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Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

economist.com

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Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#171

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #61
enord wrote: post #10

Did this trend start with social media? We are doing lots of stuff to teenagers these days that we didnt do before. They are beholden to expectations far narrower than we were. We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age, yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties. Soc…

I think more dangerous than social media is the omnipresence of image recording devices. When I made a mistake as a teenager, people might laugh at me for a day or two, sooner or later it was forgotten. Today's teenager make a mistake and if they are unlucky, their shame gets immediately exposed to the whole world, forever. I think this has to contribute a lot to today's anxiousness of teenagers - who hasn't been cau…

> I think more dangerous than social media is the omnipresence of image recording devices. When I made a mistake as a teenager, people might laugh at me for a day or two, sooner or later it was forgotten. Today's teenager make a mistake and if they are unlucky, their shame gets immediately exposed to the whole world, forever.

This in itself isn't the problem. We all have done stupid shit that we are embarrassed by. The real problem is that, for some reason, we never forgive anyone for their mistakes.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#172

Post by lurker456 »

downandout wrote: post #162
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #147

Having directed this to my teenaged younger sibling (he is intelligent and expressive) he explained in his view, teenagers have a poor prognosis for their career prospects and are aware of this. Technology allows them to be aware that life doesn’t look good for them, that they cannot look forward to retirement, to a stable long term career, that the amount of education and debt they will need to accrue is ever-increa…

>their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result That reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. While there are indeed predatory business models where this is true - casinos etc. - most highly successful people and businesses become successful by creating value, not siphoning it from others.

There are limits to such growth. Arguably, the growth of last few centuries has been achieved by burning up finite resources [1]. And even if we'd somehow get an infinite source of energy, at some point we'd run into the heat dissipation limit of the earth. [2]

[1] http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Physics_of_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_heat

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#173

Post by tdb7893 »

saagarjha wrote: post #113
tdb7893 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that social media is bad for mental health. That means that excessive social media time can be a problem and is more objectionable that reading a book and likely also worse than watching TV or playing video games. I think if everyone was reading or doing something similarly benign on their phones it would be much less of an issue.

> That means that excessive social media time can be a problem and is more objectionable that reading a book and likely also worse than watching TV or playing video games. That’s a rather serious claim to make without a source to back it up. What makes you think that reading is more “benign” than social media?

Maybe I misunderstood the point of your comment but I'm not trying to argue that reading is good for you (which I personally believe), just that it isn't bad for you and I'm not aware of any controversy around that latter point as I have never heard anyone argue that they are bad for you and I couldn't find any studies saying that it is bad for you. If you think that point is controversial I'm willing to entertain the argument but the claim doesn't seem that serious to me.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#174

Post by indubitable »

Rather than just e-devices alone, I wonder about the shift in parenting and style of education today. One of the most marked shifts in society today has been the change in direction towards treating everybody as special. Yet children know who the 'smart' kids are, they know who the athletic kids are, they know who the artistic kids are, and so on. How is a kid supposed to feel when he's constantly told he's special, yet he knows he's not particularly great at anything? A wall full of participation trophies isn't going to change that disconnect; unless the child is completely obtuse, it's going to be a reminder of all his failures to ever achieve.

Now enter the internet on top of this and it's a perfect storm. The media loves stories, however fake they may often be, of wunderkind 11 year old creates nuclear reactor in basement during downtime between giving violin solos at Carnegie Hall and solving world hunger. And the image crafting of social media only further adds to all of this.

Most people are not special, and that is okay. Even when I was young this sort of treating everybody as special had already started to seep into education. The anecdote of Einstein failing at math in high school was one that came up more than a couple of times. Of course he didn't. His response to that rumor, perhaps started by a misunderstanding of a grade change scale, was a laugh and comment that he never failed in math and statement that before he was fifteen he'd mastered differential and integral calculus. It's similar with efforts to posthumously diagnose him with various sorts of disabilities, or even attributing, in part, his success to his wife who failed to achieve a teaching certification -- unable to pass the mathematics component, she gave up after two attempts.

Ultimately I think we should treat nobody as special. And require people prove it through their own deeds. There should be every possible opportunity for anybody to achieve such merit, but people should not be expected to be special. It's simply unrealistic and, even if it may make us (as in the parents and teachers creating this facade) feel better about ourselves, I don't think it's achieving the intended effect.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#175

Post by [deleted] »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #104
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize back in the older days people did the exact same thing with books and newspapers? At least with phones we can talk with people we’re meeting up with.

It's slightly different, because at least things like books and newspapers carry a tiny bit of intellectualism. You at least need to be able to read and comprehend language. IG, on the other hand, is literally just pictures: you don't even need to be able to comprehend any language to use it.

[deleted]

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#176

Post by m_fayer »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #85

If you take a train or a bus, or are in any other public space, you may notice that a bunch of people (young and old) spend their time staring into their phones. And most of the time, if you glance at their phone, you'll see they're on Instagram. They're staring into this machine fantasizing about some image of how great life is, meanwhile their real life is passing them by. And they wonder why they're not getting al…

Back in the day commuters and bench-sitters weren't somehow more "present" than they are now, they were just consuming other media. And I wouldn't venerate the books/newspapers of old and sneer at IG quite so much. Back in the day the majority of commuters were reading pulpy crime and romance novels or sordid tabloids, not "real" literature or journalism.

It's not that IG is intellectually inferior to how people entertained themselves back in the day, it's that it's qualitatively different, in some disturbing ways. What used to be shameless (innocent!) diversion and escapism has morphed into an odd kind of media that requires everyone to produce content, content that everyone knows in their bones, one way or another, broadcasts the quality of their lives and their person into the ether. Creating such content is arguably more intellectually demanding than consuming that crime novel, not less, but it's also exhausting and anxiety producing. The commute or checkout line is no longer a quick and simple respite.

I don't think social media is making people dumb or brainless as people thought tv would back in the day. Rather, it's making the average person smarter in a very 21st century kind of way - savvy, harried, and insecure - overworked brand managers.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#177

Post by downandout »

lurker456 wrote: post #172
downandout wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result That reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. While there are indeed predatory business models where this is true - casinos etc. - most highly successful people and businesses become successful by creating value, not siphoning it from others.

There are limits to such growth. Arguably, the growth of last few centuries has been achieved by burning up finite resources [1]. And even if we'd somehow get an infinite source of energy, at some point we'd run into the heat dissipation limit of the earth. [2] [1] http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Physics_of_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_heat

Huh? There are many businesses outside the oil and gas industries that create value.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#178

Post by 0xBA5ED »

maneesh wrote: post #137
0xBA5ED wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I agree. I learn a lot here. It's the best corner of the web.

Have you seen any other forums with smart people on the web?

Nothing this active. I'd love to know if there are more hotspots like this one.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#179

Post by fit2rule »

chrisseaton wrote: post #15
fit2rule wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messenger is at least as good as a decent IRC server, with your friends all agreeing to use an IRC client app, instead. Super weird to see that we're coming full circle; it used to be that you had to install a special app to chat with your friends, same as it ever was today ..

> with your friends all agreeing to use an IRC client app I can’t imagine what world you live in where this is a realistic options. I couldn’t even persuade my tech friends to do this, let alone my wider friend group who work in different fields.

Its basically a no-brainer to set up an IRC app .. if you can install Messenger, you can easily set up a jabber or IRC client. The hard part is sending the URL to your friends so they can just easily join you, but who needs friends like that? ;)

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#180

Post by sjg007 »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #100
brndnmtthws wrote: post #85

If you take a train or a bus, or are in any other public space, you may notice that a bunch of people (young and old) spend their time staring into their phones. And most of the time, if you glance at their phone, you'll see they're on Instagram. They're staring into this machine fantasizing about some image of how great life is, meanwhile their real life is passing them by. And they wonder why they're not getting al…

You realize back in the older days people did the exact same thing with books and newspapers? At least with phones we can talk with people we’re meeting up with.

Or tabloid magazines which is like Instagram..
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