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Notes -
My instinct is that the substitute activities people are engaging with are actually even worse than what happened to teenagers before for your brains.
I’m actually fine with teenagers drinking beer and wine in moderation, I learned to do so because I reached legal drinking age outside of the USA and I had a parent who was very modest in their alcohol consumption. Basically all of my bad alcohol habits I picked up when I came back and lived in the burbs and attached myself to the local party scene.
It may have some negative consequences, but as stated above it’s one of lindy-est things to ever lindy.
Internet brain rot, social media obsession, binge video gaming, and a sedentary indoor life style seems much much worse to me in terms of damage to young people’s brain. Massive spikes in youth depression, anxiety and isolation seem to bear this out.
Pick your poison, I imagine every generation since the first has had to deal with this issue.
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