Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 366 posts

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

#341

Post by grahamburger »

johnfn wrote: post #299
grahamburger wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, sometimes they get things right, like (only stretching slightly) alcohol, which is not great in excess. You have to consider these things individually rather than trying to draw generalizations like "all puritan backlash is wrong."

My argument isn't really "they said these things were bad and they're not," it's more like "these things are actually kinda bad in some circumstances, but mostly we all turned out ok anyway, and things wouldn't really be much different or better if rock music were more heavily regulated when we were kids."

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

#342

Post by 908B64B197 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #52

People should really read the research [1] and not this article as the article doesn't actually capture the scope and real impact of the research. The executive summary highlights: * Personal wellbeing drops, on average, as children move from primary into secondary school, and continues to drop as children move through secondary school. * We find a graded relationship between family income and all three outcomes thro…

Research prove that high school is a toxic environment?

Shocking.

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

#343

Post by pitspotter »

esja wrote: post #339
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…

HN has the same problem with upvotes. It would be healthier not to display karma scores at all, even privately. Use them for ranking etc but hide the numbers completely.

My view right from the start of the internet has been to make quarrelling exact a cost, just as it does in real life. Thus downvoting should cost equal karma...

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

#344

Post by tester756 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #323
tester756 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're less informed about what is going on around you. majority of things from the news has no impact on me at all

Let's take one big example: climate change. Without the news, things would be different. It might never have achieved the level of funding and attention it has so far if it weren't for general public awareness.

well, but on the other hand I'm just one person, the rest (significant) isn't going to do the same (avoid news)

You can argue that this logic is flawed or something, but that's how it is in reality.

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

#345

Post by dv35z »

anthk wrote: post #336
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ear…

>. You're less informed about what is going on around you. https://lite.cnn.io https://text.npr.org https://efe.com I use them thru Lynx and a framebuffer image viewer. Everything else is bullshit. I'm probably 90% better informed than half of the mooks being idiotized at the social media.

Thanks for this list! Bookmarked. Here’s on that I would add: The Wikipedia Current Events summary page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

I check that a couple times a week, and feel very “caught up”, and also have an opportunity to dive in deep as needed.

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

#346

Post by ED_Radish »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #274
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 i…

Yeah, discord has pretty much become the de facto place for that. I'm in my late teens rn and its basically all I've ever used.

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

#347

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #330
throwaway2245 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why we have gone down this rabbit hole, but you're just mistaken. Phillip Morris used its propaganda to lie to people about health risks and "benefits" of smoking, sold an addictive product to addicts, and used its resulting people power to subvert democratic decisions. It didn't do this with transistor technology, sure. But cigarettes have hugely more Daily Active Users than Twitter, still today.

You're insisting on fighting that straw man. Yes, Phillip Morris used propaganda and influenced a politician here or there. That's fundamentally different than Twitter, whose very essence is a machine for influencing people at scale, including who they vote for. At a certain point, a difference of degree becomes a difference of kind. You could argue that "airplanes are no different than hot-air balloons" on the basis…

[deleted]

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

#348

Post by xxpor »

antihero wrote: post #192
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…

I swear that beheading video is a form of generational anchor in the same way that the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 soundtrack is something a certain group (early millenial/late genx) is.

>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 soundtrack

Ouch. Right in the nostalgia :)

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

#349

Post by mdocherty »

JCharante wrote: post #311
causalmodels wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I went from playing 8 hours / day (well, per night truthfully) of Eve Online during high school to logging in every few months when I began college. The new environment of college made me too busy with "IRL" stuff. I wouldn't say that social media is inherently bad because it can be addicting, because games aren't seen as inherently bad because they can be addicting.

Leaving my xbox behind at my parents house when I went to college was one of the best things I ever did for myself.

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

#350

Post by codecalec »

JCharante wrote: post #311
causalmodels wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I went from playing 8 hours / day (well, per night truthfully) of Eve Online during high school to logging in every few months when I began college. The new environment of college made me too busy with "IRL" stuff. I wouldn't say that social media is inherently bad because it can be addicting, because games aren't seen as inherently bad because they can be addicting.

Sadly during COVID times, Youtube and gaming have absorbed and taken the place of my "IRL" stuff. Hopefully, it will be easy to switch back to being back in the real world socially.
Post reply on HN