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Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#71

Post by jsonne »

Anecdotally I removed all social media from my phone recently and I only am using Twitter for work on desktop. My mood has improved dramatically and my focus is improving. Towards the end I found myself getting angry at posts that showed curated idyllic lives and realized that it's all really a facade.

To that end the last post I saw on Tiktok before deleting it basically said that social media is so insidious because it is both the sickness and the cure. You feel bad and then you feel better ad nauseum and that rang very true for me.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#72

Post by itronitron »

antod wrote: post #56
barbazoo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be frustrating to see this problem approaching and not knowing what to do. I wonder if at some point the only way out is to radically change one's family's lifestyle. Maybe homeschooling, very limited technology at home, living in a community with like-minded people, something like that?

As a parent of a 13yr old girl, we've tried with mixed success during her preteens to find her interests/activities she liked where she could get good at something and have a source of self esteem that came from somewhere outside her peer group interactions. But yeah, the interest dies away a bit by 13 and we're not fully sure it worked. But we can see that her peers that didn't have earlier hobbies/skills had even l…

You might want to look into sewing/textiles/fashion as a creative and intellectual activity. It's a nice combination of history, creativity, technical work, and learning from/with adults.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#73

Post by dymk »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #41
flerchin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's find a solution that does not involve expanding the Amish model.

The Amish kinda slap, they didn't invent addictive social media, put a game show host in charge of nuclear weapons, or have a bunch of corporations change their icons to rainbow icons while still being shitty. They literally realized 300 years ago that they should opt out of the nonsense America descended into

What’s the term for a weeaboo but for the Amish?

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#74

Post by warner25 »

dmonitor wrote: post #45
barbazoo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be frustrating to see this problem approaching and not knowing what to do. I wonder if at some point the only way out is to radically change one's family's lifestyle. Maybe homeschooling, very limited technology at home, living in a community with like-minded people, something like that?

this model breaks down because you have to enter society eventually. transitioning from homeschooling to highschool junior year and then into a large university was very difficult in my personal experience.

Yeah, I see that side of it too. I'm an Army officer, and there's an interesting phenomenon in our ranks. Officers who attend West Point live under some extreme restrictions, whereas officers who are products of ROTC and OCS tend to a have a normal civilian college experience. You can guess who gets into the most trouble after they graduate and enter the "real Army" with all the freedoms that young officers have. We have a long history of tinkering with how much freedom to give new enlisted troops during their basic training and specialized job training, trying to balance "discipline" with the fact that it's counter-productive for us to graduate new troops who immediately go wild when they get to their first real unit.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#75

Post by AussieWog93 »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #50
AussieWog93 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but dating apps sure helped crush the self-esteem of my sister. She still gets on them occasionally, because there's no alternative now. Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

I don't think we need to go as far as to point fingers at MeToo for this. We have an entire generation of young adults who hit puberty after smartphones, social media and dating apps became standard. They might have never had to ask someone out in person, and going to a bar to meet someone would be the last place they think of. https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-... To be fair I'm actually sh…

Again, pure anecdata and possibly a lot of misatteibution, but 2017-ish seems to be some kind of inflection point.

Even back in 2015 or so, it seemed that the overwhelming majority of people met IRL, whereas just a few years later everyone was meeting online.

Might be a changing demographic thing (I was 22 in 2015, and 26 in 2019), but something definitely happened.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#76

Post by webscalist »

largepeepee wrote: post #23

"It also creates a trap—a collective action problem—for girls and for parents. Each girl might be worse off quitting Instagram even though all girls would be better off if everyone quit." I like this part, it is quite clear quitting social media alone is probably even worse and self-isolating than not taking part. The solution would be to address it on a societal level, but that requires pretty strong societal/politi…

Deplatform Instagram.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#77

Post by jvolkman »

jsonne wrote: post #71

Anecdotally I removed all social media from my phone recently and I only am using Twitter for work on desktop. My mood has improved dramatically and my focus is improving. Towards the end I found myself getting angry at posts that showed curated idyllic lives and realized that it's all really a facade. To that end the last post I saw on Tiktok before deleting it basically said that social media is so insidious becaus…

Does that include Hacker News?

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#78

Post by wufufufu »

I'd like legislation that acknowledges both the utility and harm that social media and more generally smartphones have. All I want is an internet-based texting only mobile-phone that doesn't have a browser or anything besides utilities. I don't want any feeds, reels, TikToks, etc. The fact that you basically need a smartphone to socialize, make payments, park, read menus, but it comes with a hamster-wheel for dopamine dispensing is like if the only way you could hydrate yourself is fountain soda -- you're just playing a game where you try not to get diabetes.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#79

Post by swader999 »

mulmen wrote: post #15
mixmastamyk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s ok for a 12yo to be out of the loop for a few hours. They see their friends every day at school.

Do they? Is social media being used in morning classes to plan lunch? Will a socially isolated student even have friends? I haven't been in school for many years so I don't know the social dynamic but it isn't hard to imagine.

They do seem to live on Snapchat lately.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#80

Post by tayo42 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #33
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #9

I wonder if online dating tends to lead to similar impacts to mental health for some groups of people as social media does to teen girls. Just like in Haidt's examples, it's impersonal, phone-based, leading to constant social comparison, feelings of rejection, ostracism and ghosting. I wouldn't be shocked if a few years from now research came out showing that it has similar effects to adults, but they're just better…

Anecdotal, but dating apps sure helped crush the self-esteem of my sister. She still gets on them occasionally, because there's no alternative now. Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

Bars were always terrible for meeting people. Idk anyone having success there. If it did work, I don't think apps would have taken off
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