Online or offline. News keeps reporting about loneliness and disconnection, but in my experience it’s just that it’s harder to interact with people in a civil way because they are so hostile, angry, and arrogantly convinced their viewpoints and experiences are the only legitimate ones.
Not to mention the lack of civility towards servers and other service workers. I can’t recall if I was just indifferent 10 years ago, but on a almost daily basis it blows my mind how openly rude many people are to servers and such, which seemed like a much more rare thing when I was younger.
Not only is social media designed to be addictive, it hardens our divisions. Combine that with a media ecosystem that saturates us with frictionless content at a scale and speed that are unmatched, a government intentionally stoking division and breaking norms, and an environment that primes us for manipulation, our psyches strain under the weight and the affects are apparent in the way we act and view the world. We haven’t been assaulted like this before.