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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

#361

Post by lsc »

bonesss wrote: post #353
lsc wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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 I think you're hoping over a few categorical issues that create the social media dysthymia. It's not about seeing people who are more successful. It's not about "better" or "worse". It's about social regulation in formative egos. From your posts you are coming off li…

I... really enjoyed your comment. I'm drifting off, so I probably won't respond to all of it, but thanks. that was pretty insightful.

>From your posts you are coming off like an aspergersy male adult engineer

Yes, and even more so in that I've put myself in a world where I'm surrounded by people who (I believe) are even more aspergersy (if you are using the word how I think you are using it) than I am, which I actually really enjoy, but in many ways I'm very insulated (and comfortable) within my bubble.

>To our primate brains `bosses` tend to be `others` and not `us

This is one of those things that all the evidence points to being true; I mean, I read leadership books, and I read about how militaries are structured and I agree with you... but this doesn't feel true in my life. I don't feel like my boss is an 'other' and I didn't feel like my employees were others when I had employees[1]. I mean, unless it's a non-technical boss; the business side of the house is entirely "other" in my book. I can get along with those people okay, but yes, it's different.

>You're not seeing someone in another group, like someone famous, doing something fun. You're seeing someone in your group doing it, causing an implicit comparison.

Huh. But... I like it when people in my group succeed. I feel like I've put a lot of effort into getting into a group that values the things I value, and where most other people in that group are better at those things I value than I am. When those people succeed, it shows that my group is a strong group that can get things done. Also, more successful friends means more good job leads :)

[1]of course, I don't think I was a particularly good boss... if you consider all business people to be "others" -- perhaps you should figure out how to change that before starting a business. but, I mean, I have been the boss, and while I was a weird boss, it wasn't unnatural to me, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of being the boss wasn't unnatural to me, it was just a job that it turns out that I'm not very good at.

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

#362

Post by dx034 »

bpicolo wrote: post #71
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #70

Screen time is a symptom, not a cause. One of the vital drives of adolescents are to gain independence from their parents and figure out their own place in life. To do this, teens need to interact with peers, hang out, make mistakes, and generally be sociable. Our society, largely, does not allow this. Instead, safety fears, need for cars, etc, keep teens at home. So what else is a teen to do to interact socially wit…

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

IT can be a symptom if the underlying reason are parents that have become over-protective. Teens meeting in public places are often associated with anti-social behaviour nowadays. It's not that all teens prefer meeting online but with many parents that's a lot easier.

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

#363

Post by cornholio »

ramblenode wrote: post #268
cornholio wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ~…

> A lack of understanding is not negative evidence

Clearly, but anybody claiming the spooky action effect needs to accept the burden of proof and produce positive evidence. When that necessitates new ways of physical interaction unknown to science, it's a colossal burden, likely to have far reaching implications and revolutionize multiple fields; it's highly unlikely that such positive evidence was ignored for the decades the effect was claimed.

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

#364

Post by lsc »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #253
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…

Not helpful, facilitating contempt for people is not the opposite of facilitating depression. It's even worse when it facilitates contempt for your peer group, e.g. dumb yuppie millennial shit prejudicing interactions with the neighbors, coworkers, people that have tech jobs and live near you etc.

You have a good point. Really, I spend a lot more of my "negative or critical self-reflection" time thinking about my own arrogance and contempt...

At my debate club, I mentioned this part way through the argument, that I did find my own argument distressingly (and depressingly) arrogant and sad; It was pointed out that in debate club, it is traditional to not undermine your own argument.

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

#365

Post by peoplewindow »

ben_w wrote: post #327
blibble wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that vote was 18 months ago if he's still looking after that long in this market they're probably right

I started looking seriously about 5 months ago. I moved back to the UK one month ago. And, hard as moving is, I see no future for me in the UK, only a dead parent.

I hate to point this out, but Germany's government collapsed last year essentially because there's no consensus there for Merkle's ultra-pro-EU ultra-pro-migrant policies. She's still struggling to form a coalition months later. This is by far the longest German government collapse in history.

So if you think Germany is going to be radically different to the UK, I would suggest thinking again. Anti EU sentiment is rising everywhere.

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

#366

Post by madaxe_again »

lsc wrote: post #356
madaxe_again wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. If that were true, the sports stars would not have been popular

I think the difference is that everybody believes that they too could be a sports star, in the same way as everybody believes that they too will one day be rich - whereas intellect is a rather fixed quantity - so point taken, I was overly broad.

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

#367

Post by manmal »

lsc wrote: post #357
manmal wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

>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. I am super amused that in the middle of a heated debate on…

Interesting argument :) Do you mean that a happy, well-balanced person would not engage in discussions on Hacker News?

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

#368

Post by dajt »

flukus wrote: post #199
dajt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, or a build-it-yourself Z80 kit. I'm not being sarcastic.

An rpi or an arduino would be way better than an iPad.

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

#369

Post by dajt »

matwood wrote: post #29
dajt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> no benefit to the student No benefit? Maybe you mean that you prefer an Android tablet? I didn't have a computer until I was 18. The internet wasn't much of a thing until I got to college. Every day I think about how amazing it would have been to have access to so much free information when I was a kid.

No, I mean a tablet is a stupid thing for a school student to have. I could sort of see the point of a cheap laptop or chromebook - at least typing on them is reasonable. But there is nothing wrong with writing on paper either.

Teachers giving homework printed on paper makes it easier for the student and parent to know what homework there is to be done.

And printing from tablets? Come on. I don't know about Android tablets but it ain't easy from an iPad.

My kids aren't living in some tech backwater - we have more than enough computers from 8 to 64 bits they could do something useful with.

But there is no upside to me having to buy each of them an iPad - not for me or them. Even iPad games are just stupid free-to-play-pay-to-speed-up-progress games. All the kids give each other for birthday these days are itunes cards that get spend on 'gems'.

The whole thing is a disaster. Get off my lawn.

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

#370

Post by dajt »

leetcrew wrote: post #50
matwood wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no benefit to the student No benefit? Maybe you mean that you prefer an Android tablet? I didn't have a computer until I was 18. The internet wasn't much of a thing until I got to college. Every day I think about how amazing it would have been to have access to so much free information when I was a kid.

I spent much of my teenage years playing video games, building/overclocking computers, flashing roms on my phones, and devouring wikipedia. my parents were concerned that I was spending too much time online but I'm glad they didn't try to intervene. I was learning tons and by the time I got to college pretty much everything in the CS degree was trivially easy for me (except some of the formal math stuff). on the flip…

I spent every waking hour tinkering with my C64, and made a career from that.

But a C64 is a very different beast from a ipad or even a rpi. I think the percentage of owners back then tinkered with them as well as just loading up games was much higher.

I haven't heard of a single kid in my son's classes who has tried programming. The thing is just a TV/mobile game console.

Thank god they haven't hit facebook yet, at least the ones I know.

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