Humans have invented some brilliant things, but not all of them brought about progress. These are things that promised to simplify daily life, but which many people ended up regretting.
We believed social media had good intentions and would help us communicate with people all over the world. However, social media has interrupted and delayed cognitive development in children. Also, my cousin Erica told me my shirt is too tight in a Facebook comment.
Many children encounter content inappropriate for their on social media age due to a lack of filters or supervision on their profiles. Social media can damage self-esteem and generate anxiety in children and adolescents. Protecting children on social media depends not only on devices or applications, but also on consistent digital education and adult guidance.
Here are 14 clever inventions that just made everything worse, as put together by the people of Ask Reddit.
Single Use Plastics
“Incredibly convenient in the moment, but we’re going to be dealing with the consequences for a very long time.”
The State
“It has been the major human killing machine because it is a tool for colonization, imperialism and enclosures (stealing wealth from common people). It has been the major causes of famine/starvation, ecological disasters and slavery is large scale. It also has been the major cause of disinformation of people about alternatives to it, making people ignorant of human and society history and thinking there is no alternative from it.”
Capitalism
“In addition to being responsible for the harmful parts of most of the other things named on this list, its created a system where we can’t actually do anything meaninful to combat climate change, because of how fossil fuels are integrated into the economy.”
Automobiles
“Cars made us more sedentary.”
Influencers
“Not for likes for money, and not only people also bots. If an influencer creates outrage the algorithm financially benefits the controversial influencer.”
Agriculture
“Agriculture made everything bad possible.”
Petroleum Products
“Petroleum products most likely, wide ranking harms to the environment and most living things. Pollution and microplastics are causing a drop in fertility globally. Another couple hundred years of this and humans will cease to be. The planet will recover, we will not.”
Cigarettes
“Cigarettes invented everything about modern capitalism that is harmful. It was one of the first where the result was a poorly made low quality product but the value was in leaning the production. Cigarettes were the modern multinational corporation. It caused widespread cancer and then really industrialized the industry to collectively lie to everyone.”
Nuclear Weapons
“The constant threat alone has shaped global politics and fear for generations.”
Social Hierarchy
“Any human having unbalanced or unchecked power over others.”
Infinite Scroll
“Sounds dramatic but I genuinely think the switch from paginated internet to endless feeds rewired how an entire generation processes information. We went from actively choosing what to consume to just absorbing whatever the algorithm puts in front of us.”
Social Media
“Social Media has interrupted and delayed cognitive development for kids.”
Fuel
“Leaded gasoline.”
24-Hour-News
“It takes 30 minutes to say the news, the rest of the time is conjecture, posturing, conspiracies, rumors, and just outright propaganda.”
