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

#131

Post by anthk » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #101

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…

This. Im 29 and share the same experience. And we can even go further back; have people checked, old black & white cartoon? Some of them are so blatantly propaganda/politica/visual horrific that they wouldn't even be aired for 15 y.o today. If you take a closer look, even Tom & Jerry is quite violent, and most Japanese animation that air on kids TV-channel back then also, very sexual. And these things were airing on…

Well, in Spain I could see Bulma's breasts on manga an Shizuka one's as a dark joke in Doraemon. No one gave a shit, we have far worse real life problems in the 90's.

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

#132

Post by longtom » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #40

Here's the paper: https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EPI-PT_Young-p... It's all correlational (observing that people with higher social media use are worse off in various ways). This approach is not capable of detecting reverse causation (people use social media more because they are unhappy) or third causes (something else causes people to both use more social media and also be unhappy)

And even if it was causal, you'd still need to investigate what it is on social media that causes misery, e.g. ideologies/misinformation, social comparison/envy, cyber-bullying, addiction, bad news/sensationalism or echo chambers.

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

#133

Post by antattack » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

Manufacturers add fat or sugar to their product to make them more palatable or attractive. Flashy packaging or celebrity endorsement also helps. Social media is similar in many ways. Games, daily challenges, rewards, sense of belonging etc. In both instances you have to recognize what is beneficial to you and at what point is a waste of time or unhealthy.

It's hard to do it for adults and it's hard or impossible to do for children and teenagers.

Also, as with everything, everyone's experience will be different. In food example, some people can manage their calories better than other. Some are easily addicted or depressed. It's the same with social media or internet content in general.

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

#134

Post by deeeeplearning » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #122

kibwen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

>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.

They're clearly worse. Forums don't have algorithms constantly running trying to hijack your brain stem to keep you scrolling and clicking links...

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

#135

Post by tachyonbeam » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #90

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…

Agreed. It's one thing to say that you don't want to shelter your child; totally reasonable, kids should be exposed to a wide variety of experiences. But by definition kids lack experience, and if you expose them to a distorted image of reality, then unless you make an effort to point out that distortion, then they will rightfully conflate the distorted reality with reality. To use your example as an analogy, most po…

On the flipside, there's increasingly more and more amateur porn. On pornhub, there are many couples making videos of themselves and getting millions of views, making a living off of this. What these people make is obviously still probably setting high expectations (good lighting, edited to cut out the awkward parts, etc), but IMO, there is a lot more amateur and realistic content out there, and it's what many people want to see. I think in the 70s, 80s and 90s porn used to be a lot more studio, and now the general trend is for more natural, less processed.

I first got access to porn when I was 12, but I heard the disclaimer, everyone told me it wasn't realistic, and I don't think it skewed my expectations too much. IMO humans learn and adapt. I don't think that porn is a threat, but I do wish there was more sex education, and maybe relationship coaching for teenagers... Teenagers need to be taught early to have realistic relationship expectations in general, how to approach someone respectfully and accept "no" for an answer, consent, etc.

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

#136

Post by deeeeplearning » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

op03 wrote: post #119

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…

This is not about upsides and downsides. The truth is execs in Twitter, Facebook and Youtube had no clue what upsides and downside would be produced by the system they created. The happily took credit for the upsides and for the longest time, like almost a decade, laughed out of the room anyone talking about the downsides. Such people are still in charge of these fucking companies.

There's a reason these people will come out and say they don't let their kids use the apps they work on...

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

#137

Post by offtop5 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #118

Zelphyr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deleted my social media almost ten years ago and I feel like I have a stronger social network now than I had before. The key thing I think I may have done differently is that I got involved in things that provided opportunities to be engaged with people. For example; I joined my local Masonic lodge and started doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Between those two things alone I find I have regular enough interactions with a…

So, it's not that opportunities to socialize don't exist. It's that an ever increasing number of them are being mediated through social media. Which means that the list of non-social-media options in one's community likely caters to an ever decreasing variety of interests.

You can use social media, without using social media. Let me explain.

For example I tangentally consider meetup groups to be social media, but the entire point is that you actually meet people in real life. That led to me meeting one of my partners in 2019

I also do keep a Facebook around so when I meet people traveling I can just add them easily, I almost never ever use anything aside from Facebook messenger, and to maybe view a few events that my friends are organizing.

I think the key way to think about Facebook is that it's original purpose, keep talking to your college friends, wasn't bad. It's just it's mutated purpose of trying to spread mis information, spreading gossip, and bullying are absolutely disgusting.

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

#138

Post by nineplay » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #97

nineplay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised its only one in three. In the 80s I would have guessed that at least half of 14 year old girls ( I was one ) were unhappy with their appearance.

I was a 14 year old girl in the 90s and I share your surprise its only one in three. I would guess the majority of my peers were unhappy with their appearance at that time based on my experience and observations. I was one too. I (objectively) looked just fine but I thought I was a disfigured ghoul.

The irony was that my conviction that I looked ghastly only made it worse. I permed my hair and teased my bangs and piled on the makeup and held my breath while I pulled on jeans that were too small for me.

If I'd really seen myself when I looked in the mirror I would have been better off. I didn't, I saw someone who was supposed to look like Cindy Crawford and was failing miserably.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:18 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…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by serial_dev » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

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…

> Social media (and the attention economy) are worse for young brains than drugs.

I don't think you need young in that sentence. I see social media's negative effects on all age groups.

I see it in my own life (I'm 30): somehow, I feel compelled to keep track of politics, and I watch political shows way too much. I don't learn anything from it 98% of the time. After I watch/read about that topic, I can't concentrate on anything for long, I want to know more. The moment I wake up, I reach to the mobile to read the news. Then, I visit some meme sites, then I go to Hacker News. When I don't want to wake up yet, I repeat.

As a defense mechanism, I deactivated Facebook, I only post programming content on Twitter and I aggressively mute anyone who brings political tweets in my feed. I disabled notifications from most apps. I set up content blocker extensions so I don't accidentally wander to sites I don't want to visit. When I visit YouTube, I intentionally focus on the task at hand and try to not let the algorithm distract me (which is hard, because their recommendations almost always resonate with me). It works "okay", but I still didn't break the habit and I need strong self-control.

I see it also with my mother and sister, they are approx 60 and 35. They never get bored of scrolling through their feeds, they can't focus on anything else. They also often feel bad because their lives don't match what they see on the web. They make up a persona online that don't match their reality (which I see).

I'm not advocating for banning these things for adults, but I'd raise this issue to the people who read my comment: most adults behave very similarly to children, so observe your behavior and adapt.