or niche-specific social gatherings to create and affirm identity, people are sorting themselves into groups like “alt,” “cottage-core,” or “new age,” through online interactions only. The problem is not that subcultures are disappearing— the problem is that unique social markers are constantly being created online at an endless velocity, so people can join and leave aesthetic groups at their whim without ever really feeling connected to anyone else. Video essayist, Mina Le, describes this and other problems in her video: “third places, Stanley cup mania, and the epidemic of loneliness.”
Now I know it’s incredibly ironic of me to write an entire article critiquing the over-reliance on the social internet while only referencing internet sources, but hey, that’s the world we live in. I’m not going to turn around tomorrow and throw my phone into the ocean and I bet you aren’t either. The internet is here to stay, and all we can do as consumers of it is try to navigate our own consumption mindfully, in whatever way works best for each of us.
Strike Out,
Delaney Gunnell
Edited by: Reanna Haase and Hollis Humphrey
Orlando
Delaney Gunnell is the Blog Assistant for Strike Magazine Orlando. Besides writing, she likes photography, chocolate, reading rom-coms, and sitting in the sunshine. She likes listening to music that makes her laugh and watching TV shows that make her cry. You can reach her at gunnelldelaney@gmail.com or @delaney_g__ on Instagram.
