Yes, its really frustrating to see how we have been led into a culture war. And of course when they attack minorities we have to push back, but at the same time there are so much more important issues heavily affecting everyone, including minorities. Hope there will be some day when taxing corporations is just as hot topic as whether trans people should sport nowadays.

I think for most of history almost no one had any rights, then technological advancements (printing, internet, etc.) shook that system up and gave a chance for people to grab some bits of power. Now the system is stabilizing according to these new developments, and the power is getting centralized again. Im not sure if this is unstoppable, but sometimes it seems like it.

I think its easy to get into a cycle where one finds it hard to socialise in person, starts to live that aspect out more online, and then offline interactions feel even harder relative to that.

Online relationships can be really helpful, but at the same time it doesnt really fulfill some of our basic social needs. When i found a friendgroup where i could finally be completely open and where physical affection was encouraged it was like an enlightenment. Up to that point i was kind of miserable, but couldnt even realise why, only afterwards did i realise how socially deprived i was. I think nowadays to some degree most people are that way to some degree, especially males.

Hope you will find good relationships in person and never give up on it, i would have never thought that i will be able to until it happened.

I couldnt get a phone until i started highschool (i had very limited access to a tablet at home). This resulted in me being unable to participate in any of the group chats that my peers were using, and missing the necessary context to understand a significant amount of topics they discussed even in person. Up to the point smartphones started to spread in my class i was strongly involved in the community, and i would say i had sufficient social skills. After that i started to get socially isolated, and this i would say severely affected my social development for many years.

Nowadays im happy that i spent most of my free time reading and learning extracurricular topics while many other were binging youtube, but its only because in the last couple of years i successfully started to develop my social side and engage more with others, while keeping the benefits of being left alone with my thoughts for extended periods. However i wouldnt have been able to do this on my own (i convinced myself that my isolation is a good thing, and as a coping mechanism i looked down on others socialising, smalltalk, etc.), and was very lucky with a couple of people that got me out of this isolation. That said i still have to undo a lot of damage on this area.

I dont know how a parent could balance these things, but i would assume that the most important thing is to help the kid find hobbies that engage them, so that scrolling endlessly is not that enticing, while giving them time on their phone to nurture their relationships online (this could be restricted with scheduling wifi access on the router, etc), and of course educating them on the potential harms of the internet.

Also i dont really have a solution to this, but i noticed on myself that when i had restricted access to something (for example the wifi turned off at 8pm) that meant the restricted activities value went way up in my head and i maxed out on it, often even though i would have enjoyed doing something else more.

I agree that people cant really be convinced by proving them wrong on the spot. However, if someone is just a little bit interested in being rational, then after going home over time they will think about that question again and again, until they resolve that dissonance, not necessarily, but potentially by changing their mind. I would assume that this would be somewhat hard to study, but if you have some good resources on this im interested. Its just that when people constantly hear from their leaders that faith is a virtue and even more virtuous when practiced despite strong evidence to the contrary (i was raised christian, and i experienced this there, i would assume its somewhat similar in Islam), then they will be a lot less likely to go through this.

Facebook container is one i use that blocks facebook tracking with tracking pixels for example.

If its not completely dead i would use it to selfhost some fun projects (maybe lemmy?) https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

I think even from a christian perspective the right thing to do wouldnt be to just accept a collection of scriptures as absolute truths (or to be precise the exact interpretation of those scriptures by the leaders of the group they happened to get into).

If you dont examine your beliefs with regard to historic evidence, and critical thinking you would have no way of knowing if there was some work by people (or if you believe in that even satan) when the current biblical canon was set up or when jewish tradition formed the old testament, etc.

Church leaders obviously dont talk about this that much, but being a follower of jesus and a good christian doesnt require one tho view the whole bible and one specific reading of it as a unified work of truth.

I dont know your exact stance on this topic, but in my experience there are too many people that dont examine the way current day teachings of their community got formed throughout history and just treat it like if god revealed it himself to them here and now.

If you happen to be interested here is a video by a yewish guy (though he views the bible from a historical viewpoint not in an orthodox way) exploring what we currently know about the bible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqSkXmFun14

Hope i didnt sound disrespectful, i just like when discourse makes us revise our deeper beliefs.