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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

#201

Post by bpicolo »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #73
bpicolo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are using smartphones as a replacement for face-to-face interaction. That's not just symptomatic.

The solution isn't to ban or reduce smartphone usage, like you would if smartphone usage itself was causing problems. The solution is to make it easier and more accepted to hang out face-to-face. Ban the phone and keep the isolating culture and you wind up with even more isolated teens.

Of course. Banning phones doesn't make any sense and computers are pretty much the same thing in the context of home. Self-moderation is critical here, though hard to do

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

#202

Post by raugustinus »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #198
ben_w wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real solution would be for companies to start giving a shit to whom they hire and put some effort into finding them.

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

#203

Post by sumedh »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #185
lumberjack wrote: post #62

Too quick to blame, "the screen". Is it really just the existence of social media that caused this, or is it maybe a change of culture that emerged with the spread of the Internet and social media? For example, today a child from a religious community might encounter atheism at 12 or 13 whereas previously they would encounter it when they went off to college. Maybe that child happens to be suffering from depression a…

So religious people never get depressed? What a stupid argument! Believing that some (unproven and nonexistent) entity is going to solve all your problems is completely delusional.

> Believing that some (unproven and nonexistent) entity is going to solve all your problems is completely delusional.

Have you heard of the placebo effect?

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

#204

Post by jacobolus »

patientplatypus wrote: post #200

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 do…

Why do you think Cal State psychology professors are “rich”?

Twenge has a salary of about $100,000/year. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2016/california-s...

Plus whatever she brings in by writing non-fiction books, delivering paid speeches, doing market research consulting, and maybe some summer job.

That’s probably quite a bit lower than the average reader of this forum.

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

#205

Post by hux_ »

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…

Few people realize how unprepared parents/authority figures are, "to do the right thing".

And that includes the characters who are educated and aware. God knows what's happening in households with unmonitored 24*7 sewage being pumped into developing minds.

Once your kid has had his or her mind misguided during crucial periods of its development, reprogramming it, postfacto is on par with rehabilitating the severely disabled. It takes a huge effort on all sides.

When it comes to mental health and development, the instinctive thing to do is not always the right thing. And it's even harder to do after things go wrong. So take it seriously. Keep talking to experts and other families going through the same thing. Stay on his case.

And lastly don't expect the govt or sillicon valleys shitheads (who produced this environment) to act fast.

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

#206

Post by TallGuyShort »

bootlooped wrote: post #168
wutbrodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think some people that just treat it like another Facebook. I've had several of people I barely know, and who I have nothing professionally in common with, try to add me.

And then people share that "solve this simple order of operations problem to prove you're a genius" bullshit on it, just like Facebook.

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

#207

Post by autokad »

psb31 wrote: post #187

This research is highly debated and is by no means a sure thing. The research so far has been correlational, inconsistent, and weak. Twenge hugely overstates the confidence we should have in the findings. See https://medium.com/@OrbenAmy/social-media-and-suicide-a-crit... and https://twitter.com/shuhbillskee/status/955070356091555840 for some critiques of the work.

When I worked for a research lab for a university attached to a hospital, facebook usage was highly correlated with diagnosed depression. it was unclear whether depressed people used facebook more, or using facebook more caused depression.

the correlations with facebook usage and other illnesses was weak, but depression was not.

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

#208

Post by jhgorrell »

pixelperfect wrote: post #167
limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When I was around that age I also had my PC taken away from me. My recommendation would be to see if you can kickstart some hobby by spending a few hundred dollars on something as a substitute for the PC. Something of his choice than is more constructive than video games. When my PC was taken away and not replaced with anything, I just got bored and didn't know what to do with my time.

I enjoyed board games in my early years. YMMV.

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

#209

Post by ramblenode »

Findeton wrote: post #103
trendia wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

Non-ionizing radiation, like the one from cell towers or your smartphone (or radio signals, or TV, or even from power lines) does not cause cancer. It just can't cause cancer, as it can't even rip off a single electron from an atom (definition of non-ionizing).

This seems like a very wrong-headed assumption. We don't understand the etiology of cancer generally, and radio frequency radiation may have physiological effects which produce conditions favorable to cancer. Microwaves aren't ionizing, but it's easy to demonstrate that an oven will damage tissue. Tissue damage results in a cascade of physiological processes, including inflammation and scarring which may precipitate cancer. RF energy is similarly absorbed by tissue producing heat, but the specific absorption rate (SAR) for common RF emitters, including phones, is low. Maybe enough exposure over time becomes an issue, though.

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

#210

Post by flukus »

Momquist wrote: post #138
lumberjack wrote: post #62

Too quick to blame, "the screen". Is it really just the existence of social media that caused this, or is it maybe a change of culture that emerged with the spread of the Internet and social media? For example, today a child from a religious community might encounter atheism at 12 or 13 whereas previously they would encounter it when they went off to college. Maybe that child happens to be suffering from depression a…

I find your example is extremely odd and disturbing. Facing other mindsets and cultures at a young age as a reason, or at least contributing, to depression? That's really a stretch. Are children also at risk when meeting with other kids of different religions? It could shake their own faith too, by the same logic.

> Facing other mindsets and cultures at a young age as a reason, or at least contributing, to depression? That's really a stretch.

I can see it contributing. Humans are tribal animals and teenagers are the extreme of this with all sorts of cliques and clubs that form in high schools. Imagine being a teenager and discovering that your in the wrong tribe, then imagine that the tribe you like is "at war" with your tribe. Even with modern communications it would be easy to feel isolated without that face to face interaction.

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