Live data from Hacker News

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

theconversation.com

121–130 of 456 posts

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

#121

Study: 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

I’ve also wondered, because it’s really helpful. I always prefer to read the original study and author’s own analysis, caveats etc.

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

#122

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.

Depends on who and what you're following, I guess. Being a male in my mid- to late-30s I don't use Instagram for social purposes, as I don't have any personal photo of mine in there, I'm just using it to post architecture-related photos (mostly photos of communist brutalist buildings built in my city in the 1960s and 1970s) and to follow people interested in very similar things. For purposes like this one is quite an interesting medium.

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

#123

Housing market is pretty bad factor. Most generations previous could afford a starter house on two minimum wage or a bit above minimum wage incomes. In many areas today you need two engineering incomes to pay off a 30 yr mortgage.

I'm not sure how many 13-17 year old teenagers were or are concerned with their ability to purchase a home.

It still affects them - what if their parents (or parent, single) can't afford to move them into a decent school district, for example?

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

#124
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Teenagers might not think in these terms, but their parents do. Aside from parents directly projecting their vision on children, kids can read anxiety or stress from their parents and be ‘contamined’ by these feelings.

Right, absolutely. That's a different claim from the GP comment, and a reasonable one. The authors noted that the symptoms were independent of economic indicators. Now obviously this study is an initial result, and thus fairly preliminary (if you believe any effect in social science after a single study, you haven't been paying attention). But it's not like this is a rebuttal of the study's claims.

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

#125
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it is never fair to react to a peer reviewed scientific study with off hand skepticism.

A sensible amount of scepticism is generally in order for studies in the social sciences.

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

#126
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 av…

isn't this just bias some of the original time and motion studies that the act of changing something effected the results found?

The example my course gave was first increasing lighting production went up then when the reduced the lighting production went up not down as expected

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Have you ever met a teenager? Yes. And we've all been teenagers. >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 start of their careers). What? EVERY teenager thinks about it. Not only that, their parents financial…

Yes, preparing for _college_ and _finding a job_. The details of how you're going to pay your day to day are far hazier, as are things like "the gig economy" and retirement.

If you were worrying about your future mortgage when you're a teenager, I can assure you you were in the minuscule minority.

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

#128
post #63
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you do that? I get bombarded with recruiters who don’t read my profile. “I’m moving to Berlin because of Brexit and looking for iOS roles” -> “Would you like this job in London as a python developer?” (Given I’m now back in the UK helping family look after a parent with Alzheimer’s while she can still recognise me, I should probably update my profile...)

Either that or they don't believe you will really move, or they believe that with a different job you would stay.

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

#129

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.

For my son (17 y.o.) it is online games and phone use in general. He has - I hope - mild depression, which - I believe - is caused by his online habits.

His mom and I thought taking his PC away from him would fix it. But then he falls into school-sleep cycle, that looks like full-blown depression.

Yes, his grades are affected and in not a good way.

What works for now is to participate in his life with him. As of now we are at a Volleyball tournament. While he "sucks" at it, the social interaction and sense of belonging to the team/cause that puts a wide smile on his face.

Not saying we should take phones away from kids, but certainly they should be treated as potentially harming things when used incorrectly: guns, alcohol (, drugs?), etc.

In any case, Volleyball includes scores of girls dressed in spandex, so there is hope he will get interested in them and starts to think how to get to them rather than look at the phone.

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

#130
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Teenagers I do know personally talk about being worried about jobs, housing, debt and general economical problems. I never start those discussions, they do.

That sounds like a branch of the problem being discussed here. If you’re 16 and worried about housing options, something is wrong imo.
Post reply on HN