In what ways do you communicate online?
Rewatching Younger recently, I came across an episode from 2016 where a character warned that we might be in the midst of a “technopanic.” Back then, it sounded a bit alarmist, like the show was trying to play with the growing anxieties around our digital dependencies. Fast forward to today, and that technopanic feels like more than just a passing phase—it’s a reality.
Legacy media has taken major hits, while everyone with a smartphone and a strong opinion can position themselves as a journalist or expert. We now live in a time where cynicism and doubt are baked into everyday interactions. The rapid democratization of information and the ease of sharing opinions online has fed into a psychological state that was already lurking in the American psyche—a sense that our individual voices, no matter how uninformed or impulsive, matter more than anything else.
The problem? Social media amplified the raw emotion already simmering beneath the surface. We were always a society of doubters and skeptics, but now that skepticism has collided with algorithms, creating a feedback loop of paranoia and confirmation bias. In essence, we’ve digitized our collective anxiety, and it’s wreaking havoc on how we relate to information, news, and each other.
The technopanic has reshaped our collective minds in ways we haven’t fully reckoned with. We’ve become a culture obsessed with rapid conclusions, with instant takes on the most complex issues of our time. The psychological impact is that we’ve become more reactive, more driven by emotion than critical thought. As much as the internet has empowered us, it’s also given rise to a sort of intellectual laziness masked as activism or knowledge.
What does this mean for the future? Are we still in the early stages of this technopanic, or have we become so accustomed to it that it now defines how we interact with the world?
Categories: Culture, current events, Pop Culture, Psychology, social media, society, TV
psychologistmimi 
It will take a while to adapt. Transitions are always messy. Eventually there will be a new normal but right now changes are happening too fast for the culture to assimilate. The pace of change needs to slow down a bit.
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Agreed. Messiness and culture shock will be around for a while.
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SMiLes Dear Miriam Screen Life Does Bring
Many Challenges Like We Aren’t Really
Evolved to Sit Mostly Motionless Behind
A Screen Like Text Provides about
7 Percent of the Much Greater
Non-Verbal Language
of Social Reciprocal
Communication
Ah Yes Constant Dopamine
Hits Designed by Algorithms
Catering to Our Base Instincts
Of Our Reptile Brains Mostly Associated
With Reproduction Fear Anger and Hate
Of Course This is Just Barely Scratching
The Surface of Removing All the ‘Snow’
From Our Screens
Seems Timely with
Close to A Foot of Snow
in Northern Florida These Days
So Now We Don’t Need Each Other as
Much Face to Face Losing Empathy
And Compassion the Ability to Focus
With Attention Span and Using Short Term
Working Memory and Long Term Memory Retrieval
As Well
Slowly
Sinking
Into a 6 Inch
Screen And Still
Even Bigger For Some
Yet There Is Something About
Most All the Arts And Sciences
of Humanity Available at Our Finger
Tips for Practically Free that Keep me all in
Online
For A Free
Dance Across
This Keyboard
As Long as i Balance
It All With a Flesh and Blood Dance
Lately i’m Amazed That Anything America
Does Will Work at All Yet Off the Screen(S)
It Ain’t
Much
Different
Than It’s Ever Been
Meet and Greet Your (my)
Neighbor Until THere Is No
Longer Any Stranger As It May
Be True That NO one is as Strange as me…
Still
Playing
On that
With A Screen in
my Hand And A Dance
And Song Free of My SoUL
The One i Inherited Flesh and
Blood Not the Upload Online hehe
Yet yes
that
one
Two..:)
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