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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)

#321

Post by maxsilver »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #227
maxsilver wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

A few people have drawn parallels to religion in this thread, but I'm not sure if you're trying to use the example of religion to refute the idea of socially transmissible mental illness, or to prove it. To me, it seems to prove it. It's perhaps easiest to see in the more extreme and wacky manifestations, like "speaking in tongues", although it's hard to gauge how earnest those people are and how much is an "emperor'…

My point is simply, "people believing they have distinct individual personalities inside themselves isn't remotely new, isn't terribly unusual, and maybe isn't inherently bad at all?", and I tried to wrap it in a joke people would click with (many people are closer to it than they'd think, they're just used to it in different language/contexts)

Maybe it's ok if people are different -- even a little "weird" sometimes? Just because someone is different, doesn't mean they have a "mental illness".

I'm not plural, plurality is not my lived experience -- so I can't speak to it -- I'm just pointing out that it doesn't seem like any kind of "socially transmissible mental illness". Knowing about something, doesn't make you that thing. Under the logic being used here, you could frame 'friends having a party' as a form of "socially transmissible alcoholism".

And as someone who isn't plural but is LGBTQ+, I'm very used to seeing people pathologizing or criminalizing folks different from themselves, as a veneer of social cover for delivery of their hate. 50 years ago, someone would have called me "insane" or "crazy" or "having a mental disorder" just for existing too -- even the greatest folks can't always escape this hate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_ind...). So it sets off a lot of alarm bells, when folks label someone as having a "mental illness" without a lot of due diligence.

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

#323

Post by watwut »

collegeburner wrote: post #260
originalvichy wrote: post #167

I can't stop seeing the heavy gender skew in online communities centred around these topics. Both the sexual orientation as well as mental disorder communities like this seem to be most popular among teenager or young adult women. As a man I don't know how teenage hormones affect girls different than boys at that age, so I can't even give an uneducated guess as to what could be the source of this attraction towards q…

idk i always got the idea that at that age women can be more emotionally vulnerable to some stuff. same reason their bullying goes for social attacks, shaming, talking shit behind ppls backs instead of physical violence mostly.

Male on male bullying also moved away from pure physical violence. Men beat each other up much less often. The physical violence is mostly realm of very low socioeconomic status.

Bullying still exists tho.

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

#324

Post by colordrops »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #262
quasarj wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally hate seeing all the ADHD stuff, I feel like most of those people are faking/wrong as well. But I don't know, maybe I just have ADHD? I just feel like they are always like "this is life with ADHD" and I'm like "what? that's just life? isn't that how everyone is?"

I think a counter argument that makes a lot of sense to me is that our modern society is so novel, interconnected, and overstimulating, that it makes sense the prevalence of ADHD and depression have increased massively, especially compared to the populations of 50 years ago.

Perhaps it's not a "D" Disorder but a normal reaction to the malignent nature of our society.

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

#325

Post by JohnPrine »

washbrain wrote: post #148
jrm4 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of all of them in their current form. It helps bolster my argument. I acknowledge that I might be wrong, and if it inspires someone to call me out in an effective way, great! Now, ask yourself -- in a forum that's supposed to be about discussion and answering questions, why do you think it's very important to police how I use punctuation?

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 think what you're saying is true and I appreciate it

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

#326

Post by jquery »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #293
jquery wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The bar also got a lot lower than back then.” It appears GP is saying the bar for being diagnosed with a mental illness is lower today (“got a lot lower”). I am pushing back, at least where OCD is concerned.

I'm not talking about official diagnosis by trained professionals, i'm talking about tiktok and self diagnosis. Kids today think they have OCD because they jump over the gaps in tiles, and promote that on social networks. Other kids claim they have it too, because they jump over the gaps too. And in the end... social vmedia (tiktok videos) leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (like 'real' OCD)... as t…

from the same GP: “ we have professionals (doctors, etc.) reinforcing this”.

If you’re talking about merely kids self-mis-diagnosing, then sure I’ll grant that, it’s unclear to me that GP was solely talking about that though.

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

#327

Post by PheonixPharts »

NamTaf wrote: post #311
PheonixPharts wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were a pissed-off goth kid wanting to read how to bomb something, you had to genuinely work to find shit like that. Every pissed off goth kid I knew in the 90s had a copy of the Anarchist cook book on a 1.44mb floppy disk. We probably burned more than our fair share of holes in our backyards, but it wasn't access to information that was limiting us doing harm to our peers. If anything I think it was having a…

Sure, but my point is that you had to actively go out and find it. You didn't get an in-lined feed of social media 'suggested posts' that gradually took you from being angry at the machine to some radicalised position. My broader point is that you can replace that scenario with just about any subgroup with an extremist representation and it holds. Incels are a prime example. QAnon too. The list goes on. The people wh…

I think another part of the problem is that that social media feed is ultimately still alienating.

There's a world of difference between bonding with friend over how stupid and mean other kids are, blowing up your back yard together and laughing about it that night and the tiktok world of just getting angry over a constant stream of other alienated people screaming into the void.

Without the companionship you never really get catharsis, just an endless cycle of building up rage and furthering your own sense of alienation.

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

#328

Post by jimmaswell »

xwdv wrote: post #309
jimmaswell wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very alluring to escape the difficulties and expectations of being a man in society. I don't feel any gender dysphoria, merely ambivalence towards it, but if the process was faster and I wouldn't have to deal with social backlash I'd do it myself. I'd certainly choose to have been born a woman if I could since my main difficulties in life have been in sex and romance, and the difficulty would drop to 0. The extr…

Quoted post unavailable.

Gender dysphoria is a real thing that's treated by transitioning. In people suffering from it it demonstratedly improves quality of life and reduces suicides.

> that is what you truly are and all you’ll ever be

Only if you choose to see it this way. The majority of western society accepts transgender people today and it's not an issue.

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

#329

Post by naravara »

originalvichy wrote: post #167

I can't stop seeing the heavy gender skew in online communities centred around these topics. Both the sexual orientation as well as mental disorder communities like this seem to be most popular among teenager or young adult women. As a man I don't know how teenage hormones affect girls different than boys at that age, so I can't even give an uneducated guess as to what could be the source of this attraction towards q…

Johnathan Haidt speculates (and I'm inclined to agree), that young boys tend to do a lot more of their online socializing through video-games and less time on the algorithmically curated feeds so they're less subject to the weird effects of radicalizing "peer" pressure that the feeds impose on girls and gay kids. The boys who do get into that stuff do seem to be at special risk of pickling themselves into weird communities around stuff like inceldom or other sorts of violent political extremism, but that seems to be more rare (though more extreme) than what happens with groups of girls.

I think LGBTQ curious kids probably tend to be especially vulnerable since the internet is such an important gateway for so many of them to seek out answers to the questions they're starting to have about their own identity and self-conception. But the logic of the curation model isn't a "natural" or "organic" friend group so they're really being jerked around by these things at a very impressionable and vulnerable age.

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

#330

Post by Retric »

kkielhofner wrote: post #280
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bar also got a lot lower than back then. You jump over the gaps in the tiles on the road? You must have OCD. You broke up with your bf/gf.. you must have depression. You're happy a bit? Bipolar disorder. You're a guy and play with a barbie... trans. Less horny, asexual. And let's not forget a bunch of adhd/autism and other disorders, when a kid gets bored in school. On the other hand, we have professionals (docto…

The language has shifted as well. You’re not sad, you’re depressed. You don’t worry, you have anxiety. Depression and anxiety are medical diagnoses. The other are normal emotions everyone can, should, and does experience. If you don’t ever worry or get sad about anything there’s probably something else wrong with you. In terms of diagnoses, the DSM-4 included a “bereavement exclusion” from the depression diagnostic c…

That’s wildly wrong. The medical community adopted depression and anxiety from general use dating back to the 1500’s rather than the other way around.

“The meaning "dejection, state of sadness, a sinking of the spirits" is from early 15c. (as a clinical term in psychology, from 1905);” https://www.etymonline.com/word/depression

“anxiety (n.) 1520s, "apprehension caused by danger, misfortune, or error, uneasiness of mind respecting some uncertainty, a restless dread of some evil," from Latin anxietatem (nominative anxietas) "anguish, anxiety, solicitude," noun of quality from anxius "uneasy, troubled in mind” https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=anxiety

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