Talent

From today's N.Y. Times:

As I was gathering material on the absence of young people at anti-Trump demonstrations, I came across evidence of powerful technological forces weakening persistence and cognitive tenacity across the board.

Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University, tracks the demographics of participants in major anti-Trump demonstrations.

She provided the following data about the three No Kings protests: “At No Kings 1 (June 14, 2025) the median age was 36, at No Kings 2 (Oct. 18, 2025) the median age was 44, and at No Kings 3 (March 28, 2026) it was 48. Clearly, it’s getting older.”

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the N.Y.U. Stern School of Business, who has turned the issue of the detrimental effects of social media into a cause celebre, responded by email to my queries:

When I began my research on social media and Gen Z, I focused on the evidence that it increased rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm. It does, but the effects are substantially larger for young women, and for liberals. Young women on the left fell first and fastest, in terms of mental health, once everything moved onto smartphones and social media, around 2012.

More recently, Haidt continued, he realized that

I vastly underestimated the damage from social media because even larger than the mental health crisis is the diminishment of the human capacity to pay attention, which is driven in part by the explosion of short-form videos since the arrival of TikTok. The average American teen now spends five hours a day on social media, mostly swiping through short videos.

In political terms, Haidt argued,

social media has done more harm to the Democrats than to the Republicans, both by weakening their young people (e.g., their requests for trigger warnings and safe spaces) and also by radicalizing them. They in turn push the party to take more extreme cultural positions, which drive noncollege voters to the right.

Most consequentially, Haidt contended,

years of consuming short videos during childhood and puberty seems to disrupt the development of executive function, which refers to the cognitive processes that support goal-directed behavior.

Young people who watch a lot of short videos (which is most of Gen Z and Gen Alpha) find it more difficult to do anything that is hard, or that requires deep thought, or that can only be accomplished with persistent effort. That would include political activism, especially action in realms beyond social media.

Haidt’s concluding point:

I believe that TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are bringing America a cognitive catastrophe. The diminishment of capability is hitting both sides, but it is the left that most needs its young people to come out and fight for change.

Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of the book “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future,” suggested in an email responding to my questions that a combination of factors underpinned the relative lack of youth activism:

A key factor is the growth of both depression and pessimism among young adults since 2012. It’s hard to have agency if you’re depressed, and hard to believe that anything you do will matter if you’re pessimistic, even nihilistic.

Another factor, Twenge noted, may be that the left overplayed its hand on controversial issues such as transgender women in sports, equity versus equality, cancel culture, defunding the police, affirmative action, and so on in a way that alienated many young people even if they were liberal otherwise — that may have turned them off politics and taking action.

The rest of the article goes into detail about why A.I. is bad.

It surprises me--no it doesn't--that most of these critiques never talk about the dulling effect of the big screens, t.v. and films.  98% of what is sold is saccharin pablum meant to dull the brain. But, of course, that is a 1960's complaint.  

But MBA programs have been dumbing down American intellects at an exponential rate.  

In 1980, approximately 55,148 MBA degrees were conferred in the USA, marking a significant rise from the previous decade. By the mid-2020s (2022–2025 data), this number has grown dramatically to over 200,000 business master’s degrees annually, cementing its status as one of the most popular graduate degrees.

It is also one of the easiest grad degrees, along with the M.Ed and Ed.D. degrees, you can purchase.  What is the point of an MBA degree?  Bottom line?

Maximize profit.  

And what kind of people are easiest to manipulate?  

We keep emphasizing practical skills over intellectual prowess.  I don't argue against practical skills.  I just don't own many.  But I am reliant on those who do.  Absolutely.  No doubt.  But are they reliant on me?  

Not in any practical way, that's for sure.  Do they need to read?  Not deeply.  Do they need to write?  Not beautifully.  Do they need to understand art and literature?  Nope.  Taylor Sheridan fills all their voids.  

Do they need to know how to fight?  

They don't usually own the big buildings that crowd your town, though.  What are those all filled with?  Rents are high, higher than most can pay.  Artists at every level cannot afford a studio.  Nope, building and construction are driven by Big Business.  

Developers and contractors are the Big Dogs in this town.  They are the top of the practical skills food chain.  And of course attorneys who they work with hand in glove to get the developments done.  

It is well-known that if you are not good enough to get into a Medical School, you can become an attorney.  But that is for another day.  

The arts are gone.  They are not in schools.  Why do we need them?  Tech is the new art.  

And there we have it, the ouroboros.  

I don't know if we do or not.  I am writing without study.  But you get my drift.  

I was all analog yesterday.  I went to the garage and got my big film changing tent, cleared the dining room table, and set it up there.  I took the big, new 8x10 developing tank and the 8x 10 film holders and placed them inside.  First try, having never done this before, went fairly well.  Slow but steady.  When I had he tank loaded, I decided to put film back into the holders.  This all took awhile.  Then it was time to mix up the chemicals.  Wow.  The tank holds 64 ounces, half a gallon of water, developer, water, fixer, and water.  I set the timer and twirled the tank, slick and heavy.  I had no idea if this was working.  I had music playing from my iTunes station, though, and comrades, it was good.  

Two minutes in water, five in developer, one in water, four in fixer, three in water.  About fifteen minutes in all, but it seemed much longer.  Without hope, I pulled the big negatives from the tank.  Well, now--there was imagery.  I hung the images up to dry.  They were test shots of the milk jug and the bird bath.  Boring.  And I hardly expected that the focus would be good, but I won't know that until I scan them. 

Then the clean up.  While I had the tent up, I decided to load a bunch of 4x5 film holders, too.  

The hours had gone by and I had four images to show.  WTF am I thinking?  What is the point?  I wanted to show you some good 8x10 photo images, but who?  Ansel Adams' pictures of mountains or Clyde Butcher's pictures of southern swamps?  Richard Avedon's static portraits on a white background of people in the west?  Maybe the only ones I truly like are Sally Mann's images of family and friends.  Those are a true accomplishment.  

And once again, I thought. . . WTF?  

But sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing.  

If this is the road I am going to travel, though, I will be making maybe half a dozen pictures every week or two, and most, if not all of those will suck.  

All I can say in favor of it is "it's not screens."

I sent that Times excerpt to my conservative friend.  He just wrote back, "How do you get into the freak show?  Be a freak."

I guess that's right.  

Here's a throwback.  80 year old Van Morrison is still kicking and kicking ass with this new song.  What a talent.