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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

#341

Post by abusoufiyan »

throwaway2801 wrote: post #153
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…

> 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…

>Let's not make atheists look like evil people who make children depressed. This is not OK.

That's not what he's doing at all.

But it is also true that religion is largely the underpinning of morality for most people in the world and early exposure to the idea that morality is relative and malleable and that actually the only real motivator is self-preservation is probably unhealthy for adolescents.

>Solving my problems actually seems to be the solution to my happiness, not to believe or have faith in anything. On the other side, a big part of many religions seems to involve thinking about death and guilt

A big part of religions is also charity work and the idea that you aren't just doing things for yourself or solving your own problems but solving the problems of others because they are your equals (at least in Abrahamic traditions, I am familiar with these).

I don't see where you can pull that out of atheism.

>What happens when this child learns that there have been wars about such things as religions when the claim is that they are about tolerence?

What a silly thing to say. Religions would not need to preach tolerance if mankind were inherently tolerant, no? If mankind is not inherently tolerant, why will a child be shaken to understand that that inherent intolerance causes wars over nearly everything (from religion to culture to language to land).

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

#342

Post by inDigiNeous »

panarky wrote: post #311
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…

Is it the phone or is it Facebook? If you have 500 friends, your feed is dominated by the 5 friends with spectacular stories about their stupendous lives. Continuously comparing your ordinary life against your feed naturally makes you feel bad about yourself. And being on public display 24x7, with the pressure to perform for your audience, in a never-ending struggle to keep up, must do incredible damage to the psyche…

Teenagers don't use facebook. Instagram and snapchat more. Which is kinda more effective in creating a false image of somebody else having the great look, great time, when you just take pictures of the "best" moments of your life, and leave out everything else.

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

#343

Post by abusoufiyan »

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 is wholly different in real life versus solely online.

Why do you think racism / anti-Semitism / anti-Muslim sentiment is so prominent online and so much less prominent in real life? Why does so much research show that actual, in-person interactions with people of other backgrounds reduces the strength of racist stereotypes in people's minds?

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

#344

Post by abusoufiyan »

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.

Everyone believes in something unproven.

Nobody has the capacity to create a worldview solely based on things they have personally proven to themselves. You have to trust someone somewhere without the ability to verify their claims. Every human being has to do this somewhere in their life.

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

#345

Post by manmal »

lsc wrote: post #331
jraby3 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succes…

If you are perfectly content with your life, then Facebook probably won’t be an issue at all. But if you have _any_ area where you don’t feel fulfilled - like bad life/work balance, insufficient funds, loneliness, unfulfilled baby wish - then Facebook is going to rub it into your face, daily, that others have what you desire, and does it in a misleading way.

Let’s say you can’t have a baby and you have a colleague with 4 kids at work. In real life, you talk to them, get a grasp of their situation, and might realize the caveats - Eg they also had an unfulfilled baby wish at first (which gives you hope), or you can offset the perceived „unfairness“ with the areas they are lacking in (eg they often feel overwhelmed by the kids or are sick a lot). On Facebook, you have an army of super-happy baby making machines, posting Instagram filtered of happy smiles in the sunny park, kids cuddling with a dog, birthday candles... the bad moments are very rarely reported - and when they are, lots of people flock to the post and comment, making that person their center of attention (= socially important). But they won’t write next to that happy picture „right after, baby cried for 45 minutes and I almost had a nervous breakdown“ because you don’t appear to be in a favorable position when writing that.

[As a father of two, I was never directly affected by an unfulfilled baby wish, but a friend of ours was.]

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

#346

Post by duskwuff »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #329
jraby3 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I specifically cut out Reddit entirely. Subreddits quickly end up being insular groupthink echo chambers, thanks to the voting system and biased moderators. The noise:content ratio is simply skewed way towards pointless noise. It's not worth it.

I've found that Reddit improves dramatically as you move away from the huge default subreddits and into smaller, more focused subs -- for hobbies you're involved in, for instance. For that sort of thing it's not half bad.

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

#347

Post by joejerryronnie »

lsc wrote: post #331
jraby3 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succes…

Perhaps there's a difference if you meet someone who is already successful or who's past accomplishments you admire versus that idiot in high school who barely passed chemistry by cheating off your answers, exibited the worst of the sexist jock/bro mentality, skated by on his good looks and is now driving a lambo and married to a supermodel.

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

#348

Post by carlmr »

abusoufiyan wrote: post #330
mathgenius wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. It's not about "jealousy" towards your friends on fb. It's about feeding the attention-monkey. And the more you feed that monkey the more it wants. Healthy brains spend time (much time) prior to attention, just being . I like to go on long walks and practice breathing. Dissolving mind and attention leads to great clarity, when the thoughts are needed. Society as a whole does not seem to recognize t…

>Healthy brains spend time (much time) prior to attention, just being. I like to go on long walks and practice breathing. Dissolving mind and attention leads to great clarity, when the thoughts are needed. Yes, there is a reason practices like meditation, physical movements during prayer (yoga, Jewish and Islamic practices of prayer), etc. have lasted thousands of years. The screens are not the first attention-jacker…

I'm blocking social media on my phone now (LeechBlock), I mean I know how to disable it, but it reminds me of not doing it. When I activated it I started noticing how often I just habitually check my phone to get trapped in this hole. My rule is now to only use social media when I'm at home on my computer. That already precludes 95% of my social media use, because I'm rarely at home.

I have a smartphone only since I'm 24. I can't imagine what it's like for a teenager growing up this way.

I'm dabbling with mindfulness as well now, and I jog without electronics. Listening to music while jogging isn't really something that has to do with social media, but more about the meditative aspect of jogging.

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #329
jraby3 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I specifically cut out Reddit entirely. Subreddits quickly end up being insular groupthink echo chambers, thanks to the voting system and biased moderators. The noise:content ratio is simply skewed way towards pointless noise. It's not worth it.

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by [deleted] »

abusoufiyan wrote: post #338
jacobolus wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lifestyl…

[deleted]
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