Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 456 posts

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

#261

Post by ianai »

bitcurious wrote: post #258
djsumdog wrote: post #228

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

>In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless – classic symptoms of depression – surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13- to 18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent. Perhaps to a nihilist maybe that's not a bad thing, but to most that's neither good nor nihilism. T…

The US culture needs some changes. We’re still having children bringing guns to school to shoot their bullies. It happened before MySpace and Facebook. There are structural problems in a society where expressions of love are rarer than violence.

Last I knew, kids were still largely growing up in schools where being smart is dumb and prosecuted through bullying. That’s sufficient for mass depression to climb when the rest of life becomes more stressful. I.e. people really are having a hard time finding actually good work that provides health care and a steady paycheck and decent work environment. The opioid crisis has fallouts, in addition.

Most of what I just said was said by the hippies in the 60s.

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

#262

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

djsumdog wrote: post #228

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

> The universe is absurd,

This is in no way a proven fact. Only one of many possible philosophical views on life.

> Maybe they see a wold that's yelling at them, calling them entitled, where they know they'll be in more debt and less paid than any other generation before them. Maybe it's just the pure knowledge of our place as cogs in the gears.

Yes and they have a 24/7 view of the world now. You didn't have that even 20 years ago.

> Are they just looking at the US? If you didn't find similar numbers in Europe, where they have the same access to cellphones and technology, they you have to address the other issues such as health care, better pubic welfare, freedom of transportation and high standards of living.

Those factors already exist in the US-some have higher standards of living here than others, some have better healthcare, some have freedom of exploration and the numbers are still there.

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

#263

Post by enraged_camel »

djsumdog wrote: post #228

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

>>Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books.

Books are categorically different from smartphones. For one, they don't constantly interrupt regular conversations by beeping and buzzing and demanding the owner's attention. For another, they tend to be about a single subject, and tend to explore that subject in depth.

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

#264

Post by jrs95 »

abritinthebay wrote: post #251
jp555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“And nihilism isn't a bad thing.“ Becoming unwilling to manifest any faith in anything at all is absolutely a bad thing.

That... is not what Nihilism is though? I mean someone who is a nihilist might think that but it’s not a logical consequence of, or foundational feature of, nihilism.

It sort of is, though. Nietzsche in particular didn't actually portray nihilism as a good thing, but just an inevitable stage in human development, which could be either very good or very bad depending on what kind of values system (if any) arose from that nihilism. There are in my opinion some similarities between the direction we're heading and what he called "The Last Man", which was basically the worst possible outcome of nihilism.

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

#265

Post by rorykoehler »

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.

It's pretty easy to avoid that side of instagram. I haven't seen it in over a year and I browse it every day.

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

#266

Post by tlear »

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 completely agree, mine is basically filled with pictures of mountains, climbing, skiing. In many ways it is much more enjoyable then FB for me

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

#267

Post by foxylad »

enraged_camel wrote: post #263
djsumdog wrote: post #228

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

>>Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Books are categorically different from smartphones. For one, they don't constantly interrupt regular conversations by beeping and buzzing and demanding the owner's attention. For another, they tend to be about a single subject, and tend to explore that subject in depth.

Yes, and books don't tell you everyone hates you and show that awful photo where you look fat and stupid every second minute and how much better everyone else is at everything and how a person even stupider and more obnoxious than you ends up as president and that really cute guy/girl has millions of friends and you're not one of them...

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

#268

Post by ramblenode »

cornholio wrote: post #247
ramblenode wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

An oven will damage tissue by thermal heating. Since the energies involved in cell phones, WiFi, etc. induce negligible heating, we need another plausible pathway of interaction with the tissue. If we don't have one, then it's like saying that african butterflies could cause cancer at the North Pole by an yet unidentified phenomenon of spooky action at a distance. Impossible to disprove but irrelevant. Edit: To make…

Heating was an example to demonstrate that non-ionizing radiation still impacts tissue. It doesn't make sense to dismiss a possible link between cancer and RF emitting devices just because we don't understand all the mediating mechanisms in that relationship. A lack of understanding is not negative evidence. And the fact that I can't disprove your butterfly theory is not a reason that simpler theories (phone usage ~ cancer) are invalid.

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

#269

Post by eli_gottlieb »

djsumdog wrote: post #228

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

>The trouble with articles like this is they don't explore the other factors. Maybe the simply access to information makes kids more nihilistic. And nihilism isn't a bad thing. The universe is absurd, we have no meaning except what we give to ourselves (through religion or belief of whatever). Maybe kids are just realizing this, and it has nothing to do with technology? Maybe they're realizing that because of technology.

I don't want to just write you off with a snotty, "Rubbish!", but IMHO, yes, this is rubbish. Nihilism is just plain wrong-headed. It's answering, "No" where you should answer, "Mu"[1].

[1] -- http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mu.html

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

#270

Post by rorykoehler »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #55
Gargoyle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The things that bring most pleasure (family, friends, learning, creating and exercise) have nothing to do with any of the fake stuff on Instagram. I've been on yachts and frankly I was bored out of my mind and dying to leave.
Post reply on HN