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

331–340 of 456 posts

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

#331

Post by lsc »

jraby3 wrote: post #318
lsc wrote: post #67

Tuesday, this was the theme at my toastmaster's debate club[1] - I got stuck arguing that social media doesn't make you depressed. And... my problem with my argument wasn't that it was untrue, but that it was kinda mean. I don't feel jealous of the lives of almost anyone I went to high school with; quite the opposite. A lot of them post "racist memes with spelling mistakes" - which is sad on many levels; If nothing e…

I'm not on social media aside from Reddit. But what I notice with my wife and others is a simple reason why I dislike it. If you have 400 friends, and they each only take one vacation a year, that means 8x per week, you're looking at other people taking a vacation. Even if you travel 4x per year, you'll still feel like you never do anything and everyone else is always celebrating their life. I realize this is a simpl…

>Also, even having a handful of very wealthy friends can eventually lead to feelings of envy.

I.. huh. I really don't get this. Maybe it is because I am doing better than I thought I was going to for the first half of my life? or maybe I'm just less jealous than most people? but yeah, there are a few people I follow who you could say I am envious of; people who are super successful in all the ways I want to be successful, but I think it's good rather than bad, because I feel a connection to what I want and admire, and there's this person I really admire who is talking with me. That is... kinda neat, you know? Like showing up at your buddy's weekend board game party and finding the inventor of a famous programming language was also invited.

I guess I don't see how seeing people who are more successful than you on facebook could possibly be more distressing than seeing those people at work (and you will and always have seen those people at work. We've always had bosses.)

Even in person, I've always found being around people that are better than I am (better by my standards) to be fun and exciting. I don't think this is uncommon, really.

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

#332

Post by [deleted] »

madaxe_again wrote: post #321
lsc wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's a western thing. In the east being smart is cool. I thought it was an exclusive school thing. The Americans I know who went to exclusive high schools seem to have had very different experiences. I even know several people (who went to a 'special' highschool for 'gifted' children) who claimed that they enjoyed high school more than college.

Nope. I was educated mostly at public (private) school in the UK, and spent a year at a private school in the US. I was ruthlessly mocked until I learned to dissemble, to not put my hand up to answer a question, to be publicly told off by teachers for not handing in work. The reason is simple - if you make others feel inferior, by being better at anything in any way than them, they hate and envy you.

[deleted]

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

#333

Post by abusoufiyan »

newfoundglory wrote: post #244
Spooky23 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, yea. The housing market is super fucked up, that’s what’s wrong.

I guess but why would teenagers of all people care about this? You don't need a house. Many of the kids I knew growing up lived in apartments.

If they lived in a house they could inherit it from their parents. Why is the housing market something children worry about?

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

#334

Post by abusoufiyan »

yakitori wrote: post #245
jimmaswell wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. Depressed and filled with existential dread over seeing pictures of rich people on yachts, really? Do you feel that way every time you pass by a large house or see an expensive car on the road too?

> This is ridiculous. It's not. It's just your daily anti-facebook/social media propaganda. Every day there is something about the "evils of social media". It's the new gangsta rap or violent video games. The news media spreads fear in order to sell ads. It wasn't too long ago when the news media hyped up violent videos to sell ads. Violent video games were blamed for everything from school shootings to depression to…

I never bought into this argument that gangsta rap, violent video games, porn, etc have NO effect on our society.

You, yourself mentioned ads in your comment. What is an ad but a type of media? And yet, ads are so effective that they are basically the backbone of many of the largest tech companies in the world.

Clearly media DOES affect our society. It may not be as simple as "listen to gangsta rap -> commit the crimes you heard about in gangsta rap" but there can totally be changes in our behavior which come directly from our media. If this wasn't possible, advertising wouldn't be one of the largest industries in the world.

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

#336

Post by jcoffland »

jraby3 wrote: post #318
lsc wrote: post #67

Tuesday, this was the theme at my toastmaster's debate club[1] - I got stuck arguing that social media doesn't make you depressed. And... my problem with my argument wasn't that it was untrue, but that it was kinda mean. I don't feel jealous of the lives of almost anyone I went to high school with; quite the opposite. A lot of them post "racist memes with spelling mistakes" - which is sad on many levels; If nothing e…

I'm not on social media aside from Reddit. But what I notice with my wife and others is a simple reason why I dislike it. If you have 400 friends, and they each only take one vacation a year, that means 8x per week, you're looking at other people taking a vacation. Even if you travel 4x per year, you'll still feel like you never do anything and everyone else is always celebrating their life. I realize this is a simpl…

> wears you down over time.

You might also want to look at why other people's happens or success makes you feel bad. It's a very common feeling but it's unhealthy and a sign that you have poor self-esteem.

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

#337

Post by abusoufiyan »

Razengan wrote: post #164

I think the "likely culprit" is, as it has always been, just the "human condition." The coming into an unknown world, ignorant of everything, constantly reconciling conflicting ideas, nagged by a sense of ultimate pointlessness, and the dread of inevitable mortality. However we may try to pooh-pooh these things away, they've been an incurable source of unhappiness since time immemorial. Humans cannot be truly happy u…

>Humans cannot be truly happy unless we keep ourselves seriously deluded or constantly distracted; with biosocial emotions, religion, duty, hope, ambition, goals, pleasure or whatever.

Typical internet denizen idea of humanity.

Religious people are not all deluding themselves into happiness. Quite a lot of them find religion to be a framework with comes with its own sources of existential dread.

Emotions are a delusion to keep us happy? Hope is also a delusion to keep us happy? ...what?

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

#338

Post by abusoufiyan »

jacobolus wrote: post #281
soared wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rofl, $100k/yr is rich.

Median household income in her city for her age group is about $80k/year. $100k/year puts her in the top 35% or so of all households, but probably not “rich” by local standards under a typical definition of “rich”. When someone says “that guy is rich”, “oh what a sheltered rich guy who can’t understand the struggles of the rest of us”, etc., I’m imagining someone who eats expensive restaurant meals 5 times a week, va…

>Someone who can just afford to buy a house and put 3 kids through college and save for a modest retirement seems pretty solidly “middle class” by most standards. You might have a different definition.

idk what standards these are. Someone who can buy a house, put 3 kids through college and retire is rich. Do you live in America??

You are basically describing every suburban, white picket-fence American dream lifestyle, a lifestyle unobtainable for most people because most people aren't rich.

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

#339

Post by abusoufiyan »

dorfsmay wrote: post #39
bkohlmann wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More than you think. They are concerned about being independent, which means affording rent which leads them to think about buy vs rent.

lol if anything teenagers can afford rent anywhere because they have no kids, no spouses and are quite happy eating cheap microwaveable food.

They also are the least likely age group to demand lots of cleanliness and personal space, which drive up rents in most places.

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

#340

Post by inDigiNeous »

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…

That's a good point. Maybe it's the combination of both. The access to information that was not before reachable to teenagers. What I've noticed for myself once online access becomes more and more universal, more information is also available, and this means that also information about what is _really_ happening in the world becomes available, not just curated "everything is ok" information.

Information about wars being waged, global poverty, the US raging wars, nuclear holocaust fears, and the feedback loops that the effect of anybody becoming a journalist these days creates. Also the combination of internet trolls, systematic brainwashing and censorship, makes it even harder to understand what is real and what is not.

But it might be the phones, I see more and more kids, like aged 10 - 15, walking in the playgrounds, streets, sitting down with phones in their hands, staring at some game or video that is providing them with constant small feedback. It used to be that if you were outside, you at least were walking and concentrating on just that, or you were sitting down with your friends at the playground, now everybody seems to have a phone or they are looking at somebody elses phone.

It's a complex issue for sure. But I wouldn't blame the kids either, as they learn these habits from their parents, who to be honest most are just getting used to the internet phenomena and global information access, it's not that much of an old thing, although us working in the technical field who have had access since maybe childhood to BBSs etc might think so.

Post reply on HN