Hi,

Welcome to the Procrastilearning Newsletter, where your time is well spent even though you should probably be doing something else.

You may have noticed this newsletter didn't appear in your inbox two weeks ago. I was on holiday. I thought I would have the time to write the newsletter during the trip but I was quite sorely wrong, laughably so.

3 things worth procrastilearning over

1. Young people are abandoning social media

A study published in the Financial Times has optimistically discovered that young people are reducing their time on social media quite significantly. Unfortunately the over-50s are still going headstrong into social media, as are North Americans, but the rest of the world is getting bored. (The article below is behind a paywall, but you can see a key graph here).

It may well be because so much online content is now AI-generated. A different recent study found that nearly half of what you see online is made by AI. I suspect young people are much better at spotting it than older people, hence they are getting turned off from looking at it in larger numbers.

Here’s a test: do you think this footage of Queen Elizabeth II selling marijuana is real? Or how about Michael Jackson stealing somebody's KFC chicken? Okay, so these two clips are outrageously silly, and even the most naïve viewer would likely doubt their veracity. But they do show just how convincing AI can be visually.

This technology is readily available to anybody able to connect to the Internet. It’s far easier to use than actually filming something real. So, can you believe everything you see? Maybe it’s simply time to stop scrolling, just like the kids are starting to do.

2. Birds love letting ants crawl all over them

The practice is called ‘anting‘ and it’s something to do with keeping themselves clean. Some birds do the same thing with dust. I’m not sure either of these are advisable practices for us humans though.

3. A Japanese cartoon is now a unifying symbol for political protest

About 20 years ago, people started wearing Guy Fawkes masks at political protests, a symbol that has since then been affiliated with the online 'hacktivist' group Anonymous. The mask was inspired by V For Vendetta, an 1980s graphic novel about a dystopian Britain, that was turned into a film in 2005.

History is repeating itself in 2025. A famous old Japanese manga about pirates called One Piece became an even more popular live-action Netflix series in 2023, and now young people around the world have adopted it as their rallying symbol. This year, the flag has appeared at protests in Nepal, Indonesia, Madagascar and France, to name just a few.

The pirates in One Piece are a rag-tag band who come together to fight any and all oppressive elites around the world that are trying to suppress people’s freedom - you can see how a lot of frustrated young people today might relate to that.

2 quotes to keep in mind

1 simple tip for living your life

Create.

I saw this short bit of writing by Derek Sivers below the other day. I think it nicely sums up all you really need for a life well lived.

That's all for today. Many thanks for reading.

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff

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