111–120 of 664 posts
Tik Tok is the reason I've been told several times I have ADHD. Pretty sure I don't! This phenomenon is so infuriating. The only half-convincing defense I've heard of it is that it could, maybe, theoretically, disseminate information about illnesses to people who don't have the money to see a professional, but the other effects are so much worse it doesn't seem worth it.
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I for one will be giving my child unfettered and unmonitored access to the internet as I had growing up. I will be suplementing that experience with plenty of education on how to avoid some of the pitfalls, but I find the best way to learn that stuff is to experience it yourself.
Not sure how old you are but the internet of today is not the same as it was when I was growing up.
My question is: Does this actually matter? Does this have a lasting impact or do the kids simply move on with no negative changes to their lives? I remember thinking a lot of dumb stuff as a teenager. Just because I thought it doesn't mean it was bad that I did.
I suspect it is worse now than when some of us were kids. Some of us had less exposure to stuff that could mess us up because there was less stuff available. After all, in my early youth we had only three TV stations. I also see a parallel with HN and developers with impostor syndrome. Before HN, and even before Slashdot, I was a good developer. I wrote some impressive C, C++, and Java code that went into some seriou…
Tangentially related. I think capitalism increases self-reported rates of mental illness because individuals who are not achieving the highest goals they set for themselves are looking for an easy excuse as to why they can't achieve them. I think levels of anxiety are also on the rise, which causes many symptoms which are similar to more severe mental illnesses. Which also reinforces my first point.
If you're going that way you can reasonably say that capitalism is the context that makes some of these things disorders in the first place. For example it's still not clear to me whether I consider my adhd a disorder in a vacuum. It definitely is here, I can't consistently execute the tasks that that will allow me to safely live. But there have definitely been times and places where "weirdo who is good with kids, ca…
There were parts of the book, The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron, which were eye-opening to me in how they illustrated facets of myself (and how they showed the human value of some of those facets). There's definitely a place in the world for fixers, watchers, and people with unusual behaviors.
I suspect there may be uniquely valuable things to be learned or received from autistic people; but we haven't figured out how to bridge the communication gap. So while most people would assume that autistic means broken or useless, it's possible that the rest of us are just not ready or not capable of comprehending what's actually available.
It's all so tiring.
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Tiktok and pop-culture generally make me very skeptical on "ADHD", the so-called "spectrum" and "neurodivergence" generally. I'm not saying these things don't exist, but much of it seems very difficult to falsify -- which needs to be the gold standard of determining these sort of things; e.g. "By what process can someone reasonably determine that they are NOT neurodivergent?"
There are standard diagnostic tests to falsify whether you have ADHD, that give a binary result as to whether the patient has ADHD/ADD. It is very easy to take one of these tests and determine whether you experience the symptoms
Reminds me of "WebMD caused a spike in cancer" stories; anyone remember those?
And video games cause violence, and DnD leads to Satanism, and TV rots brains, and movies lead to illiteracy, and books lead to dangerous thought.
I wonder if kids would still self diagnose after having witnessed first hand what those illnesses are like and what they do to someone you love.
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You don't have to be elite to be an involved parent. You just have to be involved. I have 2 so I know how easy it is to break out the digital babysitter, but even with the small amount I give mine I can see the influence it has, and I don't like it. I grew up with unfettered access to the internet before social media and now see how much it damaged me, I can only imagine what it is doing to kids today.
> don't have to be elite to be an involved parent 100% agree. Just pointing out there are parts of society where this is being messaged and socially enforced. So it isn’t a situation where we don’t know what to do. It’s one where we’re being selective about where we give a shit.
Tangentially related. I think capitalism increases self-reported rates of mental illness because individuals who are not achieving the highest goals they set for themselves are looking for an easy excuse as to why they can't achieve them. I think levels of anxiety are also on the rise, which causes many symptoms which are similar to more severe mental illnesses. Which also reinforces my first point.
No, surely a system in which duties and resources are distributed along the lines of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" will absolutely not encourage people to maximize needs while minimizing abilities.