#Emerging Job Trends

[nurafathima]

Top 5 Emerging Technologies Shaping IT Recruitment Trends

The IT recruitment industry is changing quickly. Forget about passive candidate pools and static job postings from the past. The way IT specialists are found, assessed, and employed is changing in the modern era thanks to a dynamic ecosystem powered by advanced technologies.

In the highly competitive market of Saudi Arabia, where the IT sector is seeing rapid growth, an IT recruitment agency needs to remain ahead of the curve to get top talent.

1. The Rise of Hybrid Work Models

In the IT industry, working a combination of in-office and remote hours is known as the hybrid work model. It's important because increased productivity, a better work-life balance, and effective use of office space benefit both employers and workers.

However, it continues to need help managing a distributed workforce, which calls for excellent cooperation and communication. Employers can adjust to the scenario by promoting flexible work schedules and finding applicants who are at ease using online collaboration platforms.

2. Proactive Candidate Engagement

Creating a solid talent pipeline for Saudi Arabian IT recruitment companies has become essential in today's market. For this to happen, proactive candidate communication methods must be used.

Proactive sourcing involves actively seeking out potential candidates through social media, industry events, and online communities to connect with passive candidates. Building strong relationships and tailoring communication to individual preferences demonstrates genuine interest, attracts top talent, and reduces the time it takes to fill a position.

3. AI-revolutionising recruitment

Recruiters can free up more time by using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate monotonous processes like resume screening. You have:

Smart Resumes: AI systems review resumes for relevant experience and abilities, advancing only the most qualified applicants.

Chatbots: Artificial intelligence-driven chatbots improve the applicant experience.

Predictive analytics: Use data to pinpoint high achievers. Hiring more quickly results in better choices.

4. Beyond Technical Skills: Soft Skills Assessment

The days of hiring IT candidates only based on their technical skills are long gone. Soft skills like problem-solving, teamwork, communication, and flexibility are now as important.

This change calls for new evaluation techniques. Gamification provides a creative fix. Recruiters may measure soft skills interestingly and dynamically by adding game-like aspects to assessments and interviews. Imagine realistic, scenario-based simulations that are a long cry from bland, text-heavy questionnaires. Gamified tests offer insightful information about a candidate's behaviour while working.

5. Cybersecurity talent acquisition

There is a greater need than ever for qualified cybersecurity specialists due to the growing danger of cyberattacks. sadly, there are still not enough competent applicants in the field. To meet this problem, IT recruitment agencies must take a holistic approach.

The talent gap can be closed in part by offering targeted training programmes to upskill current staff. Collaborating with academic institutions and business leaders guarantees a consistent supply of competent candidates. Organising hackathons and Capture the Flag (CTF) events can also help uncover untapped potential in the cybersecurity community.

Conclusion

The five emerging trends discussed—hybrid work models, proactive candidate engagement, automation and AI, soft skills assessment, and cybersecurity talent acquisition—are reshaping IT recruitment. To stay ahead in the market of IT jobs in Saudi Arabia, agencies must adapt, stay informed, and embrace these technologies. The time to act is now. Explore how these innovations can revolutionise your recruitment process and attract the best IT professionals to your clients.

[tramontane-fire]

It's a federal holiday (presidents' day) and so there are hardly any new jobs, like a weekend amount, and the recruiter has not Gotten Back To Me, no have any of the other jobs I applied to (because of the holiday, not because they don't want to hire me or anything. no one in their right mind wouldn't want to hire me).

Anyway what's so great about presidents anyway? the old ones were slave owners and war criminals and the new ones are tax felons and war criminals. when can we actually get a president worthy of a whole ass holiday?

[charlessmithpost]

The meaning of SDET can be gauged from the expanded form of the term which stands for Software Development/Design Engineer in Test. SDETs are essentially professionals who remain involved in the development as well as testing phase of the SDLC.

[just-a-ghost00]

FS series : their profession & hobbies

Group 1 - Moonchild Ace of cups, 9 of pentacles, Ace of swords, 6 of wands, Page of swords

As for possible careers, I am picking up on the following elements. This person's career relies on two key factors : communication and sociability. With the two aces, it gives me the feeling of something either being very recent or very novel. So either this person has been doing this job since a short period of time or the job they are doing is something that has emerged within the recent times. So it's not something like being a doctor or a lawyer, as these professions have been existing for a while. With the page of swords, this person's work likely involves the use of technology, especially social media. The 9 of pentacles could show that they are working on their own. Either they are their own boss or their profession requires them to work alone most of the time. The 6 of wands denotes a sense of fame and support from people around them. So it is likely that your person is either well known in their community and appreciated for their work, or they have a huge following and interact with a lot of people. Based on all these information, I am deducting that your FS could work in either one of those positions :

community manager, freelance designer / artist

social media influencer, public speaker, spokesperson for a specific company

therapies that involve unconventional ways of healing (crystal healing, sound baths, ASMR, Reiki...)

being a celebrity of some kind, no matter their field of action (modeling, singing, acting, cooking...)

When it comes to hobbies, this person is definitely into creative activities. They could be into singing, writing, painting among other artistic centers of interest. This person may also enjoy spending time alone journaling, being in nature, exploring new places. They may be into horse riding. They could also enjoy learning and reading. This person may like to be the center of attention. In friend groups, they tend to be the one that makes everyone laugh. They could also enjoy competitive activities and combat sports. They are into self care. As communication seems to be very important to this person, they could also use social media as a way to creatively express themselves outside of their usual train of work. For instance, I'm picking up on someone doing Tiktok trends as a a hobby.

Group 2 - Angel The Sun, 4 of cups, knight of wands, 7 of swords, Hierophant

When it comes to your person's occupation, I get the feeling like their position is an important one within society. It is something that is viewed by society as essential to the community. It could be a profession that is very traditional or that was passed down to them from previous generations. With the Sun and the knight of wands, it feels like your person holds a position of authority or at least a strategical position within an institution that gives them a lot of power in terms of decision making and initiative. They could also have to move around a lot, whether on short or long distances. This is a profession that requires them to be flexible and confident but also to be comfortable with working on their own and thinking for themselves because I feel like this person doesn't get much help in their situation. There may be a lot of weight and responsibilities on their shoulders. With the 7 of swords, this gives me a feeling of secrecy surrounding this person's job. There are a lot of things that they cannot share about their work. Also, the 7 of swords talks about strategic planning. Their job requires a lot of thinking and anticipation. The Hierophant can represent big institutions such as religious groups, political groups, government, the army, the educational system, big companies and so on. Based on all the information provided by the cards, your FS could be working in either one of those fields :

medical field : any type of doctor, psychiatrists, forensics, working in a research lab

political/religious field : public figure working for the government, leader of a political group of any kind, spiritual guru, a person of authority within a religious group

teaching, working in the military, being an undercover agent, working for big companies that play an important role in a country's economy, baking and so on

As for hobbies, this person may enjoy traveling, running, horse riding, solving puzzles and riddles. Playing video games. Learning about other cultures and ethnicities. Learning about religious beliefs. Doing community work, praying. Spending time alone in nature away from civilisation. Camping. Trecking. Mountain climbing. Challenging activities. Being in sunny places overall. Going to exotic and remote places. Learning about History. Visiting museums and ruins. Stalking.

Group 3 - Maidens 6 of wands, Empress, 10 of wands, knight of cups, The World

Your person's occupation feels very busy and hectic. Their job is one that is very active and requires them to travel the world for some, or at least to move around within their country. For this group, it is clear that this person's job revolves around physical appearances, sensuality and promoting a positive image of life, of society, of health. This group has the most potential of having a FS that is famous to some extent. I see that your person has to work with a lot of people and is constantly on the go. They participate to various events, they take on many responsibilities and yet manage to be very successful despite the hectic and sometimes unpredictable conditions of their work. Beauty is a major theme here, as well as reputation. Thus, your FS could be working as an influencer, a model, an artist, a beauty aesthetician, a fashion designer, an event promoter, a journalist. Anything that would require them to be in the public eye and promote a certain life style or certain products. They could also be an entertainer, an athlete that is very present on social media, a personal trainer, a reporter. I'm also picking up on flight attendants, employees from big stores in airports or big hotels. Of course we can't omit everything revolving around the performing arts. Actors, comedians, dancers. We also have possibly strippers, dancers, show hosts and so on. Fitness instructors, yoga teachers. For some, your person could have a personal blog or website like a Patreon or an Only Fans account. They could also be a creator of some kind. Maybe they design their own clothes or jewelry for example. They may own a business revolving around cosmetics or a massage institute. The possibilities are endless. For some of you, I feel like your person could be having several occupations within the same field. For example, think of a model that could also be a fashion designer. Or an actor that could also be directing their own movies.

As for hobbies, again, beauty and physicality seem to be the key themes here. There's also traveling. This person is definitely a foody. They may also enjoy buying clothes, collecting objects. They may like to learn new languages or to cook specialities from various cultures. They could also enjoy doing DIYs. Knitting their own clothes, doing their home decor and so on. This person feels very venusian and earthy in their energy. So anything revolving around pleasure, the body, the earth. Gardening. Taking care of their body by doing gua sha, meditation, yoga. And so on.

[loaisacult]

LOA IS A CULT. Everyone Including myself and those who are familiar with it, know it’s a cult! I know everyone lies for attention or to live in the end because I used to be a big blogger myself. I won't reveal who I was, but I saw firsthand how these bloggers, claiming to be friends in real life, are actually deceiving everyone—they're all liars. Behind the scenes, they're working regular jobs while curating content from friends and family to share as their own as proof. Many of them have multiple accounts and blogs to give the illusion of authenticity. If you don't believe me, create a fake account and replicate the process—fabricate a success story, and watch as bloggers emerge from the shadows seeking help. Most of them have disappeared now... I wonder why that is, lol. It's time to open your eyes to the reality behind these façades and question the true motives driving this deceitful tumblr .

Despite the presence of manifestors, witches, and astrologists manifesting against Donald Trump in the world it's amusing to see that he still emerged victorious and by a whole lot!!!

It's worth noting that among the founders of the law of assumption and the void state on platforms like Tumblr, inconsistencies and inaccuracies have surfaced in their stories over time – there seems to be a trend of untruthfulness, among them (it might be interesting for you to verify this observation by checking out posts from your favorite bloggers, especially the newer ones; I've taken a look and it appears they're all just making their posts using GPT !

"Persist with belief"; A call to continue holding onto faith and dedication similar, to how spiritual groups encourage their followers to stay steadfast in their beliefs.

“Embrace the mysterious without needing evidence." This mindset echoes the inclination towards accepting the unknown and intangible elements of existence often upheld by certain groups that prioritize faith in the unseen, over concrete proof.

Echoing the cults claims of enlightenment or salvation, without tangible evidence but guaranteeing miraculous transformations assures me of its validity.

Despite the uncovering of deceit and dishonesty by individuals within a system built on mistruth; trust and belief persist unshaken. Mirroring the resilience shown by groups, in the face of revealed falsehood.

"When someone blindly follows something or someone else – it's, like trusting without proof of why or how things work out in the end."

“Discover the truth within yourself”. Encouraging the exploration of truths and insights through belief in something greater; a familiar motif, in spiritual practices.

Encouraging connection, with the energy of the universe is a spiritual idea that highlights the importance of harmonizing with greater forces beyond our sight.

"Fulfill your destiny"; The concept of shaping your own future through faith alone is frequently referenced in spiritual communities as a means to claim authority, over your own life path.

“Rise above the boundaries of the realm " suggesting the possibility of surpassing earthly restrictions through belief in something greater; mirroring stories of spiritual groups seeking elevated levels of existence.

Calling upon the power of the Encouraging believers to tap into mystical powers is a common theme, in teachings of spiritual groups that offer promises of special intervention or extraordinary abilities.

These instances provide insight into the use of language, with spiritual cult like tendencies that focus on faith and commitments that extend beyond tangible proof.

Please, there are bloggers out there sharing and telling us to save Palestine, claiming you can manifest a trillion dollars out of thin air, yet they can't manifest an end to war or even a simple solution. They say you can't control other people, yet they talk about manifesting specific people,, changing your family completely, or even your own race. You all were claiming you were manifesting Harris. I thought manifestation never fails, loool. "Oh, just persist, it will reflect like Neville leaving the war," they say, but all Neville managed could very well fall under the coincidence category, just like healing a burned hand, hahahahah. It's baffling that people are wasting their lives on something they know deep down is false. For the children in this community, just stick to a routine, focus on school and work, and foster your own life. While doing so, perhaps listen to subliminals, but don't rely on these vicious lies. Your time and energy are too precious to be spent on such unfounded claims.

Before you start getting defensive in my comments, take a moment to think and tell me how long you've been manifesting. How long have you been persisting in this process? Share in the comments first, and reflect on how little has actually changed. When you ask questions of these bloggers, why do they always seem to victim blame you instead of providing real answers? They claim to love and care about you so much, yet they charge for subliminals and can't manifest even simple things like you entering the void state. They won't manifest for your mental health desires, despite all the supposedly enlightening infographics they share. They talk about being able to shift reality and consciousness, yet they can't offer real help. Isn't this just typical cult behavior? It's time to question the authenticity of these practices and recognize the inconsistencies.

Some of these bloggers are in their 20s and live on disability, which gives them both the time and money to spread misinformation and false hopes. If you're young and still have potential, please make wise choices. Some aspects of spirituality are indeed real, and manifesting can be a genuine practice, but remember there's a reason why 99% of these bloggers are deceitful. They all eventually leave before their lies catch up with them. It's a disgrace that they pretend to help you in their DMs while knowing you're struggling with issues like poverty and abuse. I truly hope things improve for you, but don't rely on this cult-like mentality.

Critics might come into the comments and claim you just have doubts, but that's not the case. Once I left the Law of Assumption and started genuinely working, studying, and ensuring my grades were satisfactory, my life changed. I got a boyfriend, landed my dream job, and even took steps towards my desired appearance with a nose job. These achievements didn’t just materialize from thin air; they came from hard work. I accomplished more in three months after leaving the cult than some do in five years. I know people who've been in this community for a decade—when will they wake up to reality? That nagging feeling of doubt is actually common sense trying to prevent you from ruining your life.

How many times are you going to think, "I can't tolerate my life; I'm just going to shift," before it becomes unbearable and you realize you're stuck? How many liars need to be exposed? How many times do people have to be scammed before they see the truth? The so-called void masters aren’t helping; if they could truly access the void, they'd expose the liars. But then they’d have to admit they're lying too, and that no one has achieved these creative writing promises. It's all for attention and affirming to manifest is not a magic solution.

Let's be real here—your favorite bloggers allowed the Turing administration to achieve a landslide victory, with the court gone, the Senate gone, the House gone, and the residence done. Project 2025 is in motion, but sure, everyone’s supposed to be GOD, right? You people are worse than religious fanatics. I secured my visa because I knew otherwise, I'd be stuck here; you can't rely on the fake law of assumption. Go ask your bloggers why Trump won, and they'll just tell you to persist or claim it's all an illusion. Seriously? We'll see how much of an illusion it is once Palestine is wiped off the map, and all these so-called void masters can do is make a note to ignore the 3D world, loool. It's absurd that they think such real-world issues can simply be brushed aside with wishful thinking. Time to question these beliefs and face reality.

This message isn't directed at the older members of this cult because, at this point, only you can wake yourself up. But to the younger ones, please focus on building your life in the actual world. It's very real, and your suffering will only worsen if you keep clinging to false hopes.

To all the bloggers who know they're spreading lies, go ahead and manifest that my post gets deleted. I apologize for even considering that some of you revise events where people have literally died. Try revising this post or imagine me apologizing. It's time to stop spreading deceit and start facing the truth. Your actions have consequences, and it's crucial to start acknowledging the reality of the world we live in.

Even those who claim to manifest outside of time are no different—they're all selling courses for hundreds of dollars each month, with packages reaching into the thousands. It's ironic, isn't it? They preach about manifesting abundance yet charge exorbitant fees for their wisdom. Just think about it for a moment: if they could truly manifest unlimited wealth and success, why would they need to profit off of your hard-earned money? The truth is, their business model depends on your belief in their promises, and they capitalize on that by offering overpriced courses that are often filled with recycled content. This practice raises questions about the authenticity of their teachings and whether they genuinely have your best interests at heart.

The feeling you’re having is your body and mind trying to tell you there's truth in what I'm saying. It's like they're working to save you from falling into the trap of delusions. You are caught up in loa and you’re actually caught up in their own illusions. Many of these successful loa folks outside of tumblr grew up in wealthy families, living good lives, and got richer with a mix of luck and hard work. That's why so much of this community feels ridiculous; it's mostly made up of kids chasing dreams and adults spinning lies or looking for attention because they have too much free time.

Society keeps these cycles going, making it easy to fool ourselves. The temptation of quick success and promises of an easy life are hard to resist, especially for those always surrounded by comfort and now searching for something deeper than just money. For some, the LOA community seems like a beacon of hope and purpose. But it's important to see that while some find value, others get caught in a loop of broken promises, clinging to the idea that just thinking positively will bring success without real effort.

This way of thinking can will you ppl away from reality, you’re following and worshipping people seeking likes and attention takes the place of real achievements. LOA IS A CULT. Please wake up

[think-like-a-poet]

Traitor- CL16

Part 1- Traitor ( you are here)

Part 2- Take me back to the night we met

Part 3- Bust your windows out your car

Boyfriend Charles Leclerc x singer Fem!Reader

Summary: You found out that your boyfriend cheated on you and your friends help you pack up.

wc: 1200+

A/N: I am using Alex for the photos, but of course no hate to her.

F1Gossip

F1Gossip: Charles Leclerc spotted on a yacht with a mysterious woman. Are Charles and singer Y/N L/N, his 'current' girlfriend, broken up after five years of dating?

-

Cl16ferarri: Charles nooo

Y/NisBest: All Men do is lie

F1Ferarrifan: I can't defend you anymore Charles. WHYYYY

Y/n/Charles: They were suppose to get married.

-> clsuppermarcy: they were together for 5 years. How can that not mean anything to him???

Lovegossip: Maybe they just broke up. He didn't have to cheat.

User682: Home wrecker

LebeYN: I feel a new album coming

-> SingerF1: I hope so

HateYm: Finally, i hated her

-> Supportynalways: Fuck off

-------------

You couldn't believe it. When you opened up Twitter and saw that your boyfriend, now an ex-boyfriend, was trending you didn't expect it to be because of this. Charles had been spotted with a woman on a yacht. They were standing to close to each other, to close to be friends. Your gut feelings were confirmed when you saw the next photo. They were laying on a sunbed, this woman on top of Charles, making out. The next photo was Charles kissing her, it kept going.

You had felt sick to your stomach by the look of it. How could you be so stupid to let this happen. He had told you that he was going to a meeting with his team. Well this looked highly unprofessional and definitely a job for HR. Did those five years mean nothing to him?

You had gotten up from the couch to pack your bags. You were still in your apartment, in Charles apartment. You tried to get everything in your suitcases, not wanting to go back and see Charles. You know that if he asks to forgive him you wouldn't be able to resist him.

You heard your phone ringing and saw that it was Pierre. Not knowing if Pierre already knew and wanted to talk about that or if it was an emergency, you picked up. "Bonjour Pierre," you greeted through the phone. You placed the phone on the duvet so you could continue while speaking. "Salut, are you okay?" he asked right away. Was Pierre really asking you this, probably knowing what is going on. Being Charles' s best friend he should not be doing this.

Placing some clothes inside the suitcase you answered "Never been better," The answer was filled with a thick layer of sarcasm. Tears were now streaming down your face as you tried to keep your breathing steady. "I am going to get you with Kika. We will be there in 20 minutes, please don't leave." you heard a car start in the background and you couldn't believe what was happening. Even though you, Pierre and Kika were close, you were friends with them because of Charles. Charles had been the one to introduce you to his best friend, who later became one of your closest friends. "You don't have to. I can just take a cab to the airport, you don't have to ruin your time." you snicked.

You heard a voice in the background of the phone and before you knew it Kika's voice was filling the phone speaker. "Hello Honey, don't even try to resist. We will pick you up. You are in no state to be alone. We will get some take out and watch a movie. " you smile at her comment. You love her for this.

"Wouldn't it be weird for Pierre. I mean that jerk is his best friend." you heard a soft 'put it on speaker' before hearing the french mans voice again. "He is, but not right now. I don't tolerate cheating. I will not take his side on this." laughing you finally agree with their suggestion of picking you up. "Alright, I am still packing so you don't need to be so fast. I am trying to get five whole years into two suitcases. "

Everywhere you looked in the apartment it reminded you of Charles. He had asked you to move in after 1 year of dating and you had abruptly moved all your possessions into his apartment. It had become your home. You had filled it with furniture you found in stores. Your plants were in all the Corners and there was no way to take those all with you. Pictures of you and Charles were standing on your nightstand, his eyes looking right at you. Had you been so blind to see that it was all fake?

He hadn't even tried to call you after the gossip was all on the internet. You knew that he had seen it, that boy was always looking up his own name. He had to know what people were thinking of him. He had seen the pictures, seen the way people were thinking and he didn't even try to talk to you.

You heard a knock on the door and screamed that the door was open. Not even ten seconds later Kika was by your side and took you into a hug. "I am so sorry honey. Men are truely awful." you couldn't help but let tears stream down your face as your wrapped your arms around the Portuguese woman. "Don't let your boyfriend hear that." you joked and

"I am not here to judge, only to carry your stuff out of here. I have an extra box for your books."He held up a big carton box, two more laying next to him "I don't know if everything fits if you need more stuff in these, but at least more than those suitcases. " Pierre walked towards the bookshelf which was mostly filled with your books. You have always adored reading, but because of your singing career you didn't have much time for it. "Just tell me which one are you favorites and I put them all in and move them to my car. We do need to hurry a bit because I know that Charles is on a flight back."

Of course that man was coming back home. That is why she wanted to leave so fast as she could to do everything to avoid that jerk. "If you can grab all the limited edition and hardcover ones first that would be great. For the rest just fill them with what space is left. I am really thankful for your help." Pierre shrugs his shoulders as if it wasn't a big deal. He started to place all the books carefully into the boxes. Kika had walked to your bathroom to get your make up and skin care products.

After ten more minutes of packing up and checking if you had all the important stuff, you three left the apartment and walked towards Pierre's car with the suitcases. Kika went to sit next to you in the back and Pierre behind the wheel. "What do you want to eat?" the model asked. You didn't really mind so long it wasn't ice cream. Charles had taken a lot of his own brand home but his trainer didn't let him eat it, so you had been trying to get rid of all those tubs by eating them. "I just want some sloppy, salty McDonalds fries. And maybe a burger."

Pierre had put it on the radio and started to drive to the main road. "McDonalds it is."

Part 2

[antiporn-activist]

I thought y'all should read this

I have a free trial to News+ so I copy-pasted it for you here. I don't think Jonathan Haidt would object to more people having this info.

Tumblr wouldn't let me post it until i removed all the links to Haidt's sources. You'll have to take my word that everything is sourced.

End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

By Jonathan Haidt

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.

As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likelyto live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.

Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.

Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound, but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.

But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.

My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

1. The Decline of Play and Independence 

Human brains are extraordinarily large compared with those of other primates, and human childhoods are extraordinarily long, too, to give those large brains time to wire up within a particular culture. A child’s brain is already 90 percent of its adult size by about age 6. The next 10 or 15 years are about learning norms and mastering skills—physical, analytical, creative, and social. As children and adolescents seek out experiences and practice a wide variety of behaviors, the synapses and neurons that are used frequently are retained while those that are used less often disappear. Neurons that fire together wire together, as brain researchers say.

Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.

Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play.

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults.

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions––exacerbated parental fears. Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting. In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

2. The Virtual World Arrives in Two Waves

The internet, which now dominates the lives of young people, arrived in two waves of linked technologies. The first one did little harm to Millennials. The second one swallowed Gen Z whole.

The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).

The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).

Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007)—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent, and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.

3. Techno-optimism and the Birth of the Phone-Based Childhood

The phone-based childhood created by that second wave—including not just smartphones themselves, but all manner of internet-connected devices, such as tablets, laptops, video-game consoles, and smartwatches—arrived near the end of a period of enormous optimism about digital technology. The internet came into our lives in the mid-1990s, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. By the end of that decade, it was widely thought that the web would be an ally of democracy and a slayer of tyrants. When people are connected to each other, and to all the information in the world, how could any dictator keep them down?

In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.

You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns, even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.

Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.

It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.

We had no idea what we were doing.

4. The High Cost of a Phone-Based Childhood

In Walden, his 1854 reflection on simple living, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of … life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” It’s an elegant formulation of what economists would later call the opportunity cost of any choice—all of the things you can no longer do with your money and time once you’ve committed them to something else. So it’s important that we grasp just how much of a young person’s day is now taken up by their devices.

The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average. The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.

In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.

The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s, and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media. Exercise declined, too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.

But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?

Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.

First, real-world interactions are embodied, meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.

Second, real-world interactions are synchronous; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.

Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication, or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.

Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.

These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.

Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.

5. So Many Harms

The debate around adolescents’ use of smartphones and social media typically revolves around mental health, and understandably so. But the harms that have resulted from transforming childhood so suddenly and heedlessly go far beyondmental health. I’ve touched on some of them—social awkwardness, reduced self-confidence, and a more sedentary childhood. Here are three additional harms.

Fragmented Attention, Disrupted Learning

Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly—one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.

It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer. This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.

Addiction and Social Withdrawal

The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.

Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?

The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “Internet gaming disorder,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.

Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.

I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?

The Decay of Wisdom and the Loss of Meaning 

During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.

This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why videos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.

All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.

When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today. 

Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that, from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.

6. Young People Don’t Like Their Phone-Based Lives

How can I be confident that the epidemic of adolescent mental illness was kicked off by the arrival of the phone-based childhood? Skeptics point to other events as possible culprits, including the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming, the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting and the subsequent active-shooter drills, rising academic pressures, and the opioid epidemic. But while these events might have been contributing factors in some countries, none can explain both the timing and international scope of the disaster.

An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.

Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, writes,

"The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier."

A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:

I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.

Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

7. Collective-Action Problems

Social-media companies such as Meta, TikTok, and Snap are often compared to tobacco companies, but that’s not really fair to the tobacco industry. It’s true that companies in both industries marketed harmful products to children and tweaked their products for maximum customer retention (that is, addiction), but there’s a big difference: Teens could and did choose, in large numbers, not to smoke. Even at the peak of teen cigarette use, in 1997, nearly two-thirds of high-school students did not smoke.

Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.

A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.

Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.

This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem. It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.

Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.

8. Four Norms to Break Four Traps

Young people and their parents are stuck in at least four collective-action traps. Each is hard to escape for an individual family, but escape becomes much easier if families, schools, and communities coordinate and act together. Here are four norms that would roll back the phone-based childhood. I believe that any community that adopts all four will see substantial improvements in youth mental health within two years.

No smartphones before high school  

The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study, these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.

No social media before 16

The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.

Phone‐free schools 

Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up.

More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.

It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.

The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.

9. What Are We Waiting For?

An essential function of government is to solve collective-action problems. Congress could solve or help solve the ones I’ve highlighted—for instance, by raising the age of “internet adulthood” to 16 and requiring tech companies to keep underage children off their sites.

In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.

There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org, suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).

Parents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.

The four norms I have proposed cost almost nothing to implement, they cause no clear harm to anyone, and while they could be supported by new legislation, they can be instilled even without it. We can begin implementing all of them right away, this year, especially in communities with good cooperation between schools and parents. A single memo from a principal asking parents to delay smartphones and social media, in support of the school’s effort to improve mental health by going phone free, would catalyze collective action and reset the community’s norms.

We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.

This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

[n1ght0f-nyx]

mha boys with their quirkless au! jobs- Headcanons

i got bored and im procrastinating actual fics so here this is ig!! characters- izuku midoryria, katsuki bakugo, shoto todoroki, denki kamanari, ejirio Kirishima, fumikage tokoyami, koji koda, mezo shoji, tamaki amajiki, hanta sero, tenya iida

Izuku Midoriya - Detective or Analyst

Majorly detail-oriented, he over-prepares and strategizes with backup plans for his backup plans.

Known for highly detailed reports; they’re both impressive and a tad overwhelming.

Can get totally absorbed in research, like spending entire days analyzing social media for clues.

Frequently says, "The clues were there—you just had to look," as if narrating a detective show.

Runs on coffee and protein bars, completely invested in his cases.

His desk looks chaotic with notes and photos scattered everywhere, but he knows exactly where everything is.

Becomes the “did you know?” person at social gatherings, sharing obscure trivia.

His obsessive streak makes him revisit case files repeatedly.

Gets overly excited about new gadgets, especially anything with a “zoom and enhance” function.

Katsuki Bakugo - Personal Trainer or Chef

Commands with intensity, whether grilling someone in the gym or grilling steaks in the kitchen.

In the gym, he pushes clients to their limits, which they both dread and love him for.

He’s as knowledgeable about nutrition as he is about weightlifting—skip his advice at your peril.

Takes skipping leg day personally, calling it "a disgrace to all athletes."

Wins every cook-off but hates it when people compliment his food; he’s all business in the kitchen.

Runs his kitchen like boot camp—there’s no messing around under his watch.

Works out even on his days off; he’s fueled by the grind.

Secretly rolls his eyes at fitness influencers but will do a protein shake tutorial for cash.

Yells, “Do you want to stay weak?!” if he catches anyone cheating reps.

“Self-care” to him is just a mental strength exercise; you toughen up or move out.

Shoto Todoroki - Lawyer or Therapist

Reserved and perceptive, he’d be a formidable lawyer, calm and unshakable in court.

Not overly enthusiastic about his work, but he knows he’s great at it.

While people think he’s distant, he’s actually very empathetic and insightful.

Straightforward yet gentle, his clients appreciate his no-nonsense therapeutic approach.

As a lawyer, he’d specialize in taking down the unjust, handling high-stakes cases with ease.

Owns a vast collection of ties, barely noticing the variety himself but others sure do.

Prefers listening, making his quiet presence seem mysterious.

Treats himself to something small after big victories, like a quiet solo ice cream celebration.

Misses jokes occasionally, but people find his delayed reactions endearing.

Known for offering thoughtful advice, especially to those questioning life choices.

Denki Kaminari - DJ or Social Media Influencer

Natural at hyping up a crowd, making DJing feel effortless.

All about good vibes, even if it means playing crowd-pleasers more than deep cuts.

Boasts a huge social media following, constantly interacting with fans.

Always a few days behind trends but plays it off like he’s an innovator.

Gets sidetracked on live streams, responding to comments like he’s hanging out with friends.

Calls his fans “Denki-squad” and treats them like his close pals.

Buys flashy gadgets that he half-understands how to use, just for the aesthetic.

Always “goes live” if anything remotely exciting is happening around him.

Knows every meme song, dropping them like he's got an internal playlist.

Excessive with hashtags, yet somehow it works for his brand.

Eijiro Kirishima - Firefighter or Construction Worker

First in line to respond to an emergency, he’d run into a burning building without hesitation.

Embodies responsibility, always ready to go above and beyond.

Dedicates free time to community projects like building playgrounds.

Known for drinking multiple protein shakes daily to keep up his strength.

Takes pride in being reliable, volunteering for extra shifts to support the team.

Appears in firefighter calendars, where his popularity skyrockets.

Has a small following of neighborhood kids who adore him.

Constantly cracks dad jokes, his hearty laugh always filling the room.

Gets good-natured ribbing from his friends, but his solid character makes it easy to take.

Saves lives like it’s just another day, then heads to the gym for an after-work workout.

Fumikage Tokoyami - Poet or Author

Writes in dim, cozy coffee shops with dark, atmospheric vibes.

Known for abstract poetry that sometimes only he fully grasps.

When he’s not writing, he’s buried in gothic literature.

Runs a mysterious blog where he posts poems and eerie stories.

Takes his coffee black, no sugar—anything else would compromise the flavor.

Friends think he’s enigmatic, though he’s simply introverted.

Dresses like every day is a moody poetry reading, favoring dark attire and unique accessories.

Quietly garners a following for his “haunting” works but never tells a soul.

Rarely performs live, but when he does, he’s met with enthusiastic finger-snaps.

Keeps a journal that’s practically sacred—he won’t let anyone read it.

Koji Koda - Park Ranger or Vet Tech

Gentle with every creature, treating each animal encounter like a treasured interaction.

Knows endless animal facts, stopping hikes to point out specific birds and plants.

Considers the forest a second home and refers to animals by names he’s given them.

Animals instinctively trust him; he’s practically an animal whisperer.

Loves natural remedies and can talk about herbs like they’re magic.

Has a way of convincing people to adopt pets because they’re just “so cute.”

Blushes when praised for his kindness; it’s just who he is.

Popular with kids who love his animal knowledge and gentle nature.

Known for leading long, informative nature walks, always taking his time.

Prefers animals over people most days and has countless photos of rescued animals.

Mezo Shoji - Wilderness Survival Guide or Youth Counselor

The “quiet giant” on outdoor trips, guiding with a protective watch over everyone.

Preps gear meticulously, never forgetting a single item.

Has a knack for discovering secluded, scenic camping spots.

Amazing with kids, his steady nature makes him a beloved camp counselor.

Has a calm, reassuring vibe that draws people in effortlessly.

Knows endless survival skills; always has a tip or trick in his back pocket.

Enjoys nighttime hikes, talking about constellations in a thoughtful, poetic way.

Treats each trip like an important bonding experience, bringing the group together.

Carries spare marshmallows because he knows someone always forgets.

Compassionate and patient, especially with less outdoorsy folks, quietly setting them at ease.

Tamaki Amajiki - Marine Biologist or Florist

Thrives quietly in his element, tending to ocean life or delicate blooms.

Committed to preserving marine habitats, he’s passionate but too shy to boast.

His deep knowledge surprises people when he speaks up, making an impact.

Friends are amazed by his niche knowledge—he could ramble about coral reefs for hours.

His floral arrangements are carefully crafted, almost reverent in their precision.

Quietly determined to protect the environment, joining cleanups or advocacy events.

Adds hidden messages to flower arrangements, though few notice the subtle artistry.

In marine biology, he’s published numerous papers on sea creatures, always under the radar.

Works with kids effortlessly, they love his gentle explanations.

Finds joy in rare plants or marine life, though he blushes if anyone mentions it.

Hanta Sero - Event Planner or Stunt Coordinator

Organized to the last detail, he keeps his events running like clockwork.

Can handle last-minute emergencies with a calm, “I got this” approach.

In the stunt world, he’s dedicated to safety, while making things fun and exciting.

Adrenaline junkie, he loves ziplining, bungee jumping, and anything that feels risky.

He’s a great listener, always taking others’ ideas to make events inclusive.

Stays cool under pressure, adapting quickly to whatever comes his way.

Good at making tiny changes on the fly, never losing sight of the big picture.

Finds the best deals for supplies, he’s got a knack for party logistics.

Ensures killer sound systems, knowing good music elevates any event.

Somehow pulls off a laid-back vibe even while he’s juggling a million tasks.

Tenya Iida - Professor or Physical Trainer

The professor who hands out a 20-page syllabus but genuinely believes it’s necessary.

Known for his strict yet fair approach, he challenges students but offers support.

Obsessive about lesson plans, updating them constantly for “maximum efficiency.”

In the gym, he’s relentless about proper form and discipline.

Can’t handle slacking, probably shuts the door precisely five minutes after class starts.

Students tease him, but they secretly appreciate his rigor and dedication.

Motivated by improvement, he’s always seeking ways to upgrade his methods.

Hyped to offer inspirational speeches that are almost intimidating in their passion.

Puts extra time into student support; he’s the go-to for anyone serious about self-betterment.

[lilislegacy]

I did a similar poll a while ago but I’m doing it again and narrowing it down to the most popular picks from the last poll. Also, these are just full-time careers. I do love him being a marine life rescuer and a rescue diver, but those are more on-the-side jobs/volunteer things.

If you think it’s something else not listed below, select the option that you like the most and then comment your other idea!

[renmorris]

Kim, the mender

I’ve been thinking so much about Kim navigating his own deep loneliness and touch starved-ness through caring for others, and what I feel are implicit statements made by the game that he studied emergency medical first response as his mandatory RCM civil service role

(his year working in body processing, him knowing how to keep Harry alive and able to walk after the tribunal, the morale healing pats on the back, even offering his jacket to Acele etc)

It’s unselfish and not something he has to justify to himself as an indulgence, it’s practical. It’s being a good coworker. Kim mentions repeatedly that gets seen officers in worst states than Harry and I don’t think Kim is unaware that Harry absolutely thrives on his reassurances and praise.

@1tbls has some Kim posts I mull over a lot (one of them is just the sentence 'Kim's horny little need to take care of Harry' because I really feel like that hits the nail on the head. another is the one about how Kim does seem to have self analyzed himself but in a kind of shallow way.) I really agree with that, it does feel like we're meeting Kim after he’s done some internal processing of his own. in the fashion police conversation he mentions that he used to be very uptight before he started wearing plainclothes etc

This is all to say that I know fandom is understandably wary of writing Kim as Harry’s caregiver and that’s good 👍 it’s very good to be aware of racist fandom trends and push against those. But for Kim there is textually, I think, the fact that he does thrive on caring for other people. It gives him a kind of authoritative position, and stability.

(It even ties into his tailoring hobby, he’s a mender of clothes and people, a mechanic, and wants to be that for the city so badly.)

There’s a lot of reasons why Kim wants to take care of Harry, why he believes that he can come back from all of this. Obviously one is that if Harry who is white, who works in this legendary precinct with his heroes, who puts in these impossible hours and burns himself alive for the RCM, who is ranked Double Yefreitor can be so easily left to die by the RCM…it means Kim never stood a chance. That his dwindling faith in the system means nothing and he has thrown his life away in this job.

(Likewise Kim also means this for Harry- If Kim is seen as disposable then there was never any point in being diligent and clean. Both paths are thankless and have left them to rot)

But the other I think is that this is how Kim copes, by taking care of others. He is so very careful about indulging himself in ways that he feels are extraneous. But this is a kind of closeness he is allowed to have, it does good for other people.

And over time this is and will be where Harry sneaks in past his defenses and takes care of him back. Get loved, idiot! Be cared for, bino! ❤️

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Happy National Zookeeper Week!

I’ll admit, I’m feeling a little spicy about it this year (well, every year) because zoos use the celebration for lots of positive facility PR, yet staff don’t often get the support and respect that is claimed in those posts.

So I want to share this great article written by a zoo industry consulting group last year looking at the reality of what happens when a workforce ends up conflicted between their passion (zoos and animals) and pragmatism (paying rent, existing in a capitalist society). They assessed AZA compensation rates by region against things such as a living wage and rental rates in the area. (All text formatting within quotes, such as bold and italics, is original to the article text.)

I cannot give the Canopy Group enough support for the way they framed this research:

“By observing the economics of keeper compensation, it’s no secret that keepers land on the lower end of the wage spectrum. Like all other wages and salaries, the market value of keeper compensation is driven by several economic factors – including the size of the labor pool, the rigor and danger of the work, the technical ability required, and the educational requirements. However, there is one factor that artificially lowers the market value of keeper compensation more than any other: passion.

In this article, we’ll take a look at why passion lowers the market value of animal care worker wages. More importantly, we’ll consider many factors that have emerged in recent years that are making people reevaluate the value of following their passion – a trend contributing to The Great Resignation, especially as it applies to zoos, aquariums, and similar organizations. (…)

The argument here is passion versus pragmatism: the unknown versus the sure thing. It is a decision all zookeepers and animal care technicians have made. Working with animals is immensely rewarding, but this passion is also very popular. This, historically, has meant that the keeper candidate pool is very large. Therefore, if the wage is livable and working conditions are reasonable, the pool should remain large. In a very real sense, a passion for animals drives down the market value of keeper compensation. Anyone who has been through an Economics 101 course will recognize this as a fundamental market principle: supply vs. demand.

However, many zoos and aquariums are having a more difficult time filling positions than normal and have started to see higher turnover rates in recent years. This begs the question – is the current keeper wage too low?”

Their findings?

Here’s their graph of “the median wage of keepers from organizations in different AZA-defined regions” from an AZA survey done in 2021. (Median is the type of average that looks at the middle of a data set’s range).

The median wage for AZA keepers in the South/Southeast was just over $15/hr at the low end, and the median wage for AZA keepers in the Far West / PNW was a little under $26/hr. That’s pretty dang low everywhere, especially when you factor in the increased cost of living in places like the West Coast. Also consider that looking at the median wage doesn’t mean this reflects just entry-level compensation - this data indicates the the compensation middle for all keeper positions, including people who have built their careers as keepers in those places long-term.

Then, they compared those wages to the “living wage” in each region - which they defined as “a calculation of what it takes to live in a particular area, without any other income. A living wage calculation takes into consideration how many earners are in a household, how many children are being supported, etc. The living wage includes the costs of all the basic items a household needs to be self-sufficient.”

“If you receive a wage for a job that is below the living wage, then you are essentially taking a negative net income. This is unsustainable for the long term, and essentially defines where wages start to exploit passion.”

Here’s a figure they provided using the MIT Living Wage Calculator showing the average living wage for each of the AZA regions. The chart on the left shows the living wage for a single person with no kids; the second, for two parents with two incomes and one child to support.

“By comparing the two graphs [to the earlier graph of the AZA median compensation rates], we find that median wages in the Southeast/South and Southwest regions are lower than the living wage for each household configuration in those regions. In other words, if you are a single person household or part of a two-income household raising 1 child in the South, a starting keeper salary will likely leave you with a negative net income. While many people work at this level, it increases the risk of accumulating debt, lowers a person’s ability to afford a home, set a much later retirement age, and can lead to many other negative, long-term effects.”

Big yikes, right?

Next, they looked at living wage vs. compensation for single parents.

“The single-parent living wage exceeds the average keeper wage in all AZA regions. In fact, the living wage required as a single parent is double the average AZA keeper wage in some regions.”

And then they did housing, specifically, being able to purchase a home.

“In many places, even a two-income household at an average keeper salary would not purchase a mid-level home. This means that keepers have to wait far longer than their peers to purchase a home. While paying rent in the meantime, this rent will account for a larger portion of their income than their peers. All in, these effects can set hopeful homeowners back years or decades.”

Canopy’s conclusion was something anyone involved in the field knew was coming.

“Companies like Chipotle, McDonalds, Best Buy, FedEx, Home Depot, Publix, and Walmart are all offering similar starting wages near starting keeper wages – plus many fringe benefits (like tuition reimbursement) and ample advancement opportunities. Many potential keepers in younger generations are putting their passion on the shelf so they can meet basic standard-of-living concerns.

To attract and retain quality candidates, an organization must consider the journey each new employee would have to make over their career. If the journey is fraught with massive debt, decreased disposable income, and limited career opportunities, then you are limiting your potential candidate pool to the small group of people who have decided that following their passion is worth significant lifelong financial hardship. There are many potential candidates out there willing to sacrifice and arm and leg for animals and conservation, but they wouldn’t dare jeopardize the financial future of their dependents and families.”

This is something I’ve heard about for years, and seen first hand. The low average wage at zoological facilities has been damaging their ability to hire and retain skilled staff for as long as I’ve been involved in the industry. I know so many zookeepers who still have roommates into their 30’s, or work multiple jobs, just to be able to make ends meet.

There’s a mythology about zookeeping jobs, a narrative that seeps into the field and actively exploits people’s passion for the job: it tells people that they’re so lucky to be able to work with these rare and cool animals; that they’re greedy and ungrateful when they ask for more compensation because they’re privileged to get to have the job at all. It says that most people would give anything to have these opportunities, so current zookeepers are interchangable and easily replaceable. Ask for too much? Push for a living wage? There’s always someone willing to take your spot. Not all facilities perpetuate this mentality - some places do treat their staff well without intentionally manipulating them to stay them in unsustainable jobs, and there can be legitimate financial reasons that limit staff compensation (mostly at smaller facilities, afaik) - but it’s a reality in the field.

For a long time, this type of mentality towards staff was sustainable. There really were always more people wanting to work in the field. But now, after three years of pandemic stressors and inflation, it’s starting to be a problem. A lot of staff left during the last few years, and facilities are having a really hard time hiring people and retaining them for any duration. I think a large part of that is low compensation rates. People are prioritizing long-term financial stability and recognizing when their passion is being exploited.

When I first started on tumblr back in 2011, there was a whole group of us within the United States who were baby zookeepers or volunteering as industry hopefuls. We all became friends, and I’ve stayed in touch with, or at least aware of, most of them as their careers progressed. Of the 10-15 or so people in that cohort? I can think of three who are still employed in the zoo industry. Everyone else has moved on into other fields - often with great grief over the loss - because of the extreme emotional labor, the physical exhaustion, and the lack of appropriate compensation.

But I guess that annual pizza party, being featured on social media, and maybe getting additional snacks all week makes up for it all?

[libraford]

We are having a rough 2023 and it's about to get rougher.

Our attempt to buy a home fell through, our attempt to move to a cheaper apartment fell through, my car needed over 1k$ in emergency repairs, stuff keeps breaking, and this month (july) our roommates are moving into their own house, which means my rent is doubled until my fiancée can find a job and/or we can get a roommate to replace them. I can make just barely enough to cover rent at my job, but it leaves very little room for food and utilities. I'm looking into subsistence programs.

Roommates were the owners of a lot of the furniture, kitchen gadgets, electronics, etc. We're getting a lot of furniture from relatives, garage sales, and buy nothing groups, but there's a handful of items that will be difficult to obtain or that are little things that add up.

Here's how you can help.

We have an Amazon wishlist, which is mostly kitchen things that we need, plus a few things that would be nice to have. We will be adding some things to the list as our roommates pack their stuff and we take inventory of our shared spaces.

I have written a lot of things. Here's a book about pretending to be a god in rural Appalachia for money, and its sequel about how many ways a wedding can go awry. Or are you nostalgic for pre-covid problems? The Glue Famine chronicles my journey through a retail trend that baffled everyone involved. Buying a book encourages authors to write more books and that is a threat!

I have two excellent cartomancy decks. The Sweeney Tarot is 10 years old and it's still a fan favorite. I just released a 10 year anniversary edition with better quality print and a nicer box.

There is also my new, experimental oracle: The Motif Deck. You can read more about this deck and what sets it apart from other decks here.

Here is my etsy, which is where you can get some cool iron on patches.

Here is my redbubble where you can get some cool stickers and other stuff, especially if you like moths or weird animals. Lots of queer things there, too! Redbubble stickers are strong enough to hold up as bumper stickers- I have noticed, if that sweetens the deal.

Here's where you can order prints of my erasure art paintings.

Also if you like some of my photos from @photo-critter some of the nature and animal ones are available for prints as well.

And if you just want to help out without getting anything in return, there is always sending a donation via Kofi.

There is absolutely no obligation to contribute, but if you've enjoyed my stories or seen something you like and needed an excuse to buy it, or if you just want to help, really we appreciate anything that comes our way.

Thank you, once again, to everyone that has offered to help. Even if its just the tiniest bit of a commission from a sticker- it helps.

[trigun-manga-overhaul]

TRIGUN ULTIMATE OVERHAUL JUNE 2024 UPDATE

OVERHAUL UPDATE 06/07/24 - Going slow, but changes are ahead.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another monthly update.

Keep an eye out this Monday, June 10th, for an upload announcement.

The push back of the Japanese volume release to next month has been helpful, as it gave the team time to breathe. The release schedule is picking up with the work, as not as much work has been done the last few months as planned. For now, TriMax Vol 7 will release the first Monday in July and our usual schedule will continue as before. If anything changes, we'll keep you all updated on that.

There's one main factor counting into the slow work and delay, but it's more personal, so if you don't want to know, then you can just skip ahead of the next bit.

~~

I, as in the project lead, am the primarily cleaner and redrawer for the project, meaning that the delays are entirely on me.

For the last year and a half I've had a job that I took as an emergency, right after I lost my translator position due to the financial crisis. Meaning, the emergency job was supposed to be temporary, just to keep food on the table until I found something I'm more qualified to do.

Things, of course, didn't turn out like that and I've worked the same retail job for one and half years now. A retail job is usually no issue for me, but this was a newly started business with an inexperience owner, so the stress levels have been very high. My boss is understanding and kind, but also very drained and fighting to stay afloat.

I've worked hard to help as much as I could, setting up inventory systems and and an online shop/catalogue, which took most of my energy for personal projects. Now that things are finally stable, I've handed in my resignation and will leave the business in August/September, and therefore hopefully also leave me with more energy and time.

~~

Anyway, with that info, it's time for a few double page spreads!

The number of double page spreads per chapter has gone up dramatically from Vol 6, and they are all highly detailed, a trend that seems to continue into Vol 8, as well. It's been requiring a lot of work to fix these up, sometimes only managing to do a single one a night.

~~

That's all for this month's update. If there are any topics or parts of our process that you want to hear more about, don't hesitate to send an ask or leave a comment on this post.

SEE YOU GUYS NEXT MONTH!

[siegecraft]

Defining spaces, work-play separation, and avoiding TTRPG burnout.

I’ve seen a lot of folks in indie TTRPGs talk about overlapping issues and experiences around feeling burned out, not being able to keep up with new games, playing games starting to feel—or actually being—always for work rather than for fun.

I have begun to think of this issue as a game is never just a game. Not in the sense that it can’t be, but that many people working in TTRPGs in some capacity don’t allow it to be. Play has become the secondary function, because the game's primary function is no longer play, but something else. Be that a playtest, an Actual Play (AP) recording, a charity stream, content creation fodder (a review, a blog post, a video essay), a self-imposed obligation to stay on top of industry trends, etc. Because it is for work rather than play, the game is no longer play.

My firmly held litany against that is twofold:

1. Name the purpose of the game.

A playtest or AP can be fun, but you can't trick yourself into believing that that instance of play is for the sake of it. There’s a book I love called The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker. One of the key takeaways is to be deeply intentional, for yourself and for the people joining you, in defining why you have gathered together. What does this do?

It frees you from the mismatched expectations that inevitably emerge when intentions are not set. The rules and expectations for a playtest are not the same as they are for play’s sake, so get everyone on the same page.

It allows you to fully take advantage of this instance of play for its primary function. Letting go of the notion that you’re “just” playing a game lets you set expectations different from those in a space where you’re playing for play’s sake.

Whenever I playtest, be that for one hour or an intended campaign, I am extremely candid with my playtesters about what I need from them. That the expectations of the space are different than when we play together for fun.

I ran a six-hour playtest of The Prince of Nothing Good a few weekends ago. If I was just running a game for fun, I would consider that a nightmare of a game length! I would never do that to my players!

But everyone had a blast with this playtest. Because we had set aside the entire day for that purpose, and said we’d play until it was done. Everyone came in with the goal of helping me iron out some kinks in the game, and was excited to do it. And that wouldn’t have been possible without defining why we were gathering at that moment, and what we were doing to make mode of gathering work for us (dedicated time, many short breaks, blanket permission to get up from the table to meet movement/food/bio needs, I bought everyone lunch).   

2. Protect your time to play for the sake of play.

I believe the quickest way to kill your enjoyment of something is by making every instance of partaking in it work.

I’m aware there are Actual Play professionals who only play games as part of their jobs and not in their personal lives. That’s great for them, if they’ve figured out how to enjoy it (or earn enough money doing so that it doesn’t matter if they do), but the overwhelming majority of people in the game industry are simply not earning “only doing it for work” money. And until you are—and for most people in games, that will be never—you need to allow yourself time to just play games.

I’ve run a weekly home game since I got into TTRPGs, and I consider that space is sacred. Some of the players help me playtest outside of that game, but that weekly meeting is just for play, not work. Dedicating time for play to just be play makes it possible for it to be other things, too.  

I’ve never experienced anything consider close to the TTRPG burnout, exhaustion, and frustration that I’ve heard many people talk about. I’ve done it to myself with other things! I used to read and evaluate theatre scripts for work. I’ve read literally hundreds of plays. And there was a whole chunk of time where I was still doing that and I absolutely dreaded reading plays. A friend invited me to a play reading group during the pandemic and I had to decline because reading plays was synonymous with evaluating them for what was honestly not enough money to do it.

So I just stopped. I don’t read scripts for pay anymore, and I stopped reading them for fun too, because I was at a place of deficit where even doing it “just” for fun was not appealing. I’m only now getting to a place where I am interested in reading theatrical work again. It is much harder to get back to a place of enjoyment than it is to never depart in the first place.

[familyabolisher]

hey, I was reading your posts on the use of 'reading comprehension' and found them really enlightening. I'm wondering, are there similar undercurrents to how people use lack of reading comprehension to describe the tendency for people to read and interpret in bad faith online, or are they different things grouped together under the same label?

hm yeah i would say there are some similar undercurrents happening. i think glibly mocking [a lack of] reading comprehension in response to a bad-faith/hostile/animous/etc engagement (like eg. the trend of replying with 'reading comprehension questions' that aim to glibly point out logical flaws in the initial response and present it as obviously ridiculous and overblown) is falling back on that same discursive construction -- that a lack of 'reading comprehension' is embarrassing, that reading something poorly or wrongly is something you should be sure never to do in public, and whoever can score the most Reading Comprehension Points in the argument wins the discourse.

i also just find it, like, unfunny and boring. even in genuinely bad-faith interpretations of a post, it has an air of smugness to it that i find really off-putting -- it's a very, like, you sir have won the internet for today-type tone. and there are multiple cases where i've seen this Ha Ha No Reading Comprehension thing deployed to suggest that someone reading between the lines of a claim made in a post to point out eg. particular biases, particular suggestions of bigotry, that the post doesn't explicitly name but are certainly discursively present is obviously being dense or hysterical; it's an easy win in a discourse where to name something as eg. subtly racist, transphobic, misogynistic, etc., is already presumed to be hysterical overreaction by people who know better than to outright name it as such but are still predisposed to view it in that light when given the opportunity to do so covertly.

(eg: op says X; a responder points out that X implies Y and is emerging from a discourse of Z; op laughs at them by claiming that they only said X and if you're seeing Y or Z then you clearly have no reading comprehension because X without Y or Z is obvious to op's often already biased audience and the conversation is shut down.)

it's got a real like, deployment of Facts And Logic feel to it; i don't think it does a good job in actually engaging with the responder and understanding where their interpretation is coming from, which can ofc be chalked up to the fact that that's literally not what it's supposed to do -- it's supposed to get a fun dunk in and make the initial responder look silly. i more than understand frustration at people reading your posts in bad faith and i can't fairly be mad at people for lashing out about it -- i've done it before! -- but, like. i think we should just try and steer clear of discursive constructions which reify the stigmatisation of poor reading comprehension (or mediation of tone on the internet, which is also at play here).

[youryurigoddess]

The stuff dreams are made of, or the interesting case of Anthony J. Crowley

We’ve talked a bit about Crowley’s trauma and his way of reclaiming the narrative in the past, but it’s time for some deep dive into the story he’s trying to tell. A story that meanders through the fabric of time and space, slightly changing with the human fashion trends, but slowly and surely bringing the demon closer to a certain angel like the red thread of fate.

1793

Some stories start in a garden, some even Before the Beginning, but this one starts with an Arrangement. Or, to be precise, a little bit after that.

See, most of the iterations of Crowley we saw throughout the history until then didn’t delve too deep into human cultural tropes. If anything, they were the inspirations behind more or less prominent biblical figures, maybe some nameless villains matching his demonic provenance and role assigned to him by his employers.

But in the hustle and bustle of the revolutionary Paris, Crowley emerges as a prototype of the Scarlet Pimpernel — a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are sent to the guillotine. Stan Lee famously called him “the first character who could be called a superhero”.

Sir Percy Blakeney, the main character of the novel and the West End play under the same title, leads a double life. Appearing as nothing more than a wealthy fop, in reality he’s a formidable swordsman, a quick-thinking master of disguise and an escape artist. Even his own wife, Marguerite, has no idea.

Unfortunately Marguerite is being blackmailed with her brother’s life to find and expose the wanted Pimpernel. She regrets betraying her husband the moment she's forced to do it and spends the rest of the plot working to save him. She does, they make up, and return together to England.

In Aziraphale and Crowley’s case there was just a short stop for crêpes. But what seems to be an inspiration of a specific scene might as well come up later in the wider perspective of the show, so keep in mind those fragments of the musical’s libretto:

We all are caught in the middle

of one long treacherous riddle.

Can I trust you?

Should you trust me too?...

We shamble on through this hell

taking on more secrets to sell

'til there comes a day

when we sell our souls away.

We seek him here, we seek him there,

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!

Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?

Where is that damn elusive Pimpernel!

1941

The London Blitz is when we see a full-fledged iteration of the superhero Crowley performing dashing and heroic deeds under the literal cover of darkness and air bomb smoke. In a bespoke double-breasted suit and a fedora — still free from the unfortunate modern connotations from the internet culture — he’s clearly channeling Humphrey Bogart as a private investigator Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) now.

It all starts with a woman and a simple plan gone wrong: Spade’s partner is shot dead, just like the man he was supposed to be tailing upon the request of a mysterious Miss Wonderly. And when a very soft-looking, sweet-scented man named Joel Cairo appears in his office willing to pay a hefty price for a "black figure of a bird", Spade starts not only a new job, but also his own quest for truth.

On the surface, The Maltese Falcon ends happily: the killer gets caught, and the hero winds up with the Falcon. But Spade's victory is completely hollow. The Falcon itself, originally meant as a symbol of loyalty, transforms into a symbol of a corrupting, futile, and self-destructive greed that makes people betray their own loyalties.

The treasure is just a worthless forgery and he’s fallen in love with the criminal — one of the first femmes fatales on screen. Despite his feelings for her and a kiss, Spade gives her up and submits the statuette as evidence, describing it as "the stuff that dreams are made of".

Remember the eagle lectern? The eagle was believed to be flying highest in the sky and therefore closest to heaven, symbolizing the carrying of the word of God to the four corners of the world. Aziraphale in the 1941 church scene is the closest to Heaven we’ve seen him on Earth. Just look at him: dressed in a smart, well-fitted coat with peaked lapels, symbolizing his Heavenly allegiance, and doing good this time not as a work assignment, but of his own accord. Being the closest to Heaven means the furthest and most unattainable for a demon like Crowley.

The Maltese Falcon is a metaphor for unattainability — things out of reach to desire and fight for, although never truly possess. It’s “the stuff that dreams are made of”. But Crowley secured the original — made of gold and encrusted with jewels, but hiding its real value under black enamel — eerily reminiscent of the demon himself and the unending kindness behind his inappropriately tight black clothing.

Quoting Michael Ralph — the production mastermind behind Good Omens — from the S01E04 “Saturday Morning Funtime” DVD commentary, “We wanted to tip our hat to the Maltese Falcon as being a precious object that no-one thought really exists but it does”. So we can safely assume that Crowley can and will achieve his dream in the future.

1967

Do you know what else happens in 1941 in Scotland? Ian Fleming, a British naval intelligence agent, meets with the famous occultist Aleister Crowley and asks him to lead the interrogation of newly imprisoned Rudolf Hess — a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany appointed Deputy Führer — given the two men’s shared enthusiasm for the occult.

This meeting has a significant impact on Fleming’s work as a writer; Aleister Crowley becomes the inspiration for his first villain Le Chiffre and creates a blueprint for most of the James Bond’s franchise ever since 1953, the publication date of the novel Casino Royale.

Meanwhile our Anthony J. Crowley believes in himself not being the villain he’s usually and sometimes forcefully painted as, but a superhero in disguise. The character of James Bond in particular inspires him so much that he buys petrol to get the limited You Only Live Twice (1967) window decals for his Bentley, dons his own tactical turtleneck, and sets off to organize a heist like no other. Sean Connery style.

Like a typical superhero, Crowley’s once again both saved and betrayed by his love interest. Aziraphale leaves him with a thermos of Holy Water, a faint smile, and a hope that they’ll soon match their speeds to meet halfway at the Ritz. The cancelled heist is not an ending, but a promise of a new beginning. And the fact that UK decriminalizes homosexual acts in the very same year is more than telling in this regard.

2019

An exceptional situation calls for exceptional solutions, and what’s more important than the impending Apocalypse? Demon Crowley does his best to put the arsenal of his 20th century film inspirations to good use.

"Ask yourself, do you feel lucky?" Crowley drawls, clearly imitating (although slightly misquoting) the titular Dirty Harry (1971). He’s hoping to be menacing and making the point of being the one on the right side of the law and history.

Some situations require more than quoting action heroes is not everything though. He knows what to do:

A jeep was heading purposefully towards the gate, and it looked as though it was crowded with people who were about to shout questions and fire guns and not worry about which order they did this in.

[Crowley] brightened up. This was more what you might call his area of competence.

He took his hands out of his pockets and he raised them like Bruce Lee and then he smiled like Lee Van Cleef.

'Ah,' he said, 'here comes transport.'

When in doubt, Crowley acts. He transforms into a combination of a stoic martial arts phenomenon and a sardonic, menacing character. His smile alone — even on Aziraphale’s angelic face, as seen in one of the final cut scenes — seems to be enough to ward off evil spirits, angels, and humans alike.

But we all know that even as breathtaking performances as those can’t protect anyone from the cogs of the Heavenly machine and its plans.

2023

No wonder that Crowley’s tactical turtleneck comes back in style after mere four years of retirement with a self-introduction “Former Demon, hated by Heaven, loathed by Hell. How will our hero cope?”. Something has changed during this time; he’s more mature now, not playing pretend by hiding behind the usual veneer of sarcasm and movie quotes anymore. Finally comfortable with the fact that this is his own story and there’s no need to become anyone else than himself.

The bookshop fire and the Heavenly trial still seem to haunt the demon in a way that makes him realize what all humans know: that every hero is his own biggest enemy. His ultimate dream might effortlessly change into his greatest nightmare any moment now, and the only thing he can do about it is hover in a two-minute distance from the epicenter of his feelings. But Crowley has no time to work on it when a new mission appears, to protect his angel from Gabriel and the combined powers of Heaven and Hell. Even if this — rather ostentatiously — is the last thing he wants to think about at the moment.

Crowley tries to plan ahead, while his story slowly warps into a different genre due to Aziraphale’s interruptions. He eventually changes back into his usual Henley shirt after agreeing to swap places and guarding the bookshop while the angel is off to Edinburgh, collecting more clues. Did he finish his personal quest off-screen? Did he just give up on it in the whirlwind of matchmaking shenanigans? Remains to be seen.

In the S2 finale our master of disguise in yet another turtleneck proves that he can successfully infiltrate even the universe’s back office. We don’t know where he drives off in the end, but one thing is certain — he’s got a plan. And a world (and his dream) to save, like a superhero he is.