Having so much information at hand, but using none?

[Stronk Serb]

I am kind of dissapointed with the current generation of teenagers. We have the Internet, basically the whole knowledge of the world from the ancient times to the present, but what does an average teen (talking about Serbia, maybe it applies elsewere) do with it? Nothing. He/she spends time on Facebook posting (non)philosophical posts which make no sense, take selfies, half-naked pictures, pictures of what clothes you just bought and uploading thrm everywhere, knowing other languages better then your mother tongue, not researching about stuff which defines us, like music. 80% of my school listen to turbofolk which is three lines sang on repeat for 5 minutes with drugged Arabic music in the background. I researched, I found metal, rock, hard rock, punk and I educated myself about other music genres. Everyone asks me where I find all that music and info, I say the Internet, but everyone is puzzled and asks me how I did it. Apparently a majority of them can't use fucking Google properly. What do you think of this problem?

[Mushin]

I think the internet culture manifested somewhere along the lines of automatic entitlement and too ignorant to care. The internet and technology in general has such an incredible potential of making our world's society more advanced, but it seems to be doing the opposite. At least for the general public. There are still lots of milestones being reached thanks to the internet.

Today's society lacks the determination and will to discover information. Before the internet you would actually have to put some work into finding knowledge, now it's essentially handed to anyone with wifi. The problem lies within that lack of determination. People see all this information right at their finger tips but they're blinded by a sense of entitlement. Therefore they don't even have the will to use the information being handed to them, whether or not they realize it.

Honestly I think there are way too many factors to pinpoint exactly what made society the way it is today. I can agree, however, that the majority of teenagers today have an absolutely horrific perspective of the world around them. They barely have to think anymore, and so they don't. It's really disappointing. Imagine what we could accomplish as a species if we used the internet productively.

[Stronk Serb]

I think the internet culture manifested somewhere along the lines of automatic entitlement and too ignorant to care. The internet and technology in general has such an incredible potential of making our world's society more advanced, but it seems to be doing the opposite. At least for the general public. There are still lots of milestones being reached thanks to the internet.

Today's society lacks the determination and will to discover information. Before the internet you would actually have to put some work into finding knowledge, now it's essentially handed to anyone with wifi. The problem lies within that lack of determination. People see all this information right at their finger tips but they're blinded by a sense of entitlement. Therefore they don't even have the will to use the information being handed to them, whether or not they realize it.

Honestly I think there are way too many factors to pinpoint exactly what made society the way it is today. I can agree, however, that the majority of teenagers today have an absolutely horrific perspective of the world around them. They barely have to think anymore, and so they don't. It's really disappointing. Imagine what we could accomplish as a species if we used the internet productively.

My thoughts exactly. My dad for example had to buy records abroad because they initially weren't sold here, he had to copy from record to tape, borrow tape to copy from friends. He put a lot of effort in making his collection of music. He has hundreds of records. For me, it just takes a few presses of a button and woosh! I have everything I need, be it full Sabaton discography, Disturbed, Dinosaur Jr., the Clash, Dead Kennedys... you name it. The Internet is a blessing which we, sadly, don't use or appreciate nearly as much as we should.

[Bolwing]

Either Serbia has a problem with idiotic teenagers, or you're exaggerating the issue. I do hope that it's the
latter.

Using Facebook is something of a faux pas at my school, and selfies are generally frowned upon. Local and global history is well-taught.
Disco-polo (the Polish equivalent of turbofolk) is commonly regarded as meaningless drivel, and most pepole listen to either metal or reggae.

Still, I understand that the situation in Serbia might be drastically different from what I experience in my middle upper-class bubble here in Poland.

[Human]

I spend a load of my time on the internet looking at stuff. I have a massive general knowledge now :P

[Stronk Serb]

Either Serbia has a problem with idiotic teenagers, or you're exaggerating the issue. I do hope that it's the
latter.

Using Facebook is something of a faux pas at my school, and selfies are generally frowned upon. Local and global history is well-taught.
Disco-polo (the Polish equivalent of turbofolk) is commonly regarded as meaningless drivel, and most pepole listen to either metal or reggae.

Still, I understand that the situation in Serbia might be drastically different from what I experience in my middle upper-class bubble here in Poland.

Here it's the opposite, I wish I was exaggerating with the percentages. When Iron Maiden comes to Belgrade, they will probably get up to 30,000 people, if they're lucky. When a local turbofolk star made a concert, more then 100,000 people came. Nobody knows the difference between Metallica and metal. We are taught global history which is true and verified, but local history, especially WWII and post-war Yugoslavia is not true, full of lies etc., just made so that the Serbs would be portrayed as victims of drastically more oppression. The situation you described was in the 80's and 90's, but we have been degraded so much since then. New Year's Eve concerts in the nineties during the demonstrations in front of the Parliament were rock mostly. This year it was turbofolk. I do think that after 1989. Serbian youth keeps getting a larger percent of idiots with each generation. If people have the Internet, use it for obtaining new knowledge , not for posting half-naked selfies on Instagram and Facebook. Like I said, half of the teens here can't use Google properly.

[Miserabilia]

I think the internet culture manifested somewhere along the lines of automatic entitlement and too ignorant to care. The internet and technology in general has such an incredible potential of making our world's society more advanced, but it seems to be doing the opposite. At least for the general public. There are still lots of milestones being reached thanks to the internet.

Today's society lacks the determination and will to discover information. Before the internet you would actually have to put some work into finding knowledge, now it's essentially handed to anyone with wifi. The problem lies within that lack of determination. People see all this information right at their finger tips but they're blinded by a sense of entitlement. Therefore they don't even have the will to use the information being handed to them, whether or not they realize it.

Honestly I think there are way too many factors to pinpoint exactly what made society the way it is today. I can agree, however, that the majority of teenagers today have an absolutely horrific perspective of the world around them. They barely have to think anymore, and so they don't. It's really disappointing. Imagine what we could accomplish as a species if we used the internet productively.

I aggree.
It's actualy a normal thing to happen,
because we are after an after-war-period, or whatever I should call it, right after WW2 there was more need for communication and tehcnology, which increased more rapidly.
Now it is still increasing more rapidly than ever before, but it will continue at the same pace, untill the next war.
Right now we are in a society where problems of the world don't matter to people, they just want to enjoy their lives and not think about anything deeper than the nearest party.

[EddietheZombie]

I agree. This whole new generation are...... How do I put it nicely...... fucking idiots..... I learn valuable traits such as survival and philosophy while everyone else is doing nothing productive at all..... I wish I could see Iron Maiden......

[Stronk Serb]

I agree. This whole new generation are...... How do I put it nicely...... fucking idiots..... I learn valuable traits such as survival and philosophy while everyone else is doing nothing productive at all..... I wish I could see Iron Maiden......

It was 50 dollars for a ticket which is a lot here. Still worth the money because this is probably their last concert in Serbia. The generation of my little brother and sister is worse then my generation. Majority of their generation can't use computers properly.

[Rallo]

I educated myself about all things from quantum physics, computing technology (including alternative methods of computing), to the designs of large buildings and construction projects. All this in the matter of a few years.
I often have people ask me how I know all these things, usually I simply reply "the internet..", which is followed by either quite a shock from them (Surprise, the information highway has information on it!) or a smart ass comment ("oh, you must spend a lot of your time online/indoors/etc").

I've never seen a problem spending time indoors, running around outside always seemed like a waste of time to me anyway. I mean, the things I could learn in that time. That aside, I usually only spend a few hours online anyway, usually watching various documentaries on YouTube. An average day starts for me by a simple search of "documentary", followed by watching anything that interests me and seeing where the journey of learning takes me.

I can't say I'm against social networking as I usually have FaceBook open while I watch videos, however this may be less of a pure time waster for me due to the fact I only feel the need to add close friends. I currently have ~40-50 friends on Facebook, due to this maybe I receive less inboxes etc.


As for the music side of things mentioned in OP, I know exactly how you feel in that situation too. The difference for me, it's usually genre's like EDM, Dubstep, Electro, House, etc. I'm constantly asked "where do you find all this music dude? It's awesome, gotta send it to me sometime", when in reality, I wasn't even aware this music is hidden in the first place. Usuaully I come across it by simple searches (dubstep mix, best edm, etc) and scroll through the videos on various channels (most recently Monstercat Media), something I found to be quite a simple thing to do. Apparently others see it as quite a challenge, to the point (despite having very little friends), I constantly see "good songs?", "comment good songs", "good songs for a like". etc on facebook. It's something that actually annoys me a fair bit, why in this day and age are people still going around asking their friends to trade music with them when more targeted, easier accessed music is available at the stroke of a keyboard?

[ksdnfkfr]

I've gained a lot of knowledge from the internet.
But I also use it to a large degree for entertainment.

[EddietheZombie]

It was 50 dollars for a ticket which is a lot here. Still worth the money because this is probably their last concert in Serbia. The generation of my little brother and sister is worse then my generation. Majority of their generation can't use computers properly.

Damn that's a steal for $50! I'd gladly pay $150 for a ticket. Yeah, the generations are getting dumber and dumber. I blame media, the stuff they feed us that they call "food", public education, and lack of parenting.

[StoppingTime]

I think the majority of people in this thread are talking from a pretentious, preachy, and overall stuck-up standpoint. None of you are "better" simply because you decide not to "waste time" on Facebook and whatever other bullshit examples you came up with. So what if people take selfies? So what if they're on Facebook? Is that impacting you? Is the world becoming less "educated" because someone decided to, as you said, make a "(non)philosophical" post on Facebook?

There's more to life than whatever you think is the "right" way to live with "constant" learning and enriching and whatever else. People can take a break, relax, and do whatever the fuck they want. Nobody in this thread, or anywhere for that matter, should be in a position to tell other people that they're spending their time in a poor manner just because they don't live up to whatever (ridiculous) standards some of you are imposing.

[Lovelife090994]

I feel there is a time to learn and a time to relax, if you know when to do both then you are on the way to living life well. Oh, and when you do that then wisdom will follow.

[EddietheZombie]

So if someone is just wasting away not working and not devoting time to help mankind as a whole then we are the ones that are wrong? The people we are talking about benefit mankind in no way possible. I spend time on facebook, I mess around on youtube, but I also learn and educate myself. No one here has said that being on facebook or taking "selfies" was bad, but we all said if that is all you do, then you are a very poor individual. Sure they can do whatever the fuck they want, but they are getting zero life experience and what kind of kids do you think they will raise? I've been around these people and all they do is sit their kids in front of the TV and feed them McDonalds. They raise kids with poor education and people can't count on schools to teach everything about life. I've met some really dumb fucking people in my life, but it would think that with the internet, they would know a hell of a lot more than they do? I can give quite a few examples of dumb fucks I know if you would like.

[Dalcourt]

I am kind of dissapointed with the current generation of teenagers. We have the Internet, basically the whole knowledge of the world from the ancient times to the present, but what does an average teen (talking about Serbia, maybe it applies elsewere) do with it? Nothing. He/she spends time on Facebook posting (non)philosophical posts which make no sense, take selfies, half-naked pictures, pictures of what clothes you just bought and uploading thrm everywhere, knowing other languages better then your mother tongue, not researching about stuff which defines us, like music. 80% of my school listen to turbofolk which is three lines sang on repeat for 5 minutes with drugged Arabic music in the background. I researched, I found metal, rock, hard rock, punk and I educated myself about other music genres. Everyone asks me where I find all that music and info, I say the Internet, but everyone is puzzled and asks me how I did it. Apparently a majority of them can't use fucking Google properly. What do you think of this problem?

I totally see what you mean. I use the internet not only for entertainment but also a great deal for research and learning new stuff. But others, I'm afraid you are right...I hardly use facebook anymore cuz everthying I get there is tons of selfies from people I know, pics of what they ate, new shoes they bought, you name it and important news like was at XY's party....it's so shallow, boring and stupid. It's today's culture, even if I don't like it I accept it.
But what I can't accept is if people are ignorant and too stupid or lazy to google things. I often talked to people online and they asked stupid things and I thought why the hell do you make a fool out of yourself instead of google it and then talk about it? Once I referred to something that happened in the place I live a while a go. The person I talked to was completely ignorant about it although this was as on the news all over the world. I was too annoyed to explain it myself so I sent him a link to where it was all explained and he was just like oh, I just read the first paragraph...I'm too lazy to read it all....so yeah I guess that's why people don't use the information they can get they are simply too lazy to learn something new.

[xxdrakeTxx]

personally i use the internet as away to learn things they only skim over in school and learn diffrent belief systems. although my facebook is packed with diffirent religious philisophocal and scientific stuff , not a single friend on facebook likes it at all . personally i think the internet is the fastest way to learn anything and to not take advantage of that fact is well kinda crazy

[Miserabilia]

personally i use the internet as away to learn things they only skim over in school and learn diffrent belief systems. although my facebook is packed with diffirent religious philisophocal and scientific stuff , not a single friend on facebook likes it at all . personally i think the internet is the fastest way to learn anything and to not take advantage of that fact is well kinda crazy

I aggree.