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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)

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very evidently exposing children to toxicity like 4chan/racist gaming chatrooms is harmful to development, why would it be any different when letting them watch anything on their phones Normalize keeping children away from the obscene and stop letting grown adults normalize exposing weird shit to children, should be obvious innit

>everything abnormal is celebrated as cultural progress That is a very curious statement.

rite! normalize everything abnormal and awful, celebrate it as cultural progress. normalize letting the algorithms and bad actors manipulate and radicalize the youth. yup this is progress

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

#212
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not policing, I'm suggesting that in a dialogue the use of scare quotes signals a negative interest in actually engaging in discussion. Typically, scare quotes will be interpreted as someone who has already made their mind up and won't be moved. Compare: "I'm skeptical about the prevalence of autism in teens." "I'm skeptical about the prevalence of "autism" in teens." The first absolutely conveys your skepticism…

I don't think that's what they meant.

Thanks for the feedback!

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

#213
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…

From the opening chapter of 'Three Men in a Boat', published 1889: I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plun…

this also happens to (very real) students of medicine! it's colloquially called second year syndrome.

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

#214
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Early internet was populated mostly by educated people and there were very little (if at all) monetary influence to drive engagement. So i guess these two factors are sufficient for internet to be much safer place.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just related to tiktok, but there definitely was a strong fetisisation of ADHD going on which seemed to peak in 2020-2021 (but still there).

20 years ago, when my step kids were young, people also said ADHD and Autism was a "fad" and "overdiagnosed". People have been talking like this since at least the 90's and always claiming it's a new, recent, thing.

Heck, my sister was diagnosed (and I wish I had been diagnosed) in the 80's.

Plus, before it got the name ADD (and after, ADHD), it was studied by the names "Hyperactive child syndrome", "Hyperkinetic reaction of childhood", and a few others.

This has been recognized and studied for over a century.

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

#216
post #173
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is being visibly sad or happy something that should lower your self worth?

Shows a lack of self control

That implies that the inverse, bottling up your feelings, demonstrates self-control, and that self-control is always a desirable trait.

I disagree with both. Expressing your feelings is a part of good communication, and feeling free to express sadness or frustration as needed is how you stave off the kinds of arguments and blowups that have much more severe consequences.

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

#217

It feels as though our society has collectively forgotten that mental illness can be socially transmissible. I remember in 00s there seemed to be mainstream acknowledgement and concern that anorexia and distorted perception of one's body can be socially transmissible, ripping through teen social cliches particularly, and could be spread through the internet by "pro-ana" websites and chat groups. I don't hear much abo…

Anorexia has a body count, these TikTok disorders do not.

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

#218

It feels as though our society has collectively forgotten that mental illness can be socially transmissible. I remember in 00s there seemed to be mainstream acknowledgement and concern that anorexia and distorted perception of one's body can be socially transmissible, ripping through teen social cliches particularly, and could be spread through the internet by "pro-ana" websites and chat groups. I don't hear much abo…

It's taboo to criticise such movements because by extension you criticise those that actually have the illness. And some movements have grown quite powerful politically. If you allude that it's problematic to let children change sex, you are painted as anti lgbtixxxx. Activism has won against science.

Not everywhere. Common sense prevails in many parts of the world.

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

#219

I work with younger people in a tech-centric mentoring program. Most of them shun TikTok just as they shun other mainstream social media sites like Facebook. However, there is another huge offender in the psychiatry misinformation space: Reddit. The amount of incorrect, oversimplified, and downright weird psychiatry and psychology information they pick up from Reddit is astounding. The most common self-diagnosis is A…

>The most common self-diagnosis is ADHD. Do some of them actually have ADHD? Sure, statistically speaking some of them will actually have ADHD.

Self-diagnosis aside, I had this exact thought after a conversation with a teacher. The number of kids on medication for ADHD in their school was just too much. Sure, the school could just be lucky but I doubt it. More likely pressure from educators and parents for a "quick fix" for what should be correctable (sans drugs) behavioural issues.

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

#220
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Will you also be taking them to MacDonalds 3 times a day, but with warnings about the need for healthy eating?

That's not the same. In your analogy this would be just giving your kid access to eat what they want, and making sure that they understand different kinds of food and nutrients and how eating different things will affect their growth/energy level/body size and so on. Not the same as taking them to a fast food chain for every meal.
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