Every generation has some product/ingredient that they didn’t know was dangerous at the time: tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc. What is that item for this generation?
Every generation has some product/ingredient that they didn’t know was dangerous at the time: tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc. What is that item for this generation?
Perfluoroalkyls aka PFAS appear to screw with all manner of body functions.
Since you mention tobacco: It's worth noting that the smoking/cancer connection was noticed long before peak cigarette smoking in the population. Prior to WWII, lung cancer was considered a rare disease. That changed with the mass marketing of cigarettes.
Social Media
Permanently Deleted
Plastics.
Yes, all plastics. Even bpa free plastics leak estrogenic chemicals into food, and fpod is often stored in plastic containers. Even milk cartons are lined with plastic.
Teflon(nonstick coated pans and pots) arr similarly terrible
Shoes with a raised heel is bad for your knees. (Easily measurably bad. Especially for running)
Vapes.
What will happen is one or another of the flavorings used will be safe to eat because of stomach acid and digestion, but inhaling it into delicate lungs will cause disease long term. Look up popcorn workers lung to see how a common butter flavoring in the past that was meant for eating on popcorn harmed factory workers breathing it in daily.
One of the existing vape flavors... or a new one... will eventually be shown to cause simular lung disease due to daily breathing it in never truly being studied. Someone with a favorite flavor will use it for years, like any smoker with a favorite brand of cigs, then probably get sick from constant long term exposure.
Microplastics and plastic related byproducts, like phtalates (which are connected with a decreased fertility in mammals)
I'm positive that the long term effects of these substances, that can be found in every link of the food chain nowadays, will be discussed a lot in the futureTiktok.
You said product, and I mean this legitimately. Not because of meme hate or hating on what is trendy, but because it is and has been a tool of the CCP. This isn't really in question, and it was one of the first large platforms to entirely erase the idea of a timeline and fully devote itself only to a algorithm feed. One that bytedance has put their finger on the scales of many times.
The effect this has is hard to quantify, but the postmortem on it is going to be incredible as we unpack exactly how much this influenced the trends and politics among zoomers, and to what extent.
Automobiles. Especially in the USA they are causing a public health crisis, environmental crisis, qualify of life crisis. I grew up loving them and they have uses but I'm fully convinced in the future they should be a luxury used for specific tasks or trips rather than the only form of transportation available.
Forever chemicals
Sugar, especially in the US where it's literally added into everything. What's worse is the alternative (substitutes like aspartame) might also be a candidate and we just don't know it yet because enough time hasn't passed to study the long term effects. I try to take stevia as much as possible because it's more "natural", but only a few sugar-free products use it over aspartame. I read recently the WHO still considers aspartame as a carcinogen, but only in excessive amounts, like several glasses of soda a day.
Endocrine disrupters - mainly from plastics
Marketing. We put a person on the moon because we were scared of the space race, and then we spent the next 50 years figuring out how to make rich people richer by manipulating human behavior and gamifying everything so you buy into the buy more stuff you don't need and click more stuff you don't care about. We've gotten so good at it, we only need a 10 second short to advertise stuff to you.
This affects everything we do down to its core and will likely be the cause of astronomical ADHD rates in the future.
- a number of nano-things
- everything monsanto has been spraying
- pfas
- micro-plastics
"smart" devices aka Internet asbestos
Corn. It is a fact that the number of autoimmune diseases are rising. I read a NHS study comparing the data of the last 30 or so years and of right now 1 of 10 people in the UK will get an autoimmune disease at some point in their live such as diabetes, MS, Parkinson,... 30 years ago it was like 1 out of 50. And one common thing in countries with a higher autoimmune disease rate is a lot of corn products, like corn starch, corn sirup,... Right now the final proof is missing cause the studies just started. And maybe it is not corn and something completely different, but the stakes are high it is corn.
If it's not known wether it's dangerous, how would anyone reply? With their guts?
This question can only get non proven answers and risks getting answered the top health infox of the moment.
It was only 13 years ago that the FDA changed its stance on BPA from "safe" to "some concern".
I think it's about to be the weather
Getting really speculative, but maybe Infinite Scrolling and similar UX design patterns. I think we learned it was dangerous pretty early in, but I have a feeling there isn't currently a widespread understanding of just how badly things like infinite scrolling shortcircuit parts of the brain and cause issues with attention and time regulation in large populations.
If I was more researched on it, I might include infinite short-form content feeds of almost any type to be honest, which may just be another way of saying social media.
Plastics
Microplastics and PFAS
No, seriously, these two will kill Earth, and us
Don't forget teflon...
ToS for digital products
I would probably say either alcohol or microplastics. Both are carcinogenic. At least alcohol is avoidable, but microplastics pretty much saturate all of our environments. It reminds me of when they were doing experiments to figure out the impact of lead, they couldn't even open the door to the lab, because the airborne concentration of lead would throw off the readings. We might not ever know what real health is like without walking around with grams of microplastics inside us.
Fiberglass insulation.
Everyone knows that you don't want asbestos getting into your lungs, but there seems to be a prominent disregard for basic safety in preventing inhilation of fiberglass for people who work with the stuff because it's "better" than asbestos.
Generally you don't want to be breathing in any kinds of particulate, but fiberglass is literally fibers made of glass. You are breathing in shards of glass.
Probably digital screen exposure. The impact of the digital age on mental health, especially due to increased screen time, is an area of active study. Some early research suggests potential risks, including impacts on sleep, attention, and mental well-being.
Trans fats. Every processed food was full of the things until the mid 2000s, when it was discovered they were a leading cause of heart disease.
Fossil fuels.
Things have slowly drifted from "we might wanna consider doing something before this becomes a problem" to "we need an immediate and concrete plan" to "anything short of immediate and drastic action is killing and will continue to kill people" over the course of the last decade or two.
Cars
It's been way more than one dangerous product per generation. So people should feel free to choose multiple current ones.
TikTok
Literally everything to do with modern life.
I'm not saying that we should all pull a BSG and give it all up to be cavemen again.
But our bodies most certainly didn't evolve in order to sit at desks, stare at screens, communicate without physical contact, and avoid sunshine like the plague.
We evolved to be active, but developed the technology that allows most of us to be sedentary 99% of the time, and then we wonder why obesity and chronic back pain are pandemics.
vapes
Sugar
Complete shot in the dark but my brain can't let it be (also fuck it, thats the point of this topic):
Surfactants, specifically modern soap and soap products. I strongly suspect that petroleum based soaps cause damage and issues.
When you wash your glasses in a dishwasher, pour some water in after it is dried. Look at how many bubbles are formed on the surface. Pour it out and do it again - usually there will be less bubbles. That means you are ingesting leftover detergent that wasn't rinsed off. Can't be great for you.
Perhaps microplastic? I know it already kills by choking turtles or so but no answer yet if it can cause some health effects.
Edit: Just saw the comments now, microplastic seem to be the most common comment. So here is another go, The chemical they used in cars I think it's VOC/ also known as new car smell currently it can make some people sea sick. Right now there is lack of study that it is actually toxic.
Most Vegetable and seed oils. They are a silent killer and they are in everything now including French fries to replace beef tallow.
There's hardly a processed food that does not contain them and they are terrible for cardiovascular health.
Along with the fake sugars and sugar substitutes they will be among the things we will look back on and ask why.
PFAS, microplastics, intrusive advertising
The internet
SOCIAL MEDIA
Plastic
Please don't be it Wifi or cellular.
Some that haven’t been mentioned:
Prolonged Sitting Prolonged Loud Headphone Use Off-Label Drug Use (e.g., Ozempic, Wegovy) Sun/Heat/Poor Air Exposure Thiamine/B1 Deficiency via Alcohol Consumption
We know they’re all dangerous (to wildly varying extents), but I don’t think we’ve had enough moments-of-reckoning, like with emphysema and lung cancer following long term smoking.
Permanently Deleted
Smartphones and Internet usage. We know it, but no one cares.
The internet. I'm sorry.....
singularity
Artificial sweeteners?
AI. We've seen the movies. We know it's coming - the one robot that doesn't follow the rules and then becomes the leader of the rest.
Coal.
Javascript
Silica Sand. And just like asbestos it's in quite a few products, many of which you will find in your home.
Resentment
antipsychotics
You saw the new emplemon video 😃
Sorry, i can't look in the future.
5G
Just kidding... :D
Colours. Colours on the screens. Colours on billboards. The colours we wear. The colours of foods we see in pictures. The colours of AI loaded photos we click on smartphones. Dopamine spiking colour abuse started in glossy magazines and street posters of big fashion and food companies, way before social media existed like post 2000s.
The abuse of human psychology using colours is arguably the worst crime committed in the human history, for which specifically USA is responsible. Never before Edward Bernays did this human psychological abuse exist on Earth, and never before has there been an advertising ultracapitalist machine like USA. (I recommend watching Century of The Self by Adam Curtis.)
The typical answer to OP's post would be social media, but the ingredients of social media are human psychological abuse using dopamine spiking colours, infinite scrolling and Vine-style short content. (Tiktok is credited with polished recommendation algorithm, but Vine originally brought about this disease, later in the form of Snapchat Stories, then Instagram stories and then Tiktok. Tiktok is merely the evolution of FrankenVine.)
If you want to conduct a self experiment, just try this for a day.
- On Android and iOS, you can use grayscale mode on your phone screens
- On Windows 10+, you can search "Adjust Color Filters" and enable grayscale filter using Win+Ctrl+C key. (Windows 7 has a tool "Negative Screen" https://zerowidthjoiner.net/Uploads/negativescreen/Binary.zip)
- On Linux, the easiest way for GNOME users is to install the GNOME extension "Colorblind Filters". On KDE, you can install Grayscale Effect or similar tool. (For LXQt users, here is a method https://nevyan.blogspot.com/2018/08/enabling-grayscale-in-gnome-kde-and.html)
- On Mac, you can access grayscale mode using Accessibility settings.
You will be shocked how accurate my observations are, and how less people even realise how long this has been going on for. Literally more than a century.
Edit: since some dishonest, malicious and ignorant people have downvoted and gone ahead to claim its stupid and baseless, I will tell them that their existence is a liability, because they defend these neurological and psychological abuses. Absolute wretched people.
The effects of colours having different kinds of psychological effects are well documented. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4383146/
The neurological and psychological abuses employed on digital screens akin to slot machines is also documented, since social media apps and most audio visual content on computers employ same neurological hack techniques as that of slot machines.
https://neurosciencenews.com/visual-sound-slot-machines-15816/
https://www.fastcompany.com/3046149/applying-the-addictive-psychology-of-slot-machines-to-app-design
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432812006456?via%3Dihub
https://www.gatewayfoundation.org/addiction-blog/how-gambling-affects-brain/
Irresistible by Adam Alter is a great book on addiction.