Modern Social Media and My 2 Cents On It

Hello! This is the first blog I've posted on here and I wanted it to be something that peeved me kind of.

So, I have not had TikTok since I believe almost 2 years, (Maybe start of 2025?) I hardly use Instagram's features, I use it to talk to ONE person, so I have never used reels. I used youtube shorts for a bit until I realized it wasn't enjoyable anymore. The only social media I've used is the normal Youtube and Friendrewind/Spacehey if you wanna count it.

However! My friends, classmates, the general people around me, all use the big platforms I mentioned, so I want to talk about the effects I have seen in others, along with the slang we've modernized and continued to use. And also how I feel not having used social media in so long.

I have never made one of these kinds of blogs before, so I'm really sorry if it isn't very good. You can always ask in comment to clarify if I word something wrong :(

So, outwardly, meaning the people around me, I've noticed a very, very severe lack of attention. This is NOT talking about people with ADHD or ADD, as their brains naturally lack dopamine(or some have excess), keyword: naturally. Short-form content sends so much dopamine into your head that it depletes the muscle.

>My analogy here is drug tolerance, the more you take, the more you're going to need to feel anything at all. If you watch 500 tiktoks, the next day you'll need 1,000 to feel remotely satisfied. 

I've seen people have to wait for a 30 second screen to load and pull out their phones. 30 seconds. I don't think that's normal anymore. I've seen kids sneak their phones in class to watch TikTok, not even play music, just watch TikTok, something I always thought could wait till later...

It's really common for my peers to disrespect the teachers and continue to use their phones, when the teachers and just trying to teach peacefully. I have never seen more students sent out of class than during my last school year. And towards the end of the year, this resulted in the teachers allowing this behavior and trying to teach the people that were still paying attention.

I'll add something else, cruelty, lack of empathy and sympathy. Why does every single thing have to be funny? Why is mental harm/distress funny? Why is anger funny? It's not, that's the issue.

And when you try to call them out on it, they'll think your distress is hilarious. I don't think people being angry is funny, I don't think crashouts are funny, either.

>With the exception of streamers...most of their "crashouts" are exaggerated for comedic value, that's ok!

I'm talking when people are actually upset, and it gets played off as funny or stupid. And when real issues are being discussed, again, funny or stupid.

Slang is normal and it always has been! I don't discourage anyone from using slang.

But with the more recent slang I've heard, it's mostly based on AAVE, and people who don't naturally use AAVE and did not grow up around it are changing the meaning of words.

This also kind of ties in to how black people are still seen as funny by so many...it's really gross, people who aren't black are so comfortable doing a blaccent when that's how a lot of real people talk normally.

I'll give you some examples of words I hear often:
>Unc
>Cap
>Facts
>Twin
>Type Shit
>Cracked\Cracking/Crack

Do you notice that most, if not all of these words are AAVE? Unc used to literally mean uncle, someone that was looked up to, ect. Now it just means old, 18 year olds are being called unc.

 All of these words have been used by black people for AGES. Before TikTok took it and made normal words incredibly popular and in some cases (like unc) funny. Whether these words are right or wrong to say is not up to me and it never will be, I'd appreciate anyone's opinion on it. 

However I would like to point out how modern social media rewards the use of these words and turns them into almost buzzwords. 

I'll even throw Woke in here as an extra (yet very important example), but Woke meant that you were up to date on racial injustice and discrimination, and now, mostly people who are in office at the moment...have turned this word into a label for either liberals and/or people who believe in equal rights for all. Making a lot of people scared of using this word, when the original meaning meant that you were educated about prejudice.