this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
698 points (93.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43781 readers
974 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Am I the only one that's scared this isn't from social media / attention span but actually maybe that a long term side effect of COVID could partly explain this? I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory and I've never heard anyone phrase it like I'm doing right now but it seems like this virus changes how we think. I've heard people say for the first time in their life they couldn't control their thoughts, my father couldn't stop having nightmares for multiple nights...
it is a symptom of long COVID, but i only think it exacerbated an already existing issue. It is the rise of dumb social media and dopamine addiction if you ask me. But what do i know
This effect has been observable even before the Corona pandemic hit us. While it can be a factor in individuals, the overall shift in society over the last ~30 years probably stems from us using our brains less for tasks that require continuous effort.
Basically, we only train the sprint and can't do the marathon anymore.
The effects of persistent inflammation in the brain were already known previously, but it became a common symptom first with COVID, so yeah.