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Young Adulthood Is No Longer One of Life’s Happiest Times
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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I don't know if people have just gotten meaner over time or if that is how it has always been, but there are a lot of people who are very unpleasant to interact with, both on and off the internet. It can be stressful trying to interact with new people because it's a dice roll on whether they're friendly or condescending.
Anyway, just my observation. I don't know if that has anything to do with social media, but it wouldn't surprise me I guess.
A lot of environments on the internet basically reward hostility. Any kind of engagement gets stuff promoted in the algorithms, including negative engagement, so anything the starts a fight gets put in front of everyone else. That'd mean that people are more likely to see hostile people regardless of whether there are actually more of them than before
That only accounts for online interactions though, so maybe it's not as strong an explanation as I think if offline interactions are similar
Offline, I've seen an increase in hostility after the pandemic. Mainly, people just being rude or outright hostile to each other in public. Completely anecdotal, of course, but it was less common prior to the pandemic and all of this weird political landscape.