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With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

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Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#42

They did a study using Facebook. But I'm more curious about Instagram. "Look at all these rich beautiful people with millions of followers sailing around the world on their yachts." Ten minutes on Instagram is enough to fill any sane person with existential dread and bring about severe depression.

I spend about 10 minutes a day on instagram and come away thinking how amazing the world is.

You have to curate your feed. Curate curate curate.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#43

They did a study using Facebook. But I'm more curious about Instagram. "Look at all these rich beautiful people with millions of followers sailing around the world on their yachts." Ten minutes on Instagram is enough to fill any sane person with existential dread and bring about severe depression.

Not as much as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a fairytale-land for adults, and it's bizzare (to me) that anyone wants to participate. It's not even humblebragging anymore. It's "Look what I made, and what I achieved" packed into casual "Oh this thing? Yeah it's just my perfect life"-packages...

Really?

I found it a great resource to reach out and break into the tech sector. It only becomes a dick measuring contest when you've no clear goal on the platform.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as much as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a fairytale-land for adults, and it's bizzare (to me) that anyone wants to participate. It's not even humblebragging anymore. It's "Look what I made, and what I achieved" packed into casual "Oh this thing? Yeah it's just my perfect life"-packages...

Why would anyone browse LinkedIn? This is actually a serious question. I'm pretty good about keeping mine updated, but the only viewers I'm planning on are recruiters, who would be getting the same information regardless.

It's a good place to share information I guess. I would've liked it to be a bit more academic if I were to browse it more often. If you work in consulting etc., it's also a nice place to get updates on what people are doing, because everyone (over)shares so much.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#45
post #40
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but its a pretty good clue.

huh? It could very well be that teens who are depressed (because of unrelated causes) prefer to spend time on social media, not hanging out with friends...

The original post references this issue.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#46

Except from 2010 - 2015 many teens did feel a crushing sense of economic dread as they dealt with the realities of student loans, an out of reach housing market, devalued college degrees, the gig economy, promises of no retirement, etc. The article just skims over it with a quick this is why economics couldn’t have been the reason.

> the realities of student loans, an out of reach housing market, devalued college degrees, the gig economy, promises of no retirement, etc. Have you ever met a teenager? Almost literally zero percent of them think (or need to think) about this stuff, with the possible exception of some of the very oldest teenagers (ie, people in their first or second year of college who are starting to think about the details of the…

Yeah, I feel like there's some projection going on with GP and those issues. Teenagers don't stress about mortgages or retirement.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#47
post #19

Is it possible this is also in part due to EMFs from their phones (and environment) and circadian rhythm disturbances from screens? Some studies suggest the radiation can be risky to kids: Christ A, Gosselin MC, Christopoulou M, K’uhn S, & Kuster N. (2010 Jan.). Age dependent tissue-specific exposure of cell phone users. Physics in Medicine and Biology, 55: 1767-1783. Retrieved from http://iopscience.iop.org/0031-915…

Ah, whatdya know, I said the same thing a while ago - we don't actually know the effects of long term exposure to so much radiation. But I think it's mostly the Internet - too much information, endless info streams, endless mindless entertainment, endless feeds of successful people (so it seems that everyone is successful, or making 50K/year, or pretty, except you and your family/friends/hometown).

Currently we're running a huge experiment in which virtually everybody is exposed to the electromagnetic fields of communication networks. This has been going on for more than a decade. If there is an effect, we should easily see it.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#48

Except from 2010 - 2015 many teens did feel a crushing sense of economic dread as they dealt with the realities of student loans, an out of reach housing market, devalued college degrees, the gig economy, promises of no retirement, etc. The article just skims over it with a quick this is why economics couldn’t have been the reason.

> the realities of student loans, an out of reach housing market, devalued college degrees, the gig economy, promises of no retirement, etc. Have you ever met a teenager? Almost literally zero percent of them think (or need to think) about this stuff, with the possible exception of some of the very oldest teenagers (ie, people in their first or second year of college who are starting to think about the details of the…

Although they used teenager. I think most of those things probably more accurately describe a young adult

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correlation does not imply causation

What does imply causation?

Effects measured as part of a randomization procedure in a controlled experiment or, failing that, a causal inference model applied to observational data.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#50
post #29
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the oldest of teens would worry about those things. I agree they're all bad but I'm not convinced they'd have much of an impact on under 17 year olds. I'm extremely hacked off that the high school I'm sending my kids to requires students to have an ipad. It's expensive for me, of no benefit to the student, and makes it difficult for students and parents to figure out what homework is due becuase it's scattered a…

> no benefit to the student No benefit? Maybe you mean that you prefer an Android tablet? I didn't have a computer until I was 18. The internet wasn't much of a thing until I got to college. Every day I think about how amazing it would have been to have access to so much free information when I was a kid.

I spent much of my teenage years playing video games, building/overclocking computers, flashing roms on my phones, and devouring wikipedia. my parents were concerned that I was spending too much time online but I'm glad they didn't try to intervene. I was learning tons and by the time I got to college pretty much everything in the CS degree was trivially easy for me (except some of the formal math stuff).

on the flip side, I am quite certain that most of my peers spent their hours primarily on youtube, facebook, and aim. they seemed to take pride in how little they understood the workings of their entertainment devices.

today I hear a lot of parents talking about how they are putting off getting a family computer/tablet for as long as possible and how they intend to severely limit screen time once they finally get one. it makes me sad to think that these children will miss out on all the great learning experiences I had with my computers, but I'm not sure the parents are necessarily wrong, especially with the current buzz around social media and mental health.

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