8 ms·
"Regardless of the dramatic drop in crime over the last 30 years, more than half the population believes crime is worse than it was in years past." "The childr
by Mefis 9y ago
"Regardless of the dramatic drop in crime over the last 30 years, more than half the population believes crime is worse than it was in years past."
"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise."
- Socrates
This argument keeps popping up. To confirm it we would need a control group. It is likely that even before social media people believed the state of affairs worse than it actually was. Maybe people are more prone to believe that our condition is deteriorating rather than improving.
- caseydurfee 9y agoIsn't the control group the part of the graph from 1993-2000ish, where perception and reality are fairly closely correlated? I guess that raises more questions than it answers. What about the rise of cable news? That tracks the change in the graph more closely than the rise of social networks. What about 9/11 and the war on terrorism? A significant portion of the US population lost their shit and never got it back. I'm not sure we should pin all or even most of the change on social media. I think you have a point that the "good old days fallacy" has been around since forever. But it also seems like something dramatically changed 15 years ago or so.
- mdpopescu 9y agoAs far as I can tell, "things are worse now" (or put the other way, "everything was better in the past") is a generally accepted thing throughout time and space. Including absurdities like "people were happier" or "there was less pollution".