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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

#101

Post by nerdponx »

shagie wrote: post #43
warner25 wrote: post #2

I'm still reading it, but this is great so far. As a father to four little girls, though, it makes me feel really defeated. I can already see that social media has eroded my wife's mental health. I just don't know what to do in the next few years when our girls approach the age when everyone else will get an iPhone and have an Instagram account. I want to say no, but that leads to many other issues, including what th…

While the generations are a bit dated - https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-... > Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling…

This article is the classic "millennials are sad because they have unrealistically high expectations" drivel that I thought we had buried for good. Even for 2013 it seems pretty trashy. Lucy doesn't think she's unusually wonderful, and to assume so is completely unfair to Lucy. Lucy was told over and over and over that all she needed to do was go to college and work hard at anything somewhat respectable, and financial stability and personal comfort would follow. She only ever wanted a decent liberal arts education, and after that a decent career. You know who fed her that BS? Her delusional parents.

Yes, it's easy to get unrealistic expectations from social media. But that's not the point of the article, for anyone tempted to click and read.

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

#102

Post by biomcgary »

barbazoo wrote: post #11
warner25 wrote: post #2

I'm still reading it, but this is great so far. As a father to four little girls, though, it makes me feel really defeated. I can already see that social media has eroded my wife's mental health. I just don't know what to do in the next few years when our girls approach the age when everyone else will get an iPhone and have an Instagram account. I want to say no, but that leads to many other issues, including what th…

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?

I'm a father of a non-verbal autistic son. We have chosen a non-traditional path for him to avoid bullying and he is generally doing quite well (and slowly becoming a bit more verbal). It helps that he has siblings that love him as he is.

Our kids have a mix of private schooling, tutoring, and homeschooling. They spend a lot of time outdoors and have very limited access to screens and no social media. We chose this path because the typical classroom has 25-30 barbarians and 1 civilized person, if you're lucky.

Most social media appears completely overrun by highly tribal barbarians.

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

#103

Post by seanw444 »

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.

It worked well for me. Homeschooled until 7th grade. It helped me make friends, because I had no concept of cliques at the start. Also gave me a good "bullshit" meter for some of the crap public school has started teaching.

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

#104

Post by colinrand »

YMMV, but the thing that seems to work in my house (mid teen girl) is to actively be engaged with her social life and have the meta (not Meta) conversation about social media impact with her regularly. She will have to learn to deal with her reality and live with it on her own, but helping her have a set of tools to describe and analyze it is beneficial. Tools like being aware of how much time she spends on it, how other people are affected by it, how apps affect your behavior, etc. But it all starts with engaging as a parent with her on her level, not forcing her to be an adult with a fully formed executive function capacity.

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

#105

Post by samstave »

warner25 wrote: post #2

I'm still reading it, but this is great so far. As a father to four little girls, though, it makes me feel really defeated. I can already see that social media has eroded my wife's mental health. I just don't know what to do in the next few years when our girls approach the age when everyone else will get an iPhone and have an Instagram account. I want to say no, but that leads to many other issues, including what th…

As the Father of Three girls ; I propose a screen-age limit. Just like the drinking limit, and I think that certain sites should have a limit of 10 years old.

Only educational sites and videos should be available to anyone under 10.

I KNOW this is a horrendously hard problem to solve - but kids should EARN sceen time by 'playing outside time' or something.

Kids born to cities are fucked. kids born to dense 'no-nature'access' environs are fucked.

But growing up in the forrests of california and being a latch-key kid in the 80s was a godsend to my imagination and thus my IQ.

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

#106

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> We have an entire generation of young adults who hit puberty after smartphones

It's unfair to blame #metoo, but it isn't unfair to blame a modern version of PC that expresses itself as puritanism. This is the least sex-having generation of all time. They're afraid that saying the wrong thing to each other is genocide or rape, especially the wrong sexual thing.

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

#107

Post by AlexandrB »

itake wrote: post #61
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.

Guys also just don't want to go to bars. Even in my 20s, "going out" always felt like a chore that I had to do to find a partner. Approaching girls in public has high social consequences. I've read enough reddit [0][1][2] or seen enough news articles about people banned from businesses because a guy was seen as creepy. Men need to learn what is ok and not ok when communicating with women. This is already an challenge…

> Approaching girls in public has high social consequences.

My read on it is that, like cold calling and door-to-door sales, this is a skill. You can be naturally good at it, you can develop it, or you can be self-aware that you suck at it and do something else.

As someone who has met all his partners in places other than bars/tinder and without any dramatic public approaches like what you're describing I would say that it's important to keep in mind that there are plenty of ways you will meet people. Obsessing over the ways that you won't meet people is counterproductive.

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

#108

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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.

> Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

Bars were not a good place to find dates decades ago either. That’s more of a tired movie trope.

The bigger issue is that people just don’t seem to get out and do things as much as they did in the time before we all had unlimited entertainment options at our fingertips from the comfort of home. As soon as you do break the cycle and start doing activities in the real world, you discover that there are a lot of interesting people just a few degrees outside of your friend groups and activities.

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

#109

Post by jsonne »

jvolkman wrote: post #77
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?

HN falls under work for me (in the sense that I learn things, I have a company that employs engineers so there's a networking element etc) but point taken. I guess I don't think about it as much because it's significantly less problematic than say Instagram and at least I learn things here.

Notably I did cut out reddit which imho is the most toxic social network I was a part of.

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

#110

Post by giantg2 »

Loughla wrote: post #67
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I know that's meant to be funny, but the Amish community is a nightmare, from the outside looking in, very closely. I live in an area where there is a large Amish community; they outnumber "English" about 4:1. Patriarchy in all decisions. The old men make choices for families based on what they know is best, and you follow that rule, regardless of your own views. Women are not allowed a voice in formal decisions. Chi…

Some of this varies by the exact community and sect. But there are some good lessons in there too. Health-wise they are great, with some of the lowest costs, low chronic disease, and getting about double the recommended 10k steps per day.

So we don't want to emulate them in every way, but we can take some lessons in certain areas.

If you truly want resilient kids, that lifestyle will do it. Safety is another thing though. I saw a 1 year old just fall 3 feet off a playset and it only cried a little. The parents weren't very concerned. I guess when you have 6 kids, it's like you have "spares". Not that it's the right way to look at it, but ignoring balance of other concerns they will be tough.

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