#escape from with the small amount of neegy and resources we have left after trying to survive at the bare minimum

[tuliptiger]

I! Would also love to see this studied so we can use whatever the results are to help change the things we're able to. I have been sitting here trying to figure out how to word my thoughts though.

I disagree with the hypothesis that people are chronically understimulated or at least I disagree with that as a general statement. I think that we're plenty stimulated but more importantly people with all sorts of different interests find their own stimulation just fine.

I love nature and the natural world, merlin, ebird, Inaturalist and good old notebooks and field guides are my favorite activities to go outside and do. More than anything I love birding. I also have education in natural resources and plan to live out my life with that as a career.

That being said, this last field season I worked exclusively outside, four 10 hour days outside in an area I absolutely am in love with. I still stayed up, often into the following days, watching tiktok and "satisfying" videos. Looking back I think I was stressed from, well everything. Needing money to pay for everything, the world's entire situation and americas fucked up (sorry for the language but describing it would deserve it's own post) cultural and social shifts. (While I love my career natural resources notoriously doesn't pay well, at least not the FS)

Those videos never actually made me feel better and often ruined the following day, anything I learned was questionable at best and completely devastating at worst, and the ratio of actual content I'd care about vs the rest of it was completely drowned out by the sheer volume of the library of content.

I found bird feathers and animal bones (environmental story telling forest edition), looked at bugs, spotted every animal and bird I could lay my eyes on. My crew and I would eat local berries and take breaks under the bluest sky I've ever been under, experience the awe-some views and sounds of being so far away from civilization the only way to contact us was through our radios.

That did NOT change my consumption of "stim videos" and quick content. My knowledge, curiosity, and adoration of nature was not correlated with my media use. Maybe for some people those things can be related, we're people and we're variable and nebulous but I think the issue is deeper than people being understimulated both mentally and physically.

If I had to put in a guess I'd say the larger issue is honestly stress, work and value (capital, value, worth) culture ie if you aren't creating value you are worthless. I'd also wager in correlation with these constant feelings of needing to be active and creating value, people are uncomfortable with being bored more than anything else these days.

(Sarcasm) If you're bored you can and should be making money right? How else is anyone going to pay their bills, go on vacation, have a stable life, or retire? Don't be lazy and stop staring at bugs. (End of Sarcasm)

I do not think boredom is bad at this point in my life, I'd even go as far as to say it's necessary (this would deserve it's own post to explain what I mean by this but I hope the meaning is clear enough) But capitalism doesn't have any room or patience for boredom, inactivity and monetarily valueless exploration. That's only good for your long term health and wellbeing and unsatisfied, ill people spend more money.

Addition: I rambled way too much, I am not currently good at condensing information. I just wanted to add on another piece of the puzzle, because it's really not one big thing it's a thousand different things I think.

Anyway...I just wanted to add that our infrastructure is so unfriendly to people just existing let alone exploring in urban AND rural areas it makes me furious. Birding these last couple years has really exposed me to this too. I can almost never find safe locations to pull off of roads to set up my binos or spotting scope to look at birds. Cities rarely have TRUE "loiter" friendly areas, parks are ok but USUALLY not the best for the purpose of learning about ecosystems or native ecology (unless you have a really cool city planner/city council that built parks around the idea of the local ecosystems).

I have never felt safe or welcome in residential areas either and they aren't particularly interesting in terms of biodiversity. Down town areas are out of the question due to noise, population and overall lack of the natural world. Unless you're buying things from shopping areas people dont take too kindly to you checking out the bushes and grasses around either. Urban areas don't encourage a slower pace of life and curiosity for the natural to me.

Again, if I'm not spending or making money and I'm only interested in my pretty cheap and free hobby I'm not welcome. And the final thing, this is, of course, just from my experiences and the places I've traveled. This does not encompass the entire USA let alone the world nor does it cover everyone's lived or future experiences.

I would be interested in resources and studies of why this trend of stim videos and quick content is on the rise though. I don't think any of us will like the answers but it would be a step forward to shift our society hopefully. If nothing else it could give individuals the chance to learn something about their habits to make the change for themselves.

My random unsubstantiated hypothesis of the day: the popularity of "stim" videos, fidget toys, and other things like that is a warning sign that something's Deeply Wrong with our world.

Don't freak out. I am autistic. These things are not bad. However, can we just...take a second to notice how weird it is that there are entire social media accounts full of 10-second videos of things making crunching noises, people squishing slime in their hands, and objects clacking together, and that enjoying them is mainstream and normal?

It seems that nowadays, almost everyone exhibits sensory-seeking behavior, when just a decade ago, the idea of anyone having "sensory needs" was mostly obscure. It is a mainstream Thing to "crave" certain textures or repetitive sounds.

What's even weirder, is that it's not just that "stim" content is mainstream; the way everything on the internet is filmed seems to look more like "stim" content. TikToks frequently have a sensory-detail-oriented style that is highly unusual in older online content, honing in on the tactile, visual and auditory characteristics of whatever it's showing, whether that's an eye shadow palette or a cabin in a forest.

When an "influencer" markets their makeup brand, they film videos that almost...highlight that it's a physical substance that can be smudged and smeared around. Online models don't just wear clothes they're advertising, they run their hands over them and make the fabric swish and ripple.

I think this can be seen as a symptom of something wrong with the physical world we live in. I think that almost everyone is chronically understimulated.

Spending time alone in the forest has convinced me of this. The sensory world of a forest is not only much richer than any indoor environment, it is abundant with the sorts of sensations that people seem to "crave" chronically, and the more I've noticed and specifically focused on this, the more I've noticed that the "modern" human's surroundings are incredibly flat in what they offer to the senses.

First of all, forests are constantly permeated with a very soft wash of background noise that is now often absent in the indoor world. The sound of wind through trees has a physiological effect you can FEEL. It's always been a Thing that people are relaxed by white noise, which leads to us being put at ease by the ambient hum of air conditioning units, refrigerators and fans. But now, technology has become much more silent, and it's not at all out of place to hypothesize that environments without "ambient" white noise are detrimental to us.

Furthermore, a forest's ambience is full of rhythmic and melodic elements, whereas "indoor" sounds are often harsh, flat and irregular.

Secondly: the crunch. This is actually one of the most notably missing aspects of the indoor sensory world. Humans, when given access to crunchable things, will crunch them. And in a forest, crunchy things are everywhere. Bark, twigs and dry leaves have crisp and brittle qualities that only a few man-made objects have, and they are different with every type of plant and tree.

Most humans aren't in a lot of contact with things that are "destroyable" either, things you can toy with and tear to little bits in your hands. I think virtually everyone has restlessly torn up a scrap of paper or split a blade of grass with their thumbnail; it's a cliche. And since fidget toys in classrooms are becoming a subject of debate, I think it pays to remember that the vast majority of your ancestors learned everything they knew with a thousand "fidget toys" within arm's reach.

And there is of course mud, and clay, and dirt, and wet sand. I'm 100% serious, squishing mud and clay is vital to the human brain. Why do you think Play-Doh is such a staple elementary school toy. Why do you think mud is the universal cliche thing kids play in for fun. It's such a common "stim" category for a reason.

I could go on and on. It's insane how unstimulating most environments humans spend time in are. And this definitely contributes to ecological illiteracy, because people aren't prepared to comprehend how detailed the natural world is. There are dozens of species of fireflies in the United States, and thousands of species of moths. If you don't put herbicides on your lawn, there are likely at least 20 species of plant in a single square meter of it. I've counted at least 15 species of grass alone in my yard.

Would it be overreach to suggest that some vital perceptive abilities are just not fully developing in today's human? Like. I had to TEACH myself to be able, literally able, to perceive details of living things that were below a certain size, even though my eyes could detect those details, because I just wasn't accustomed to paying attention to things that small. I think something...happens when almost all the objects you interact with daily are human-made.

The people that think ADHD is caused by kids' brains being exposed to "too much stuff" by Electronic Devices...do not go outside, because spending a few minutes in a natural environment has more stimuli in it than a few hours of That Damn Phone.

A patch of tree bark the size of my phone's screen has more going on than my phone can display. When you start photographing lots of living organisms, you run into the strange and brain-shifting reality that your electronic device literally cannot create and store images big enough to show everything you, in real life, may notice about that organism.