The main point of this essay is that the baby boomer generation was indoctrinated into unprecedented massive consumption of all things: consumer goods, food, and media, mostly TV. This indoctrination into massive consumption as a lifestyle has been amplified by the internet and social media such that Generation Z suffers from rampant depression and suicide. People of all generations are walking around staring at their phones much of the day as if this were normal behavior. Algorithms on social media have amplified mental illness so that people attack and trigger each other. People can’t sleep at night, with cell phones beside the bed or in hand, checking for text messages, etc. Stores put candy and cookie displays in the front to maximize sugar consumption despite the fact of the lethality directly caused by these pseudo-foods. Holiday celebrations center on consumption of refined carbohydrate junk foods. If you decline the sugary treats offered you by family members or at the office you’re a party pooper, a dull person devoid of joie de vivre.
This newest form of addiction is the natural consequence of public relations, the use of psychology to addict people to mass media from the 1920’s onward. Enrico Caruso had records selling a million copies. Ladies swooned over movie star Rudolph Valentino. Pop culture was big even before TV came along. Television accompanied the explosion of mass consumption in this nation’s most prosperous era, the years after World War II into the 1970’s. Very unhealthy habits including rampant cigarette smoking and sugary breakfast cereals became the new normal in American life. Doctors appeared in cigarette commercials. From the 1940’s into the 1970’s more and more sugar-saturated cereals came to market with cute cartoon characters, Tony the Tiger, Captain Crunch, Count Chocula, Frankenberry, The Trix Rabbit, Sugar Pops Pete, Coco Puffs Cuckoo Bird, etc. My generation was simply groomed to become sugar addicts. Add to these cereals soda pops with high fructose corn syrup and we have a massive program for diabetes and obesity and the current Generation Z with a lower life expectancy.
What about the promise of the internet “information superhighway”? With all the touted utopian aspirations 25 years ago, we have unprecedented socio-political polarizations and mental health crises directly resulting from social media algorithms specifically designed to trigger people into inter-tribal enmity. Literally the result is increased anxiety, depression, and suicide. This is simply yet another manifestation of the consumer culture from the era of postwar prosperity.
The Greatest Generation could be blamed for the problems ordinarily attributed to Baby Boomers. They got us hooked on consuming stuff, whether it’s toys, sugary breakfast cereals, hanging out at shopping malls, etc. Drug use by hippies and freaks in the 1960’s is just an offshoot of addiction already inculcated by the Establishment’s consumer culture. The kid that got the sugar high is trained to seek other highs, whether from pot, alcohol, or hallucinogenics. Hippies smoking pot or taking LSD were simply refining or advancing addictive behaviors from their earlier sugar junkie childhoods. They wanted that new special “high” and rationalized this as some form of liberation or revolution. The various methodologies of getting “high” range from bungie jumping, staring at your phone all day, internet porn, eating sugary junk food, video games, extreme sports, etc. To be addicted to something is integral to life. If I restrict myself to social media to “just 2 hours” a day am I not still addicted? Deluding myself with various rationalizations comparing myself to those more addicted does not make my addiction disappear.
Politics enters into the realm of social media algorithmic tribalization. Rational discussion of the issues plaguing the non-wealthy and marginalized groups is subordinate to triggering people into tribal identities so they fire back and forth with emotional epithets. I am a dinosaur raised in The Great Society Era of LBJ with liberal republicans and Nixon claiming to be a Keynesian. I am a prime target of younger generations schooling me on the evils of TV. During Ron Paul’s heyday of the mid 2000’s memes with sheep watching TV flooded myspace. The old liberal hegemony fractured into identity politics. The 1960’s revolution fell apart in the 1970’s as people descended into disco and snorting coke. My generation “sold out”, worshipped Saturday Night Fever, then got conned by Ronald Reagan or became annoying anti-Reagan yuppies derided by Rush Limbaugh. The era of Walter Cronkite became replaced by that of Fox News. Bill O’Reilly was far more popular than Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, or Cornel West. Far left critics of the corporate tyranny were marginalized while Fox News pundits attained the biggest viewership. So the remedy for this was memes deriding Boomers as “sheeple” glued to the TV. Now we have people glued to their cell phone screens. The one constant persisting across generations is addiction.
What is the cure?