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Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

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

#231

Post by scook »

tux1968 wrote: post #184
reaperducer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the things you list are unique to social media. They all existed before the rise of the socials. Many of them existed before the internet.

Yes, but the increased availability of such things around the globe and across social strata is unparalleled.

Availability and immediacy, too. What does it mean when information becomes available to a broad swath of the population immediately after it comes into existence? For instance, we're already witnessing the effects of speedy dissemination of dis- and misinformation.

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

#233

Post by lotsofpulp »

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…

>Leaving a kid on the internet is like living them on a shaddy part of town for hours at a time. I'm old enough that I only had internet at home when I turned 18, in hindsight I feel like I dodged a bullet.

I grew up with uneducated parents who are susceptible to believing bullshit peddled by cult leaders. I lived in their business, without access to other people since we lived in a business area with no other residents.

Access to the internet was the only way I was able to interact with educated adults, and I attribute it to as the main reason for my economic and social success as an adult.

There was also lots of gore/pornography/other explicit stuff, although social media was more limited to instant messengers and photo/video content of yourself was not a thing yet. But the upside was almost limitless with the access to all the information, experts, and ability to interact with someone you can learn something from.

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

#234

Post by jiggunjer »

tzs wrote: post #145
Xelbair wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The size is just the symptom. Those services match you, with other who share similar views/preferences - putting you inside a bubble. Before social media radical views\moronic opinions etc. wouldn't spread so far- because others would point out flaws in your reasoning or outright laugh at it. Now? you have permanent access to enabling group - group who share views, and support each other - entrenching it. Flatearther…

The usual counterargument I see offered to that is that sure, it is great if we can impede the spread of some completely stupid belief like flat Earth, but sometimes those things that are crazy by conventional wisdom turn out to be true. At that point, they usually mention Galileo and maybe some others, and they ask how do we avoid squashing the next Galileo with our measures to limit the spread of flat Earth theorie…

in other words: the answer is that type 1 errors self-correct quickly, but type 2 errors self-correct slowly.

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

#235

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

csallen wrote: post #102
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…

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…

> But you can't accurately assess the whole picture without taking the upsides into account, too.

apologies but it sounds like PR from the tobacco industry before they got regulated. wonder how we'll look at this in 10-15 years time. the "let's listen to both sides" argument has no place on something this evil and damaging (not just to children) imo.

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

#236

Post by oblio »

Bodell wrote: post #221
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is all personal anecdotal, and not intended to be a real argument either way. I have and have had internet in my house since I was 5-10. And I'd have to say: I'm still a misfit, social pariah, currently with no friends. Ironically the most respect (I mean this in the most basic sense of respect) I get from other humans is on here. But things were better when I was younger and worse now that I am 31. I'm not misr…

I'd say things are worse. Forums were a more personal experience. Fewer people, shared interests, avatars.

Look at HN - how many commenters do you personally recognize, except for the ones that are popular because they're part of YC (so for things outside of this discussion forum) or because they also submit articles they're written (so again for things outside of this forum)?

I probably recognize maybe 10 people, and with the way this discussion forum is designed, I recognize them despite the software, not because of it.

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

#238

Post by throwaway894345 »

megaman821 wrote: post #213
throwaway894345 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider how many people saw the shooting of the Trump supporter storming the capitol or the killing of George Floyd. I can't imagine that level of exposure in 2005 or earlier. And this is just gore; we're not talking about sex (also, we don't have to choose between the two, so I don't understand the dichotomous argument).

You think more people saw the shooting of the Trump supporter or George Floyd than saw images from Desert Storm, 9-11, or school shootings? They are all horrible, but I have seen a lot worse stuff pre-2005 than after.

No, I'm not arguing that more people saw footage of those two incidents versus the universe of gore preceding 2005; rather, I'm arguing that gore is far more prevalent and accessible after 2005 than before. The images that we saw before were generally censored of gore--we saw night-vision imagery of bombs raining down on Baghdad, but we didn't see the actual death. Similarly, we saw the towers fall, but most of the actual death was censored (the worst I can recall were people falling from the towers from such a great distance that they appeared to be specs).

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

#239

Post by oblio »

csallen wrote: post #102
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…

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…

There is a difference.

Planes and schools are by design positive things.

Social media by design is at best neutral.

Social media is designed to benefit its owners and its customers (ad sellers). At best social media is designed to entertain its users, but the big caveat is that it does it through whatever means necessary. And that's a big caveat. Because at the end of the day, it's an online casino. And we regulate casinos to hell and back.

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

#240

Post by raunakdag »

pietrovismara wrote: post #214
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Social media are not the internet. If Facebook, Instagram and tiktok disappeared tomorrow, the internet would keep existing. In my opinion we would all be better, queer kids included.

I agree - I feel like one really important misconception to set aside is lumping "communication" in with "social media".

From a teenager's perspective, Instagram and TikTok are a lot worse for your mental health than say, Snapchat and iMessage.

In addition, for the queer community example - I'd say the perfect parallel for today would be Discord. Anyone can find a community and make friends on Discord, but it's probably not 5% as damaging to mental health because it's a communication based platform

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