Social Media Dangers Documentary — Childhood 2.0

Michael B-C

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I've watched 100s if not 1000s of documentaries down the years on so many subjects but I don't think many have made such an instant impact on me as this one which I've just finished watching.

If you have children up to even 25, but especially if there in the say 8/9-18 bracket, I would suggest you simple have to watch this from beginning to end. And if you don't have kids, but care about the why and the how we are where we are (even before COVID) you should watch this.

I thought I really knew - and I clearly didn't. Yes I knew all the pieces but not to the subtle and insidious degree that this calmly lays out. That's the key take away for me as a parent; thinking one knows when really one just doesn't know nearly half enough. It doesn't go into the agenda side of this monster (though its implicit) but in a way that makes it more powerful - rather concentrating methodically on impact and the human values at stake. Really well thought through, constructed and delivered with powerful contributions from genuinely informed experts, older generations, committed parent groups and particularly young people themselves.

If your kids are regularly online (and whose aren't?!), I highly recommend using this as a tool to sit down with them, watch and discuss as openly and as frankly as possible together - its a really invaluable safe space clearly made from the young people's perspective (with zero judgement and a whole heap of care) whilst going right for the jugular of the dark side of the moon.

Again I say, we think we know but do we really? And if you want answers as to why the generation of today has been so insidiously and cruelly prepared to become deliverers of their own post-COVID slavery, the fundamental constructs of mind debasement are all in here.

 
Thank you Michael for putting this documentary on the Forum. I just watched it and I felt very sad, the part on pornography, sexto and bullying in school, I didn't know that was at this scale and how exponential this becomes over the years. young people get to know each other better so that they can develop romantic relationships that can help them grow up. We are really at the opposite extreme of the reading project with the romantic stories. I also really think family and people who haven't children should take a close look at this documentary

Edit : The experiment part near the end is unbelievable
 
Thanks, I'll check it out when I get the time. I recently watched The Social Dilemma documentary which also deals with social media and Silicon Valley mega-corporations. It was good, with some nonsense thrown in like Russia influencing the U.S. elections through social media, their stance on conspiracy theories and COVID. But overall I get the sense that these modern apps, technologies, social media and so on, are basically a giant mind/behaviour/emotion control operations, and people are unaware of it. It's nothing new for SOTT readers, but it brings the point home when you see these insiders talk about it, and when you see it on video instead of just reading about it. I think the whole things is worse than even what these insiders present when you factor in 4D STS influences.
 
Right, so the modern age has given young people in particular too much time on their hands, and the internet used the way it is is proving detrimental to those young people. So we have big problems. It really is a brave new world and the elite psychopaths think they have the solutions. Of course they created most of these problems that they now want to sell the solution to as the 'Great Reset.' If the nano technology is what it's purported to be I wouldn't be surprised if a sort of Soma wouldn't be introduced into the plan to regulate emotion and keep everyone 'happy' and complacent. But obviously the internet can be used in a positive way like we do here too. But it seems to me we will have to see how things shake out with what's coming in terms of natural occurrences. The technology grid will be disrupted if the C's are correct. In the meantime, anyone with kids needs to be thoroughly educated in the reality of what's happening. It's a quagmire for sure.
 
Thank you for posting this video which seems to be very interesting! I just have seen the 5 1st minutes but it's hard for me to understand everything, english is not my mother tongue. Unfortunatelly, it's not translated into other langages. I wished i've watched it with my daughter who is 18 years old. It will be helpfull in our relationship...
 
Thank you for posting this video which seems to be very interesting! I just have seen the 5 1st minutes but it's hard for me to understand everything, english is not my mother tongue. Unfortunatelly, it's not translated into other langages. I wished i've watched it with my daughter who is 18 years old. It will be helpfull in our relationship...
You can activate french subtitles on the youtube video ! (authentic french of course not google translate)
 
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For all the garbage Netflix puts out, their documentary “the social dilemma” is TOTALLY worth a watch. It takes this issue and expands on it in a broad way that really lays out a lot of the issues.

Yes, I think The Social Dillema documentary is worth a watch too, and agree with what @Anthony said about it.

I haven't seen Childhood 2.0. I'm looking forward to watching it one day this week, and will add to the discussion if there's anything to add. Thank you for sharing, @Michael B-C.
 
Thank you for recommending Childhood - 2.0! I've watched this film this morning and have to say it was breathtaking. The number of suicides due to this problem was particularly shocking!
There was another documentary that came out in 2018 called "The Creepy Line" that follows a similar line:
Synopsis from IMDb.com -
An eye-opening documentary, The Creepy Line reveals the stunning degree to which society is manipulated by Google and Facebook and blows the lid off the remarkably subtle - hence powerful - manner in which they do it.
I've found where you can watch it on YT -

I haven't seen "The Creepy Line" as of yet but will this week. Thanks again @Michael B-C
 
This guy Yasha Levine, the author of "Surveillance Valley" has some interesting things to say about "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix.

About halfway through, the director interviews someone named Renée Diresta — a credentialed expert on democracy and the Internet associated with a thinktank at Stanford University.

Renée talks about the danger of fake news and the ease with which social media platforms can be used to divide people. When she came on the screen, I had to hit pause because I couldn’t stop yelling and laughing.

The fact that she is interviewed — and the fact that she is a founding advisor to the “heroic” corporate thinktank that’s at the heart of this doc — was a perfect encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with The Social Dilemma.

What Renée doesn’t mention — and what the director of the documentary omits as well — is that she used to work for an outfit called New Knowledge, a shady government and corporate cyber meddling contractor set up by a couple of guys from the NSA and the State Department. This outfit did exactly the kinds of things she’s warning people about in the documentary: it spread fake news and disinformation and ramped up radicalization and political division — and it did it all for profit.

As we found last year, in 2017 New Knowledge ran an elaborate “false flag op” on behalf of a wealthy Democratic donor — Silicon Valley tech billionaire Reid Hoffman — to influence the Alabama Senate race and to help elect a Democratic candidate. The company did this not by doing the whole Enlightenment and Liberal Values thing — like trying to appeal to voters through reason and information. Nope.

Renée’s New Knowledge did it by running an “active measures” and “maskirovka” campaign that tricked people into thinking that Roy Moore — the sleazy Republican candidate endorsed by Trump — was actually a Russian asset with connections to the Kremlin. It did this by deploying fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that were designed to look like they were Russian and then used them to boost Moore — all in order to make it seem like he had the Kremlin’s backing.

In short: New Knowledge spread fake news and whipped up radicalization and xenophobia to sway an election. And the campaign was wildly successful.

Though we should not throw the baby with the bathwater. It is still important to know how detrimental is for everybody to be on their phones for hours a day, specially for children and young teens.

Coming back to "Childhood 2.0", the bit that caught my eye was how after the parents/interviewees setup a fake online persona/user profile of a 10-11 year old child on Instagram, it only took under 2 minutes before it was contacted through a direct message by someone clearly set out to groom or influence or otherwise exploit the child.

Two minutes is astonishingly fast, but how is that even possible? Some predator was just out there at the right time and the right moment to notice this new profile? Don't these pervs have have day jobs or something?

This led me to think that for some, going out there to social media to groom, influence and exploit young users is actually their job. The images and videos they get from their victims is their product, which then they sell to other parties.

Following this line of thought, this means there could be armies of groomers trying to exploit victims at all times as part of a large operation, and that they could have specialized tools to scan the social networks for new profiles. So that's how is possible to notice someone "new" that matches their target in such a short period of time.
 
Thanks Michael for the nudge to watch this documentary. And not that it is not unknown, yet to hear it all spoken about by the young to the more elderly in the film - and those who suffered loss, simply chilling. Society, if they look, is hardly seeking answers - it was on many's lips in the documentary; more police seems no answer, and yet the very platforms rolled out to download upon devices, devices that are handed out matter-of-factly and occupy nearly every square inch of a shopping mall, continues unabated. With their search data depicting the astronomical numbers of pornography over all others combined, well, there are those who seemed to have carte blanche in providing it without repercussions.

The discussion on the formation of the neurological pathways, the impacts upon it, was interesting, and the tale that it my tell down the road is yet largely uncharted.

Their talk at the end aimed at parents was spot on, and yet one can look around and see so many parents broken and their kids left unattended to face the world without any true parental minders. Who can not look around who once knew when parental brokenness could be counted on a few fingers (not that some should have not broken up due to their natures - and what was best for the children), is common place now, even fostered.

When young we were never encouraged to watch TV, although it took place sparingly, and my dad used to always comment that TV was a cheap babysitter, and he was right, and now young children are handed iPads and whatever else to help sedate their learned boredom.
We are really at the opposite extreme of the reading project with the romantic stories.

Yes, this came to mind, too.
 
Thanks Michael for the nudge to watch this documentary. And not that it is not unknown, yet to hear it all spoken about by the young to the more elderly in the film - and those who suffered loss, simply chilling. Society, if they look, is hardly seeking answers - it was on many's lips in the documentary; more police seems no answer, and yet the very platforms rolled out to download upon devices, devices that are handed out matter-of-factly and occupy nearly every square inch of a shopping mall, continues unabated. With their search data depicting the astronomical numbers of pornography over all others combined, well, there are those who seemed to have carte blanche in providing it without repercussions.

The discussion on the formation of the neurological pathways, the impacts upon it, was interesting, and the tale that it my tell down the road is yet largely uncharted.

Their talk at the end aimed at parents was spot on, and yet one can look around and see so many parents broken and their kids left unattended to face the world without any true parental minders. Who can not look around who once knew when parental brokenness could be counted on a few fingers (not that some should have not broken up due to their natures - and what was best for the children), is common place now, even fostered.

When young we were never encouraged to watch TV, although it took place sparingly, and my dad used to always comment that TV was a cheap babysitter, and he was right, and now young children are handed iPads and whatever else to help sedate their learned boredom.


Yes, this came to mind, too.
With you there Voyageur. One of the issues raised that has stayed with me is the issue of the fear of an all encompassing boredom. Its something Ive noticed as being a near systemic fear with each generation that goes through this tech indoctrination. Kids have always bemoaned that state but not quite with the level of fear they now express. Its as if all the inner life capacity has been bleached out of them (or worse, never fostered or allowed to naturally germinate) and they are therefore literally life-terrified of not being plugged into the dopamine matrix. I remember 'boredom' being a cue that forced one out into the world - particularly the natural world - in which you found some kind of beginnings of a pathway, a series of connections that fused slowly within, which over time nurtured awakening to the 'magic' that is beneath the surface of life, inextricably leading one of a life-times journey of discovery ... and for some fortunate ones, to end up at a place like this. The neutering of this pathway before it can event sprout seems to me the most dangerous anesthetizing end purpose of this tech dependent road-map. A Trans-humanistic hell filled with wall to wall inner silence beckons.
 
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