Yeah I feel this even as a millennial. The tech we grew up with was exciting, constantly improving, generally not exploiting us, always getting cheaper. For gen z they've grown up when tech was abundant but always getting worse, more expensive and more exploitative.

I would take this notion or feeling more genuienly if said people then actually stopped using and deleted Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok, etc.

The reality is that social media with a profit motive is basically a digital drug that operates via dopamine pathways, and most people these days are addicts.

Quit then, go clean, and I'll take these people more seriously.

Don't make tiktok reels about the idea of this so that you can feel 'appreciated' by view count and follower number go up.

I do appreciate that this can be very difficult and scary. But ... you're gonna need real self-control and discipline to quit an addicition, and you're gonna need to actually quit, to achieve the goal you say you want to achieve.

Us here on lemmy, we're largely here because in some way or another... we recognize this already, on some level, to some degree, as we've specifically sought out a kind of 'least insane and systemically exploitative' way of mass public communicating with randos.

But the normies just don't truly 'get it' yet.

As someone who has been interested in retro, vintage, and antique technology since I was a preteen for me at least it's just the simplicity of it all. An old light from say the 1950s breaks and it's like 4 components max and there's a pretty good chance it's just something that needs to be tightened or cleaned, meanwhile a modern light breaks and it's almost always a fucking board meaning I can't fix it by just tightening a screw and fuck me if it has touch controls.

I will say I do like plenty of modern tech for example the FM transmitter in my truck or my computers but holy fuck I had to shop around just to find a fan that didn't need WiFi and I still got one where it's optional.

Knowing and experiencing a disconnected world is one of the few things I wouldn't give up from childhood. I was enamored with the Internet when popular adoption began in the mid to late 90s but it was a separate world that you could actually exit. I could still communicate with peers and friends without this layer of memes and affected irony between us.