Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents • Hacker News Board

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#121

Post by Bakary » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

Verdex wrote: post #81

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It jives with my perspective too, but I can't help also feeling like that's an "old man yells at cloud" viewpoint. The way kids use social media today is fundamentally different to my experience. Like the way my parents viewed IRC usage as an outlet for kidnapping or whatever. Kids grew up immersed in social media, and probably use it for rich and important social interactions that are alien to me. I view social medi…

This is really off topic, but I just wanted to highlight how important the simpsons are to communication. Like, "old man yells at cloud" causes me to almost immediately understand your point (at least I feel I understand your point). The rest of your comment is almost unnecessary (although it is appreciated because it helps confirm that I am getting you). Personally, the experience is a bit incredible.

Before the Simpsons this was just "get off my lawn", possibly inspired by some other piece of media long forgotten

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#122

Post by nyanpasu64 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #114

csallen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusingly, you could analyze anything this way if you ignore the benefits and only look at the costs. "Planes are an outrage! Imagine if you proposed a system that required hours of everyone's time, cost them hundreds of dollars, forced them to sit in cramped positions, and subjected them to invasive scans and searches of their personal materials." "How are schools allowed! They literally imprison our kids for upward…

Rather than alluding to vague upsides, can you list what upsides you want to assert that social media provides, so that we can do as you say and perform a cost/benefit analysis? As both an early adopter and former user of both Facebook and Twitter, my eventual conclusion was that whatever benefits they offered were vastly outweighed by the mental toll they took on me.

To quote @mumblemumble:

"""

There's another side to this, though. Letting kids roam the internet can give ones who might otherwise be doomed to become misfits an opportunity to find community. Being a queer kid pre-Internet, for example, sucked, and the Web rolling out to households changed a lot of kids' lives. And we have a poor cultural memory of what that experience used to be like, because, before the rise of online communities, a big part of being queer - especially being a queer kid - was being subjected to systematic erasure.

I'm not sure how you balance those two things. My sense, though, is that the balance was better 20, 25 years ago, when the Internet had more small, individualized communities. Most of them have since been squashed by the rise of the social media oligopoly.

"""

I don't know if the downsides are worse for Facebook or Twitter (engineered for eyeballs and ad clicks), than forums, or where Discord lies on the spectrum.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#123

Post by Jestar342 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #65

titzer wrote: post #24

Social media (and the attention economy) are worse for young brains than drugs. If you came up with a substance that caused young people by the millions to become totally addicted, cost them multiple hours per day, pushed them into depression and suicide, and contributed to inactivity, obesity, loss of attention span, and overall ennui, it would be banned almost immediately. Heck, if you proposed a tracking system th…

I've always been a bit extreme on this but I more than ever believe that it's insane that we consider that leaving teenagers with unsupervised internet access is reasonable. Maybe I'm prude or naive but I remember vividly when I first saw a pornographic movie at like around 17. It really shook me at the time. I wasn't traumatized or anything but it made a strong impact on me. These days I expect that most teens exper…

Before the internet we were passing video tapes/films, magazines, and prints around with porn and gore. Pre-teen me saw a lot of the kind of things you mention before the internet was a thing. The students at my school had pseudo-competitions for who could get the best porn/gore, earning kudos for the bloodiest gore or "hottest" porn. Often the lines would blur whens someone found scat or snuff but that's a different matter.

Later on in life, I think everyone knew "a guy" at work that had all kinds of taboo material. The Weird Eddies or Creepy Colins of the world had a black-market snatched from them when the internet got popular.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#124

Post by Bakary » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

wackro wrote: post #16

INTPenis wrote: post #6

Don't mean to sound deep and profound here but I think life in general damages your mental health. Social media just brings it to you in a superficial format. But I do also believe those little notifications can be addictive.

That's very cynical. It's possible to enjoy life more and more as time goes on. Read Triumphs of Experience. My dad is one of those lucky people. Besides, even if life itself /is/ damaging in general, that doesn't explain the teen suicide rate etc, or any of the findings from this report specifically pertaining to teens.

It's more a case of happy people and unhappy people being largely unable to understand each other and then turning their general outlook into a theory of the world. Even a single person can have trouble remembering their own happiness when they sink into depression and their past pain when they are breathing life into their lungs.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#125

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #99

xxpor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, how old are you? I'm 30, so myspace and Facebook showed up only once I was in high school, but everything you describe was still available on the web before social media. Shock sites were huge (goatse, tubgirl, etc), and I remember watching a beheading with a chainsaw by a Mexican cartel. And of course porn was around too. The difference with social media is the "keeping up with the Joneses" except no…

There's a difference between something being available somewhere on the Internet (when Internet access was 56K from a desktop computer featuring prominently in your family room) and having it shared with you specifically to your smartphone.

[deleted]

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#126

Post by vulcan01 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #52

People should really read the research [1] and not this article as the article doesn't actually capture the scope and real impact of the research. The executive summary highlights: * Personal wellbeing drops, on average, as children move from primary into secondary school, and continues to drop as children move through secondary school. * We find a graded relationship between family income and all three outcomes thro…

As a high school guy, I have to wonder if

> Engaging in physical activity was found to be more important for boys’ mental and emotional health

is because (personal anecdata warning!) guys tend to prefer friends who are physically fit. This is just something I've noticed by observing my school; the stronger guys tend to have a larger social circle.

However, this causation could be flawed, maybe physically active people have better emotional health and that's why people are attracted (friendship-wise) to them.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#127

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #83

simias wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been a bit extreme on this but I more than ever believe that it's insane that we consider that leaving teenagers with unsupervised internet access is reasonable. Maybe I'm prude or naive but I remember vividly when I first saw a pornographic movie at like around 17. It really shook me at the time. I wasn't traumatized or anything but it made a strong impact on me. These days I expect that most teens exper…

Just wondering, how old are you? I'm 30, so myspace and Facebook showed up only once I was in high school, but everything you describe was still available on the web before social media. Shock sites were huge (goatse, tubgirl, etc), and I remember watching a beheading with a chainsaw by a Mexican cartel. And of course porn was around too. The difference with social media is the "keeping up with the Joneses" except no…

A random thought: What if the filter back then (I’m 34) helped? Most of the people spending significant time online back then were some degree of nerd (I hope that classification doesn’t offend anyone). Nowadays, it’s everyone.

During the early years of the German equivalent of high school, most of my classmates would spend days without being online once.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#128

Post by kibwen » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

ramphastidae wrote: post #78

simias wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been a bit extreme on this but I more than ever believe that it's insane that we consider that leaving teenagers with unsupervised internet access is reasonable. Maybe I'm prude or naive but I remember vividly when I first saw a pornographic movie at like around 17. It really shook me at the time. I wasn't traumatized or anything but it made a strong impact on me. These days I expect that most teens exper…

I agree that kids shouldn’t use the internet unsupervised, but what is the alternative? We were all 15 once. It is 100% impossible to stop kids from using the internet if they want to. So what’s the alternative?

Active and available parenting, ideally starting long before the teen years where they no longer want to take advice from their parents.

Saying that it's 100% impossible to stop kids from using the internet is as true as saying that it's 100% impossible to stop kids from trying alcohol. But there's a difference between a kid getting drunk once at a party and a kid being a habitual, daily alcoholic.

As a parent you want to guide them towards healthy ways to engage with things that could otherwise destroy them in excess. Social media in moderation is fine. Social media in excess isn't, and that's where a lot of parents have left their kids (because even they don't know how to use it in moderation; society hasn't caught up yet).

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#129

Post by tachyonbeam » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #99

xxpor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, how old are you? I'm 30, so myspace and Facebook showed up only once I was in high school, but everything you describe was still available on the web before social media. Shock sites were huge (goatse, tubgirl, etc), and I remember watching a beheading with a chainsaw by a Mexican cartel. And of course porn was around too. The difference with social media is the "keeping up with the Joneses" except no…

There's a difference between something being available somewhere on the Internet (when Internet access was 56K from a desktop computer featuring prominently in your family room) and having it shared with you specifically to your smartphone.

I never get anything gore shared to me, but I think it's also because I wouldn't stay friends with anyone who sends me that. I think it's weird that, as a society, we're more OK with violence than sex.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#130

Post by devlopr » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #114

csallen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusingly, you could analyze anything this way if you ignore the benefits and only look at the costs. "Planes are an outrage! Imagine if you proposed a system that required hours of everyone's time, cost them hundreds of dollars, forced them to sit in cramped positions, and subjected them to invasive scans and searches of their personal materials." "How are schools allowed! They literally imprison our kids for upward…

Rather than alluding to vague upsides, can you list what upsides you want to assert that social media provides, so that we can do as you say and perform a cost/benefit analysis? As both an early adopter and former user of both Facebook and Twitter, my eventual conclusion was that whatever benefits they offered were vastly outweighed by the mental toll they took on me.

There are upsides. From providing self estem from a different source from the local.

It has raised awareness like never before.

It has provided an income for some.

It allows new peer groups not available locally

It provides a safer space to interact with strangers.

Where we got it wrong was connecting these profiles to real life names. That has ruined people's lives.