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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

#191

Post by throwaway2801 »

darkstar999 wrote: post #178
throwaway2801 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having discovered atheism at such a tender age , they are left hopeless and desolate . (emphasis mine) What?? As if atheists were monsters. As an atheist (more agnostic actually - I cannot be sure no gods exist), your answer feels interesting but also surprising, very saddening and actually chocking. Let's not make atheists look like evil people who make children depressed. This is not OK. I never needed to have an…

I think you're taking it the wrong way. Perhaps they feel hopeless and desolate because they are stuck in the religious group after learning about other things.

(edit: I read your answer again. It made me smile. Original text:)

Maybe you are right, and xupybd too. This is why I still think my parent had an interesting and insightful answer. I actually wanted to understand that this way, but was put off by the "at such a tender age". This does not look neutral to me. "at this stage of life" or "at this young age" would not have triggered this in me.

Unfortunately, written text is not sufficiently precise for this kind of things.

I'm biased though. I happen to have met (independently) two people last year who were sorry for me and wanted to make me believe in God (which is okay. When you have convictions, you may want to make people adopt your convictions - but they didn't seem to understand my point of view). I also went to the US and met people there who were seeing atheists as extremists and intolerent people (I was ok for them though, because I am agnostic - so for them, I consider the existence of God).

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

#192

Post by goialoq »

jeffmould wrote: post #94
deckard1 wrote: post #12

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.

Completely agree. I also believe that YouTube can have similar results. Kids watch videos of "professional" YouTubers having nice cars, traveling all the time, living in nice homes, etc... We have had to significantly limit the amount of time our kids are exposed to YouTube (and Instagram) simply because of the "I want it now" and "I want that one" mentality it has caused on some occasions.

YouTube, like TV and the newsstand, has good content and bad content.

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

#193

Post by kikoreis »

uep wrote: post #146
runT1ME wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Facebook/Twitter/Instagram is blocked at a lot of work places, while LinkedIn is not...

That's ironic. To me, the implication of browsing LinkedIn at work is that you're looking for another job. Whereas if you're browsing Facebook or Instagram you're just wasting time.

A lot of inside sales teams use LinkedIn for active prospecting. It's reasonably successful.

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

#194

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #129
deckard1 wrote: post #12

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…

I mean, there is no way to know about what is happening in people's heads, so you may well have made the correct choice - however when I was 16-17, I played online games a fair bit and the reason for it was because I enjoyed them a lot and had friends on there I didn't have in real life.

When I went to uni I met similar friends which led to my social life improving, but before then there really was no substitute for online games at the time simply because I did not enjoy the company of the people I'd met at the time.

When I didn't have access to online games I'd just read the same amount instead.

I guess what I'm saying is that a lot of the time (but not always), online games are a symptom, not a cause.

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

#195

Post by rinze »

MIKarlsen wrote: post #25
deckard1 wrote: post #12

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...

It's the culprit of corporate self-help. I don't look at it as anything else.

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

#196

Post by ktta »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #129
deckard1 wrote: post #12

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…

What he needs is a good set of friends. Not just acquaintances who he sees during an event (like say volleyball) and never again, but a couple friends(or atleast one) who with whom he feels like he can hangout with all day, year round. That'll help greatly with the depression. Even if they stare at a screen, they'll do it together. I speak from experience.

Now how you can help him get a couple good friends, I don't know. It is something that has to happen very organically. Forcing it won't help in most cases (you'll know within a couple interactions). Don't try to push him to events he doesn't want to do. You can be around hundreds of people and still be lonely.

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

#197

Post by agumonkey »

Gargoyle wrote: post #42
deckard1 wrote: post #12

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.

I find it "funny" that internet was to bring on us the infinity of information, only for it to be curated curated curated to make it relevant. Instead of having curated diffusion, we flipped the logic.

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

#198

Post by rebeccaskinner »

ben_w wrote: post #63
drharby wrote: 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...)

It's really just a special case of the general spam problem. It costs recruiters very little to send out their listing to as many people as possible. People who are unqualified or uninterested in the specific job, or not looking, will typically just not respond. All the recruiters need to do is filter the dunning-krueger responses, pass along a hoard of largely self-filtered candidates to the hiring manager, and try to collect a paycheck.

The only real solution is to somehow make the cost of contact more expensive. I'm not sure of any way to do that other than simply trying to convince enough people to waste enough recruiter time collectively to make the dragnet approach unprofitable. And to be honest, given the churn in the industry, it might be unprofitable anyway- but there are always hoards of new graduates ever year without any particular marketable skills looking to leech onto the industry who become recruiters only to burn out after a few years anyway.

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

#199

Post by flukus »

dajt wrote: post #18
purple-again wrote: post #4

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.

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…

> I'm extremely hacked off that the high school I'm sending my kids to requires students to have an ipad

My nephews in primary school had android tablets but had to get new ipads (second hand not supported) for the "programming" class that was introduced with proprietary drag'n'drop programming software. A raspberry pi would not only have been much cheaper but would have had much more potential as an educational tool.

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

#200

Post by patientplatypus »

Morons -

"It can't be the economy because unemployment is low and the economy is booming." Except of course that rents are far outpacing wages and most people are getting by with make work.

Almost all the US jobs created since 2005 are temporary

https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created...

I mean good lord, if I were 17 right now and knew it were only going to get worse as I got older I would be down right morose.

I wonder how these authors could be so obtuse and out of touch.

Author:

Jean Twenge

Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University

Oh I get it. The authors are rich and far removed from the actual conditions of the job market. "Fooled by numbers" indeed.

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