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Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

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Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#541

Post by Spooky23 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #502
indymike wrote: post #481

Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualification to post this: I have four kids that are either teens or in their early 20s, and one who will be a teen next year. Here is what I see out there: 1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work th…

> Diversity is good, but being ____ is bad. Can you fill in the blank? I actually have no idea what you are referring to here.

We like to “celebrate diversity”, but if you diverge from whatever the people in charge are doing, or worse, whatever they think you should be doing, you’re very much on the outside.

Kids and teenagers need stability and trust. As adults, we’re bad at fostering that environment in our institutions for a variety of reasons.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#542

Post by fullstop »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #350
bambax wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmm, what? The things you are listing don't concern "teenagers" in their young teens, at all. They start being a problem for young adults, maybe. The study in question debates young teens, ages 11-13 and 13-15, well before college. In my experience as a parent of young teens, while they're sensitive to climate issues and of course "suffered" [1] during the pandemic, they aren't politicized, don't care about house pri…

"The things you are listing don't concern "teenagers" in their young teens, at all. They start being a problem for young adults, maybe" That's just not true, though. I'm over 40: My first formal 'current events' portion of a social studies class happened when I was 12, IIRC. The first gulf war was the current topic. Middle schoolers would be told now that they need to think about going to college, how doing well in h…

> The first gulf war was the current topic.

Our view of that was from the news, as well. The events in Ukraine are much more real-time and on social media. They see stories of children separated from their parents, of parents murdered, or all of them being killed in bombings.

These atrocities have always happened in war but now they are barely filtered and easily accessible.

"If it can happen to those children, it can happen to me."

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#543

Post by rufius »

ofisboy wrote: post #483

My sister, now 27, was diagnosed with psychosis about 10 years ago. Her real social life was plummeting and i couldn’t notice it since i was living away. But apprently she was obsessed with social media, particularly twitter back then. At one point, she came to our parents saying thay “people put cameras at home and they are watching her”. So, she totally lost it. Immediately diagnosed and started using heavy medicat…

I have no thought to add here. Just wanted to say I’m sorry to hear that about your sister.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#544

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

seydor wrote: post #522
radarsat1 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, still lost. What is "the 50% of diversity"? Are you trying to say "white"? (Not sure that's 50%...) Not judging, literally just trying to understand the semantics here. This is some kind of code that I'm not getting.

yes that s a good example. "being proud to be black" is diverse, being proud to be white is not. There is definitely a level of doublespeak here, although i'm not sure if teens are really annoyed by it

That’s because we have a history of white supremacy in that country though. Similar to how in Germany you’ll get weird looks if you’re echoing nazi talking points; there’s an existing history and cultural context to that sort of thing in that country that the country now wants to not repeat.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#545

Post by rapind »

bdefore wrote: post #530
indymike wrote: post #481

Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualification to post this: I have four kids that are either teens or in their early 20s, and one who will be a teen next year. Here is what I see out there: 1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work th…

While the risks you bring up are valid, many of them are not new but amplifications of preexisting ones. In the past, children have largely managed to navigate these on their journey to adulthood. An unsolved problem with social media: it's an amplification of parking lot scuttlebutt. It will entice you to see catastrophe and share it with others. Perhaps despite your position on this, you are being affected more tha…

Another amplification is that many many parents haven't even solved this problem for themselves. How are they going to help their kids navigate social media use when they're pissing about on Instagram, and retweeting outrage garbage, etc.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#546

Post by webmobdev »

indymike wrote: post #481

Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualification to post this: I have four kids that are either teens or in their early 20s, and one who will be a teen next year. Here is what I see out there: 1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work th…

> Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope.

I am sorry, that's an absolutely naive way to look at it. The fact is that it is being increasingly recognized that current Social Media networks are a stress inducers in kids and thus causing mental health issues in them. It is in fact not a great medium to communicate with someone too - if any kid prefers to talk to a friend through social media, than in person, it indicates social anxiety issues that need to be addressed, as otherwise the dependence on SM will actually aggravate the symptom. Not to mention parents should be teaching their kids not to share personal and private feelings on SM with questionable privacy policies (and lack of laws) that will one day be used against them publicly, directly or indirectly.

> School, practice, volunteer, homework, bed, do it all again. This builds up to a very difficult to unwind ball of stress, anger, fear and despair.

Sounds like all our childhood (with slight variations) before social media. Now add social media to this mix as one of the daily rituals / chores and you will begin to partly see how it can add to the stress in teens.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#547

Post by hattmall »

api wrote: post #501
indymike wrote: post #481

Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualification to post this: I have four kids that are either teens or in their early 20s, and one who will be a teen next year. Here is what I see out there: 1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work th…

I'll add one more that IMHO is huge: Youth culture seems dead. I remember being a teen and early-20 in the 90s-2000s and there were things like a hippie festival circuit, raves, goth culture, club culture, and so on. I keep hoping I'm just old and don't see it, but I remember back then it would seep out and get covered by the media and get chatted about on the nascent Internet. I see nothing like it today. Sure there…

No post body was provided.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#548

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

I think the rise of social media and poor mental health has a much simpler explanation and I think due to occams razor it works out:

1) social media incentivizes negative reactions and therefore promotes negativity

2) there is something bad happening all the time that you cannot do anything about

For example as an adult does it benefit my mood in any way to hear teenagers aren’t doing ok? Nope. I can’t even do anything about it because I don’t have influence over any teens. But it’s still heavily upvoted on the social media I visit. I imagine the same thing happens on tiktok and Instagram and the like, except teenagers have underdeveloped brains so it’s not like they can even critically think about their consumption.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#549

Post by dc-programmer »

dpweb wrote: post #84

What bothers me most and even on HN, where you usaully get intelligent discourse, the alarmist pessimism. Everything is falling apart! Just another form of self-indulgence. There must be something compelling about pretending the apocolypse is tomorrow. Yes, there are problems in our social, political, ecomonic systems. They need to be recognized and addressed. Democracy makes that process slow and difficult. But the…

The general (Anglo?) public has adopted this eschatological aesthetic. The mood here doesn’t seem that different that in other forums. Whether the pessimism is warranted, I can’t say
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