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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

#301

Post by danenania »

fingerlocks wrote: post #290
danenania wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Even when I call my mother she can't put down her Facebook or emails for a few minutes to talk." Anecdotally, it seems like the older generations are some of the worst offenders when it comes to this stuff. The stereotype is of two millennials sitting at a restaurant and both spending the entire meal staring at their phones. While that does happen, I think it's actually a lot more common now for older people to beha…

Older people stare at their phones when they're in restaurants because they are often with their spouse, and they already spend 100% of their time with each other. Their lives are encumbered with child rearing, house maintenance, and other time-consuming adulthood chores. So when you see them at a restaurant, they're both thinking Thank god we can finally sit down and peacefully stare at our phones in peace .

I don't really care if two people would both rather do that (except that it's kind of sad for them). But similar to the GP, I have some older relatives and acquaintances who do this constantly no matter who they're with. They seemingly just don't think there's anything wrong with it.

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

#302

Post by causalmodels »

jjice wrote: post #278

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 ti…

This comes shockingly close to my experience growing up playing WoW.

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

#303

Post by claudiawerner »

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…

Your analysis of schools doesn't seem so far-off for me, and it's not unreasonable to say that not every aspect of social life should be measured by a calculus of upsides to badsides. The utilitarian 'weighing' mode of thinking is not appropriate for every situation, and I think you (inadvertently) made a good case for why, at least with schools. The fact that schools also educate can be worked into an analysis even of the 'bad sides' as not contingent, but a part of the same system that creates the 'bad sides'.

The very fact that we consider weighing the 'upsides' of something is if we give it, or part of it, legitimacy in the first place - legitimacy that may not be deserved. I'm silent on the topic of social media, but we wouldn't even begin to consider the 'upside' of murder or rape or defamation, for instance - and that's not because people in the past have done that analysis for us, it's because collective experience has shown the analysis isn't worth doing - that the utilitarian analysis is the wrong method to apply to the question, just as there are good and bad methods in science or philosophy.

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

#304

Post by Nasrudith »

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.

That luddite standard of "expected to know all upsides and downsides of something novel" bugs the royal crap out of me. It not only demands omniscience but implicitly assumes perfection of the status quo by not holding it to the same standards. To call forums for speech reckless is a very novel standard that back in the 90s and 00s would get you mocked as sounding like a third world dictator.

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

#305

Post by Nasrudith »

meowster wrote: post #212
linuxftw wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "parenting" which is not in vogue right now. Currently, people treat children like adults, expecting them to navigate the world as an adult would, and that's dumb. Reject a failed society. It's okay to be an individual, you don't need to be part of the collective.

I think we have different definitions of treating children like adults. It seems to me like they are barely treated as people. Yes, parenting is not in vogue, and that's the problem. People do not know how to parent. It almost seems like many people are treating them like pets.

They treat them like adults if the adults are prisoners essentially.

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

#306

Post by notsureaboutpg »

grahamburger wrote: post #277
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

These days I think the Puritans were right about some of that stuff.

Weed is pretty addicting. It's nowhere near as bad for you as it's been made out to be, but it's still bad for you.

Music is the worst in my opinion. Most of the most popular music is full of terrible lyrics which only promote bad things and rarely ever promote good things. Constant misogyny, hypersexuality, etc. A large part of pop music is selling "sexy" older boy bands to preteen girls (which is super creepy).

And kids are addicted to this stuff like crazy. I've seen 8 year old kids throw tantrums because someone told them they can't listen to this garbage pop music while doing homework.

It's not good for small kids to be exposed to sexuality the way pop music does it. And that's super obvious. If thinking that makes me a Puritan, then so be it.

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

#307

Post by JSavageOne »

It's sad the extent to which these problems exacerbated by COVID restrictions are neglected. It would almost seem like the boomers are sacrificing the youth for their own benefit since the virus is only statistically deadly to older people.

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

#308

Post by JCharante »

whatshisface wrote: post #159
conradev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is this weird balance because I owe literally everything I know about programming to unsupervised internet access: asking questions in IRC rooms, finding random programs on random websites, posting on obscure forums, etc. I was able to find some wonderful communities, like the iPhone jailbreaking community on IRC, which completely changed my life and put me on the path I am on now. I was also on Twitter in the ear…

To strongman the OP, would your parents have stopped you from talking about programming on IRC if they had observed it? Would you stop your kids, if you observed them? Watching your kid's internet use doesn't mean not letting them use the internet, it means applying your developed adult discernment to judge between healthy and unhealthy uses.

Not OP but I was in a similar situation. They certainly wouldn't have encouraged or would have stopped me from talking to strangers online. I understand why, you have to precautions against things like grooming, but on the internet and especially behind text no one knows if you're a 12 year old or a 22 year old with poor writing skills.

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

#309

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

I cannot help but be deeply unsettled by the proposal. Isn't that considering willfull ignorance of the world at large considered good mental health then? That is effectively an implication of saying we should reject all mass media.

Really mental health should be considered to have at least two components - 'morale' related to functioning and happiness and 'attunement to reality' based upon perceiving the world as close to as it is as possible essentially. That approach sounds like something which would boost the first at the cost of the second.

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