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TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

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Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#131
post #34
post #15

For all of human history across every culture, parents would do what they could to keep their kids away from “bad influences”. You move to certain areas, go to certain places, are members of certain organizations etc. which serve to socialize your kids with kids from families that have shared values. You don’t talk to strangers. With the internet and especially media like TikTok parents are exposing their kids to unt…

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where the lower bound of "bad influences" has gotten much lower in a lot of places that used to be safe. Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving. Now, with TikTok, the o…

> Now, with TikTok, the only limit is what TikTok will ban. Which isn't much. The population segment of kids who aren't supervised in any way used to have an inherent limit. Not any more.

This may be new-ish but I’m not sure it’s that new. I grew up with the early web in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it’s always been pretty unfiltered. It wasn’t centralized in the way TikTok is, but plenty of us grew up on the web with little supervision, and web circles were/are much wider than the neighborhood.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#132
post #34
post #15

For all of human history across every culture, parents would do what they could to keep their kids away from “bad influences”. You move to certain areas, go to certain places, are members of certain organizations etc. which serve to socialize your kids with kids from families that have shared values. You don’t talk to strangers. With the internet and especially media like TikTok parents are exposing their kids to unt…

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where the lower bound of "bad influences" has gotten much lower in a lot of places that used to be safe. Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving. Now, with TikTok, the o…

Banning "undesirable topics" isn't the solution, but only a band-aid. We need to teach children critical thinking skills and allow them to make their own decisions. The former might be easier, but the latter is the most beneficial in the long run.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#133

It’s this kind of content that reminds me that if social media censors were actually interested in keeping safe people with mental problems, they wouldn’t police content so much as they would prevent such people from using their poisonous systems.

There's a whole other side of this equation that I don't hear much about - the parents of the kids who are producing a lot of the content.

I wouldn't want my kid spending hours each day scrolling through various social media, but likewise I wouldn't want them making pointless garbage videos just because... well because I guess that's what some people feel they should do?

My son watched gaming streamers for several years in his early teens, and that drove me nuts. I understand watching people who are good at something do their thing, but most of the gamer stuff I saw was just obnoxious punks who really needed a life. I'm still baffled at how successful (followers, income) many of these garbage can kids are. If they tried to talk to people, or even just talk out loud, in public the way they talk on their videos, they would be getting broken noses weekly.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#134
post #89
post #32

Teens do exhibit lots of mental disorder symptoms at various times--their brains are still developing rapidly, and on top of that they're thrust into one unfamiliar environment after another. The "normal, well-adjusted" state ought to be pretty tumultuous at that age.

Good point. I use to experience slight hallucinations (mostly auditory), but that tapered off as I grew out of adolescence

I wonder sometimes how many adults experience slight auditory hallucinations, especially at night, and don't bother recording them. I live in a pretty busy area with lots of trains and emergency vehicles outside, and when I'm close to sleep but get jolted back awake, I sometimes remember things that don't make any sense.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#135
post #15

For all of human history across every culture, parents would do what they could to keep their kids away from “bad influences”. You move to certain areas, go to certain places, are members of certain organizations etc. which serve to socialize your kids with kids from families that have shared values. You don’t talk to strangers. With the internet and especially media like TikTok parents are exposing their kids to unt…

A community that does not control the narrative its members hear, will cease to be a community. A massively dystopian reality I feel we are only beginning to understand. As an aside, a TikTok employee told me TikTok is known to trigger old maladies like anorexia etc. I was told this after mentioning that trying TikTok gave me my first nicotine cravings in several years.

That sounds worse than all the other social networks put together as TikTok needs more addictive content and users to continue the addiction and profit from bad habits and cravings mentioned in other comments. It is no different and is in fact worse.

A dystopia that the many have chosen to believe in who's goal is to only worsen the digital crack cocaine addiction which that is already just as bad and present in society.

We do not need society to regress any further with platforms like TikTok.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#136
post #14
post #9

Related: medical students' disease! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease

One item in the article is: + Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 1392: bad argument #1 to 'pairs' (table expected, got nil). That's new to me. I didn't know wikipedia had adopted lua for its templates.

I experienced the same bug today, with several bibliographical entries displaying the same error message. The article in question was the one on deus ex machina.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#137
post #34
post #15

For all of human history across every culture, parents would do what they could to keep their kids away from “bad influences”. You move to certain areas, go to certain places, are members of certain organizations etc. which serve to socialize your kids with kids from families that have shared values. You don’t talk to strangers. With the internet and especially media like TikTok parents are exposing their kids to unt…

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where the lower bound of "bad influences" has gotten much lower in a lot of places that used to be safe. Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving. Now, with TikTok, the o…

> This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely.

I find it astonishing that this is the limit of "bad". There are people alive today who were at lynchings in the US as children and cheered them on.

Setting cats on fire by comparison was a harmless past time.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#138
post #82

I recently discovered "systems" people via Reddit (r/SystemsCringe) will searching for systems engineering. The core belief seems to be that the individual has "multiple people" living in the same body. They've devised a whole language for talking about it as well[0]. This reminds me of the "otherkin" fad that occurred primarily on Tumblr about a decade ago[1]. It was where teenagers believed themselves to not be hum…

It's not too hard to pick up on multiple identities, tho I'm sure it can get out of hand when you pick out the people who are reinforcing each other as a trend My view of it, for my own personal reflection, is to first define identity. I opt to have two prongs to it, rooted in game theory: executive identity & motivational identity. Given a decision matrix executive identity is the actor being able to choose. Motivat…

> It's not too hard to pick up on multiple identities,

you wear one mask with one group, another with a different group. Wouldnt say multiple identities though.

But yeah, the mutual reinforcement is a BIG problem.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#139
I've done a lot of thinking about this issue, and there's two topics I notice. First, disability has become a status symbol in certain circles. Second, the huge rise in self-diagnosed disability.

On the latter point, these kids are acting out these disabilities with such sincerity and 24/7 consistency that they effectively are disabled for all practical purposes, it's just that the diagnosis might be different than the one they self-diagnose themselves with. I think the TikTok videos are a symptom, what's the cause?

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