The Great Digital Anesthesia

I genuinely can't stop thinking about this.

Everywhere I look, I see people glued to their phones, endlessly scrolling through social media. And what worries me the most is seeing this behavior in people who are no longer particularly young.

People who spend hours staring at a screen, consuming whatever the algorithm decides to throw at them.

One video after another. One post after another. An endless stream of content.

And just to be clear, I'm talking about older people because they're the ones I personally see doing this.

I honestly don't know whether children are experiencing the same problem, or whether growing up surrounded by this technology creates an entirely different set of issues.

Maybe it does. Maybe it's even worse.

But I don't want to pretend I know something I haven't directly observed.

And now, with generative AI entering the picture, I feel like things are getting even worse.

Is any of this even real anymore?

We've reached a point where distinguishing AI-generated content from reality is becoming increasingly difficult.

And I'm not just talking about elderly people who might not be particularly familiar with technology.

I'm talking about everyone.

A 2025 study on human detection of AI-generated content found that participants struggled to distinguish authentic media from synthetic media, with average performance close to a coin toss.

Think about that for a second.

And here's something else worth considering.

That study was published in September 2025.

At the time I'm writing this, almost a year has passed, and generative AI has continued evolving at an astonishing pace.

We're talking about technology that can now produce increasingly realistic images and videos, with better motion, audio, consistency, and fewer of those obvious artifacts that used to give AI-generated content away.

So if people were already struggling to distinguish reality from synthetic media back then, what does that mean for us today?

I don't have a newer study that directly answers that question.

But I certainly don't think the problem has magically disappeared.

We're asking people to navigate an environment where they can no longer reliably trust what they're seeing.

And somehow, the responsibility falls on them to figure it out.

But why should they have to develop this skill in the first place? And how realistic is that expectation when even people familiar with AI struggle to tell the difference?

I don't think the answer is telling everyone to become an expert in detecting synthetic media.

Especially when the amount of AI-generated garbage being pumped into our feeds keeps increasing.

We're essentially flooding the Internet with content that is becoming cheaper and easier to produce, while making it increasingly difficult to distinguish what's real, what's artificial, and what's worth our attention.

And for what?

The infinite slop machine

Social media was already pretty good at keeping people glued to their screens.

Now combine that with generative AI.

You have platforms built around keeping people engaged, combined with technology capable of producing an enormous amount of content at very little cost.

An investigation by AI Forensics has already documented the presence of automated accounts producing AI-generated content at scale on major social media platforms.

It's a pretty disturbing combination.

An endless supply of content, delivered through an endless scrolling interface, optimized to keep you watching.

And the result?

People staring at their phones for hours, consuming increasingly absurd videos, fake images, fabricated stories, and whatever other AI-generated nonsense happens to appear in their feeds.

Sometimes I look around and genuinely wonder what the fuck we're doing.

Is this really where we're heading?

Are we slowly moving towards some kind of collective anesthesia?

Not necessarily because someone is deliberately trying to make us stupid, but because we've created an environment where passively consuming content requires almost no effort, and there's always something else waiting for us.

Another video. Another image. Another notification.

Another reason not to put the damn phone down.

Wasn't AI supposed to do the opposite?

This is probably the part that bothers me the most.

I genuinely believe AI can be an incredible tool.

It can help us automate repetitive tasks, learn new things, explore unfamiliar subjects, and extend our capabilities.

As someone interested in technology and cybersecurity, I can see that potential.

And yet, I look at how we're increasingly using this technology, and I can't help feeling that something is going terribly wrong.

Instead of using AI to free up our time, we're using it to fill every available second with even more content.

Instead of expanding our knowledge, we're generating an infinite stream of meaningless entertainment.

Instead of giving people more control over their time, we're feeding systems designed to compete for their attention.

Of course, AI isn't responsible for everything that's wrong with social media. These platforms were already designed around engagement long before generative AI became widely available.

But I can't help wondering whether we're making an existing problem significantly worse.

We were supposed to automate the boring stuff so we could spend more time living. Instead, we're automating the production of stuff to stare at.

What the fuck happened?

I just want to throw my phone away

The funny thing is that I don't consider myself particularly anti-technology.

Quite the opposite, actually.

I spend a significant amount of my time working with computers, learning about cybersecurity, experimenting with tools, and trying to understand how things work.

But when it comes to my phone, I increasingly feel like throwing the damn thing out of the window.

I constantly look for ways to reduce my screen time, limit distractions, and avoid getting sucked into that endless scrolling loop.

Not because I think technology is inherently bad.

But because I don't want to spend my life passively consuming whatever some algorithm thinks will keep me entertained.

I want to use technology when I need it.

I want to learn something, build something, break something, or just enjoy something I've actually chosen to watch.

And sometimes I simply want to exist without feeling the need to check a screen.

Is that really such a strange thing to want?

So, where the hell are we going?

I don't have an answer.

I don't know whether we're genuinely moving towards some kind of collective digital anesthesia, or whether this is simply another stage in our relationship with technology.

Maybe I'm overthinking it.

Maybe I'm just becoming increasingly intolerant of the amount of bullshit floating around the Internet.

But I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong when people spend hours consuming content they won't even remember five minutes later.

And I worry about what happens when that content becomes almost entirely synthetic.

When reality and fabrication are mixed together in the same feed, and people gradually stop caring about the difference.

Maybe the real question isn't whether AI will eventually become intelligent enough to replace us.

Maybe we should be asking what happens when we become so accustomed to passively consuming artificial content that we stop questioning what we're looking at.

I don't know.

But I'd really like to put my phone down now.