Worth Reading – Is 2026 The Year We All Decide to Quit the Internet?
The problem, of course, is that there is always something to see online:
The world generates an estimated 400 million terabytes of content every single day.
https://heystacia.substack.com/p/is-2026-the-year-we-all-decide-to
Stacia focuses the rest of this post on ways to disconnect, and I think that is important. I also want to acknowledge where the internet is going from here.
AI will eventually create an infinite amount of content every day. Every time we log in, there is already more content than we can engage with, and AI will only increase the noise level. If anything, AI will also probably help all of us find the most extreme content out there, but that’s a post for another time.
This post is about what I think we should consider for 2026 and beyond regarding our online lives. The days of scrolling algorithmic networks should probably be done. AI is not going to provide us with healthy content.
What I am thinking about is not leaving the internet, but going back to it. I’m not looking for endless scrolls of hot takes or AI-generated posts. I’m looking for real people creating real things, writing real words, sharing real photos and experiences.
The internet has always held the promise of connecting with like-minded people and ideas, yet somehow we’ve used it instead as the world’s largest selection of TV channels. We reach for our phone when we’re bored for passive entertainment, not human connection. But there is a human connection that happens online, too. I want to focus more on that, and a lot less on content that exists to steal attention toward the latest viral topics and sell that attention to advertisers.
I’ve always written under the assumption that people were reading what I put out here and, hopefully, learning something. In the age of AI-slop, I want more of that, and only that. I’m seeking it out and connecting with it. I am not connecting with people who are creating crap content in a chase for attention. Bring your authentic self, or I’m ready to assume your account is AI slop.
Follow these topics: Artificial Intelligence, Personal, SocialNetworking
Good luck on that idea, but one look at what sites like Facebook and X immediately turned into, you have to wonder how the mentality of the human race declines sharply when offered an anonymous forum to do exactly as you are saying, yet it just decayed into a place of arguments and misinformation and deception with porn mixed in at all levels.
To think people are genuinely good at heart would be the worst misconception one could make. It’s looking more and more like people in power are so corrupt that we can’t even imagine how depraved they are or were at some time. The web on helps them to more easily achieve those worst traits.
Now with AI nothing can be trusted and I see this to be the beginning of the end for the web. Our lives would be considerably better without it, I for one grew up without it and even as an adult I had little interest in it until ias more or less forced into using the web just to get things done. The dependency on the web is not meant to be for everyone and seems to attract the worst of the worst to its ranks and provides content that just expands their ways to be bad.
The only real thing that you can count of the web to help is as a dictionary or encyclopedia, if there was a separate web created and geared for education only, I could see how that would be a plus. That way the worries about kids being on line would be resolved.
Having a separate web for porn and another for discussions would again separate the unwanted content that’s mixed in throughout the web. I know that if I wasn’t forced into using the web (the same way we’re all forced into using some type of credit card to exist) I would not be here writing this right now and would be actively doing something real with friends I would have never lost track of. I lived 50 years with no Internet and was happy without it. Now I use it just out of boredom since I’m old and can’t do much of what I used to, limiting my entertainment and activities.
Charging people to view content that’s mostly narrative is insane, who cares what someone you’ll never meet has an opinion on something just to find out they’re lying or just trying to make money, and who cares if you agree with their wild stories and assumptions? What does that do for your life? Justify your insane own ideas or make you go down the wrong path?
I think everyone will agree that the way life is depicted on the web is nothing like reality. Nobody is walking around arguing politics in a grocery store or hates the person who’s holding the door for you because they oppose your viewpoint of politicians or the government or choice of coffee that’s the best. Even peoples color of religion have little to do in real life (other than a distrust in people wearing turbins in the USA). This is more of a temporary distrust and only has been part of our society due to the regime that was hell, bent on becoming a terrorist platform. I truly believe that removing the hatred coming from some mideast countries will be one the largest steps towards a much safer and trusting world.
The web only fuels hatred that will eventually spill into real life, the narrative is formed as a way to control what and how people think and it’s dangerous when there are people who have large sums of money and have crazy ideas that would never enter real life suddenly have a huge platform that’s geared to sway thinking and those who aren’t smart enough to find out who’s behind radical thinking, fall prey to it. Normal trusting people become hateful mercenaries and we see the outcome daily. The web is doing this, there would have been no way for these radical ideas to even get a foothold 40 years ago. People lived in there immediate surroundings and cared much less about things that they have no control over or will not directly affect them.
The innocent is gone now and everyone is clamoring to get their cut rona points where nobody will be doing anything useful, there need to produce things that are required for life cannot be made without workers and people who are interested in real life. No farmers means no food.