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Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

bbc.com

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

#251

Post by bserge »

OmniiTyler wrote: post #112

It is heartsickening that this is the result of current social media implementation. As others have mentioned, it is largely caused by this attention economy (as I've heard Tristan Harris of https://www.humanetech.com/ call it) - where the apps most used today are made to be addictive and consume our attention as much as possible. I have been working on a more intimate, less addictive, social media and messaging appl…

I'd be interested to see what you're working on. How would you reduce the amount of content? Would people still be able to find it by search? Or is this more of a Facebook/Whatsapp without the extra bs?

I've been trying to block social media and have finally managed to do it (DoH was a pain in the ass to block). Although I can still access websites on mobile, working on that.

I quit Imgur after years and I don't understand why I was even going there. Now everything looks dumb and uninteresting. Truly like a drug addiction.

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

#252

Post by kodah »

For all the folks talking about pro's and con's of social media companies, the government (and investing world) are working on a solution to make these kinds of findings empirical. It's called Economic, Social, and Governance metrics (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-an...)

Biden is already poised to encourage the DOL to adopt these more directly: https://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2021/1/27/biden-may-have-t...

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

#253

Post by spoonjim »

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.

One upside for me is that I only like interacting with people about my interests, not about personal stuff. I don’t want to hear or talk about weather/kids/sports. Social media allows me to discuss woodworking with someone in Galway instead of whatever little common ground I can find with my next door neighbor.

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

#255

Post by marcod »

civilized wrote: post #218
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)

It's funny how correlation proves causation the moment the science makes headlines.

FTFY: The moment the media makes a headline out of scientific research

> Heavy social media use is associated with worse scores on all outcomes in girls age 14 and 17, but only worse wellbeing for boys at age 14. In a model controlling for pre-existing levels of self-esteem and wellbeing, we find that low levels of physical activity remain associated with lowself-esteem and wellbeing scores in girls and boys through adolescence, while heavy social media use contributes to low self-esteem and wellbeing in girls, and wellbeing in boys at age 14.In focus groups, young people highlighted the positive and negative aspects of social media. While girls tended to focus on the negative impact on body image, boys felt that the images they saw on social media platforms could be aspirational.

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

#258

Post by cherishorperish »

Hendrikto wrote: post #199
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.

I just finished writing a paper on this. Here are some upsides: Studies have shown that disclosing information about oneself is an intrinsically rewarding experience [0]. Social media offerings provide a platform for sharing information easily with a large audience, which activates reward mechanisms in the brain. People use social media because it makes them feel good, which is probably the reason for their explosive…

Very interesting

> or at least feel connected, without having to put in much effort.

I have experienced the other side of this, so to speak, having someone think that they have made a connection with me or contacted me etc. just because they made a post or sent a tweet/text assuming that I'd see it. I don't always see these things or spend my time logged into these sites.

There are some people (including family members) that simply no longer 'talk' to me but think that they are 'always telling me' things. I've been caught out with things like phone number changes, address changes because someone has moved home and think they have 'told me' because they did some random tweet to 'everyone' some time back.

There are two sides to 'staying connected', social media (generally speaking) has made these connections rather one-sided. Staying connected should be more like a gentle came of catch-and-throw but instead it's more akin to beig stood in front of one of those machines that fling balls at you relentlessly regardless if you are ready or not.

I hate it.

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

#259

Post by prepend »

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…

It’s funny I went online in the 80s and had no supervision whatsoever. And it was pretty wild back then. I remember adults chatting with me when I was 10 and printing out and mailing me game manuals. Chat rooms with every kind of pornography and drug and explosive recipes. My parents would have been horrified and stopped it.

I survived, so maybe there are missing stories from people who didn’t. I learned lots of skills used every day for work and never did anything I’m ashamed or or criminal.

But with my own kids, I protect them more than I protected myself. I wonder about the paradox of whether I would have changed anything in my chaotic youth and whether I’m stunting my kids by sheltering them. But there’s YouTube videos of behedding that I don’t want to risk my kids’ mental health.

I feel like the paradise I envisioned after reading Heilein and Dickson and Stephenson is here now and I hate it. Now spend my time in the digital Galt’s Gulch.

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

#260

Post by jayant123 »

Here's an excerpt from the article -

Heavy social media use was linked to negative wellbeing and self-esteem, regardless of a young person's mental state, with more girls experiencing feelings of depression and hopelessness.

“Those who feel worse may turn to social media for solace or community,” Dr Amy Orben, research fellow at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, said of the research.

“It’s not a vacuum, it works both ways."

Contrast that with the title of this post, which tries to establish a clear causal link from social media use to poor mental health.

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