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

#271

Post by karmelapple » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #182

kreeben wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you're right. Lashing out is not a slow release of the pressure within that will save you from popping your balloon, it's the pop itself. Not all people have set up a structure in their lives that allow them to slowly release that pressure. We do not all have people in our lives that we can talk to about our feelings. Social media might help these folks. If I were to lash out at you during lunch or while we…

To take your analogy a little further: if we all started saying to someone who started lashing out online, "Hey dude, what's going on? You're acting irrational. Where's this anger coming from? What can I/we do to help?" would it subdue the flames and vitriol that exists on social media? Maybe. I don't know. It's worth a try. What I suspect would be better would be to pick up the phone and call that person and say tho…

I’ve seen it work before, but it’s rare.

The algorithms don’t encourage reading of responses like that typically... and, alas, human nature doesn’t really encourage people to “like” or “love” or otherwise strongly react to messages like that.

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

#272

Post by redisman » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:43 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…

Yeah its funny I feel like the "meme" internet for teenagers was way worse if shocking content is worse when I was young. There were so many NSFL websites too like stileproject, rotten, ogrish, etc. that everyone knew about and so much weird stuff on the pirating websites and gif sites back then that you don't really see anymore outside of the dark web.

I'm pretty convinced that just a "dumb" web 1.0 site of shocking content is way better for your mental health than a handful of giant corporations honing in on your psyche and exploiting the weaknesses of the human mind.

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

#273

Post by notahacker » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

stretchcat wrote: post #229

notahacker wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connecting those profiles to real life names has the upside of enabling those teenagers to stay in touch with old friends when everyone moves around as adults (and I wouldn't say the social networks where profiles don't need to be connected to real names are necessarily any better)

I don't see what real life names have to do with keeping in touch. I've kept in touch with people for 15+ years using IRC nicknames. In a few cases I don't know the other person's real name at all. Sure people can change their nicknames, but people change their real names too. I've gone by three different 'real' names throughout my life. That may not be super common, but people getting married and changing their name…

I mean "here's all the people you went to school with" was literally Facebook's raison d'etre. If I was relying on stored phone numbers or email addresses I'd be a lot less likely to be in touch with some of them (including those whose numbers I still have!)

Sure, it's possible to stay in touch with a long list of monikers and sometimes even not much more difficult, but (going back to the OP I responded to) it's possible and often no more difficult to ruin people's lives across pseudonymous services too. Lack of real name is probably more of an impediment to the casually interested old friend than the concerted hate campaign.

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

#274

Post by __turbobrew__ » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

elric wrote: post #106

An anecdote, at the risk of sounding old: Back when I was a kid, if we had internet access at all, we mostly used it for the community aspect. A fan of some book? Search for it on Altavista and you likely found some kind of fan site which had a little bulletin board community organized around it. Or maybe a usenet group. A few minutes down the road you were talking to strangers on the other side of the planet about s…

> I miss actual communities

I have found that Discord has become the closest contemporary thing to the old communities you talk about.

Many niche interests now have small Discord servers with like minded people, and if you hang around long enough you will become integrated with one of these niche communities.

I have been a part of several Discord servers for 5 years and I feel like they truly are communities: there is a deep history of the active members; people who met on Discord have visited each other in real life; members have gotten married; members have shared in grief as other members committed suicide; over time people have come and gone, but they have always had the Discord community to come back to when a relationship falls through, or they just need companionship in a tough time.

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

#275

Post by confidantlake » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

I think it is the same for adults and I think news sites are also up there with social media. Just a constant barrage of NEGATIVE THING HAPPENED!!! that you have no control of and can't do anything about.

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

#276

Post by ptudan » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

elric wrote: post #106

An anecdote, at the risk of sounding old: Back when I was a kid, if we had internet access at all, we mostly used it for the community aspect. A fan of some book? Search for it on Altavista and you likely found some kind of fan site which had a little bulletin board community organized around it. Or maybe a usenet group. A few minutes down the road you were talking to strangers on the other side of the planet about s…

Facebook groups is one of the shining features that brings people to the platform. While I also prefer the PHPBB days of old, FB groups are indeed interest based places that foster communities.

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

#277

Post by grahamburger » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #235

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…

> 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.

On the other hand, 'Social media damages teenagers mental health' sounds a lot like puritan arguments against rock music, weed, and video games from decades past. All of those things had legit studies done on them that showed harm, too. Honestly I think the kids are gonna be alright.

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

#278

Post by jjice » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

I was addicted to Twitter in high school. I spent hours on it at night, getting no sleep. I spent so much time and mental bandwidth thinking of funny things to say or memes to make to get more likes. I was addicted to the likes and keeping up with everyone I knew.

First semester of college, I stopped using Twitter. My sleep got better, I had more free time, and I was noticeably happier and freer. I no longer spent time in that dopamine cycle.

I've been weening off of Reddit and HN the past few months as well. YouTube is my next beast to conquer, and that might be the biggest one for me right now. I'm trying to adapt to longer form content again, instead of only watching videos under a minute or reading 280 character tweets. I want to have an attention span again, I really do.

Is social media an inherently evil thing? I don't think so, but I don't think I should use it. I also think that it can be toxic for teenagers in general. There are a variety of reasons, but the one that applied to me was the dopamine cycle caused by "likes".

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

#279

Post by xen0 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:53 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…

I don't think it's reasonable to compare the scales of the impact of social media and drugs, simply because far more people engage in one over the other.

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

#280

Post by MetaWhirledPeas » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

bnralt wrote: post #18

I'm starting to wonder if mass media in general is bad for our mental health, and if we'd be better off unplugging as much as we can from everything - social media, TV, radio, Hacker News, etc. and spending more time with our community. I suppose the problem is, most communities are completely addicted to this stuff, so we're left in a situation where it's hard for most people to unplug for any long period of time wi…

The problem with totally unplugging is that you effectively put your head in the sand. You're less informed about what is going on around you. Sure you can read books, but you're increasing your risk of exposure to bias or falsehoods when you limit your selection like that. We may be getting pummeled with "fake news" right now, but at least we have the ability to discuss the matter and see more than one side.

The early 20th century may have seemed hunky-dory to a lot of people, but there was a lot of bad stuff going on that just never had the chance to see the light of day. I don't want to go back to that.

Take it to a further extreme, the Amish. I'm sure many of them think life is great out there on the farm. But they aren't going to be much help for solving problems on a national or global scale. Heck even their votes (do they vote?) are probably based on some community consensus or shared local interest. As you narrow your gaze you limit your ability to participate in the world.