Earlier quoted context omitted.
correlation does not imply causation
What does imply causation?
double-blind randomized controlled experimental trials.
With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
51–60 of 456 posts
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be an unconvincing piece, but it still seems like a very plausible hypothesis to me.
I've got a plausible (to me) hypothesis of my own - namely, that the "kids these days are getting worse and worse" is something people have been thoughtlessly regurgitating for as long as we have historical written records, and that new customs or technologies are easiest to blame. Today it's Facebook, previously it was TV, earlier still it was walkmans and metal bands. Hell, if I'm to believe random quotes from the…
I think there is actually a bigger danger with people summarily dismissing negative consequences of technology, and then just saying "it's no big deal" because it's been going on a long time.
Look at TV. Of course TV has many positives, but it's also another factor in people (at least Americans) becoming much more sedentary over the past 6-7 decades, which has been a large factor in the US obesity epidemic. It's a mistake to dismiss the negatives of TV just because we've gotten used to the fact that nearly everyone is so fat.
Similarly, with social media, forget about teenagers, as I think many people are able to see the huge negative effect it has on their own lives. The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons.
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#53Study: Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time Citation: Jean M. Twenge, Thomas E. Joiner, Megan L. Rogers, Gabrielle N. Martin. Clinical Psychological Science Vol 6, Issue 1, pp. 3 - 17. November 14, 2017. Link: https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702617723376 DOI: 10.1177/2167702617723376 Abstract: In two na…
Are you manually linking the study or automating it? I have seen your effort across multiple threads
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
correlation does not imply causation
Authors of studies like this are well aware of this. I haven't read this paper, but these papers often go to great pains to explain how they controlled or screened-out other causes.
I think it's fair to be off-hand sceptical without digging into the details of the paper. Since we don't really understand depression, it seems fairly obvious that it would be nigh on impossible to control for causes we don't know.
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#55They 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.
How do you prevent yourself from thinking "how amazing their world is", or "how amazing my world could be but isn't"? Most people can change their thinking about this manually to some extent, but I can definitely see how it could be a big problem for a significant subset.
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But where's your control? Everyone is exposed to EM radiation
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#57[deleted]
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#58They 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'm not sure that "sane" is the right term to use for a person who becomes suicidal from looking at pictures of rich people. Obsessively materialiastic, maybe. Sane, no.
It's not just material posessions that are flaunted on Instagram. Experiences, lifestyles, relationships, and accomplishments - most things that people want - are bubbled to the top.
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#59Study: Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time Citation: Jean M. Twenge, Thomas E. Joiner, Megan L. Rogers, Gabrielle N. Martin. Clinical Psychological Science Vol 6, Issue 1, pp. 3 - 17. November 14, 2017. Link: https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702617723376 DOI: 10.1177/2167702617723376 Abstract: In two na…
correlation does not imply causation
Various possible con founders were discussed at length in the article. The obvious one, depression leading to social
Media use:
“Two followed people over time, with both studies finding that spending more time on social media led to unhappiness, while unhappiness did not lead to more social media use. A third randomly assigned participants to give up Facebook for a week versus continuing their usual use. Those who avoided Facebook reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week.”
Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> we should easily see it.
Note, I'm not saying there is an effect, but it's not quite so easy to say we should have found it if it exists. First, there is a delay between radiation exposure and cancer risk (up to ten years).
Second, if all population centers experience the same increase in radiation exposure, then it is very difficult to use radiation as an independent variable to measure its impact on cancer.
For instance, it took decades before anyone was able to show that nuclear testing caused an increase in deaths, and that was only possible because the distribution of radioactive isotopes was not uniformly spread across the US -- some states (especially in the midwest) received far more radiation than others (e.g. Western California or Louisiana).
In contrast, if electromagnetic radiation from cell towers is relatively uniformly spread for the same population density (e.g. New York is comparable to Los Angeles, and rural Washington is comparable to rural Missouri), then it will be rather difficult to separate cancer risk from electromagnetic radiation from other risks.