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The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What? (yewtu.be)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Hirom@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Social media divides us, makes us more extreme and less empathetic, it riles us up or sucks us into doom scrolling, making us stressed and depressed. It feels like we need to touch grass and escape to the real world.

New research shows that we might have largely misinterpreted why this is the case. It turns out that the social media internet may uniquely undermine the way our brains work but not in the way you think.

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[-] Hirom@beehaw.org 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If they don't know what they're going to use it for, I'd focus on practical things most non-technical people use laptop for:

Fair battery life to carry it around.
Operating system that does auto-updates, needs little to no administration.
SSD so the thing feels fast, and starts quickly. May not need a large storage capacity.
Built-in webcam for video calls with relatives, etc.

The rest can be done on the software side:

To browse safely, install security tools (antivirus, browser extensions like privacy badger) and verify auto-udate is on.
Install an office suite (et Libre Office). Even if they don't write documents, they'll probably need to read them.
If using Windows, tweaks settings to disable abnoxious things like ads, telemetry.
Backup software. Ideally with automatic remote backups. Window's built-in backup sucks.