some of the comments from parents in this thread scare the shit out of me.
apparently discipline society and father morality still reign supreme even in the postmodern era as long as you're a child :/
Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
201–210 of 689 posts
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a parent to a 12 year old girl, I’ve been fighting the “no social media” fight since she requested at 9. Every single one of her friends have social media and I think it is negative to be isolated in that way. But I also notice that she seems to have positive benefits over her friends, but of course it’s tough to measure. It’s strange to me because I’ve talked about this literature and whatnot with other parents a…
This is really baffling to me, because social media sites have an age limit of 13 in most western countries. ...and this is by the companies themselves, if they are found out to be "marketing to children", they get hit with a whole another set of legal issues. Epic just got hit with this because of Fortnite and has to pay over $200M fines. The only issue is that there is zero oversight on the age limit, there is no w…
How are girls actually using social media? My impression is that the problem isn't so much obsessively posting as merely scrolling through content, thus a social media account for the purpose of infinite-scrolling isn't necessarily going to appear to be for someone underage or even be surfaced to anyone who would even care enough to report it.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#203I think it's somewhat important to ask why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys, and Haidt does not seem to really reflect on that. Social media in and of itself is really just an accelerant for the particular set of social expectations we stack on girls and women around appearance and how that relates to self-worth. Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by fi…
> Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human beings.
Before absconding boys from harm, maybe we should check twice on their health. They are often forgotten or their difficulties brushed off in studies. How are addictions progressing? Obesity maybe? Why are they all on 9Gag? Let’s check their level of racism and misogyny, it might be a proxy for self-esteem. Have right-wing groups gotten more expressive recently? Are we taking proper care of the boys?
Can we ensure, if we measure something where girls are particularly exposed, that we also measure an area where boys are particularly exposed, before assuming boys are exempt from harm.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#204Of course it is! Existing in a constant evaluative state of mind is absolutely toxic to mental health. Think about it: would you enjoy your spouse grading you on every little thing you said? If they did, it would quickly discourage you from saying much at all.
Most anyone who has quit social media can attest to the near-immediate benefit they get to their subjective well-being. And it persists even in spite of realizing they are missing out on some of the things social media does well. I REALLY hope we can eventually look back at this time and laugh at the incredibly high rate of addiction to what are worthless Internet Points. Everyone laughed at WoW junkies for staying up late to get epic loot, then turned around and did exactly that themselves, or worse!
Social media persists because it fills a void in our increasingly atomized lives. And some people thrive on what is essentially a real-time status market. The real fix is we stop normalizing having lives so small they can be so easily filled with such worthless garbage like social media.
Edit: really appreciate how Jon calls out how every damn journalist treats social media with such kiddie gloves because they are too scared to speak what is plainly evident: social media is toxic.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#205I'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…
You've hit on the conundrum. Damned if you do join the social network (for the known reasons) and damned if you don't (isolation from friends). Until a major of parents remove access, this will always be the problem. Btw, I had the same issue with games and my son. I could not let him play, but then he wouldn't have had access to the sole socialization his peer group had. Both decisions were bad, but one was worse. L…
Video games and social media are two entirely different things.
Some of my best times with my friends is LAN parties as well as going together at demo parties, traveling, coding together.
Frankly, a ban on videogames is stupid as hell. Even today on discord and over the network, it?s stil entirely unlike social media.
/smh
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#206Are there some parents here, who were able to convince their girls not to use social media? Was it a success?
I think it’s very well documented, that social media can be really bad for kids. It seems to be much worse than drinking, smoking or bad relationships.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once sat next to a dean of private school on a plane—she mentioned that the ~100 parents that sent their children to the school signed an agreement that they would restrict their children's access to social media until 9th grade. I have no idea how well it was adhered to or enforced, but it surprised me that the parents of the school and the dean were trying to collectively organize action around this issue to prev…
And at 9th grade it's a free for all? Looking back the high school years would have been the worst for my own self esteem, angst, etc. Glad none of it was recorded. :)
6th and 7th grade are pretty brutal developmental years. You get a lot more autonomy but also spend a lot of time grappling with who you are and what your identity is, particularly in monoculture suburbia.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would contest one point in the article, and I admit this is dependent on where you live: > But social media is very different because it transforms social life for everyone, even for those who don’t use social media, whereas sugar consumption just harms the consumer. In countries with single-payer healthcare (or socialised healthcare), it's not true that it harms only the consumer. If it turns into obesity, diabete…
>This is a rephrasing of the argument against smoking, where the argument that was smoking harms nobody else, and the counter was that smokers created a healthcare burden. Smoking also has much more direct second hand effects from releasing smoke into the area of the smoker. Poor diet lack such effects.
Which most people would agree - smoking in public is not a personal activity; but this debate raged on throughout the 90s and early 00s. The secondary effect is on the healthcare system some time after the fact, which is the same for sugar, alcohol, smoking...where it is a new generation that is funding the care.
I don't mean to distract from the main point, but sugar is not an innocent example, especially when lobbying happened to use sugar in favour of fat.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel similarly to seeing parenting advice from people who clearly aren't parents.
Funny thing is, I'm not a parent and have no plans to be one. Just seems kinda obvious to me. Edit: I guess I didn't word this very well. Please consider this comment in the context of my earlier one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34901931 .
Parenting is by far the most difficult, stressful thing I've ever undertaken. My kids are mostly not too difficult, but they're very different nonetheless. My son is Mr. Compliant and is exactly the kind of kid that makes people think they must be rockstar parents. My daughter, on the other hand, routinely makes me feel like an ineffectual failure at parenting. I love her more than anything in the world, but she might well be costing me a few years of lifespan :).
One major problem, at least from my perspective, is managing the transfer of responsibility as a child progresses from toddler to adult. It's not like you throw them the keys at 18 and say 'good luck!'. So there is ongoing give-and-take, rules, negotiations, and extending trust. My kids are 10 and 12, which is an exciting time for sure. Puberty is a wild ride whether you're the victim or not :)
Haven't let her get a smartphone yet, but this is an ongoing battle. Because when she says 'but all my friends do!' she's not lying. I have to temper my fears and try to remember what it's like to be a kid. As an adult I had largely forgotten what it was like in middle school.
Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once sat next to a dean of private school on a plane—she mentioned that the ~100 parents that sent their children to the school signed an agreement that they would restrict their children's access to social media until 9th grade. I have no idea how well it was adhered to or enforced, but it surprised me that the parents of the school and the dean were trying to collectively organize action around this issue to prev…
And at 9th grade it's a free for all? Looking back the high school years would have been the worst for my own self esteem, angst, etc. Glad none of it was recorded. :)
Agreed, but what’s the alternative though? Just going full Amish on them until they’re 18? 25? Look at all the Baby Boomers and older Gen X’ers that got on the Internet in the past ten years and instantly had their brains rotted despite decades of life experience. Should there be some kind of emotional intelligence test everyone has to pass to earn their internet license?
This is why I think that taking steps to keep kids off social media is delaying the inevitable. Just as there’s no safe age to start smoking, there’s no truly safe age to start using social media as it currently exists. So either we accept the negative aspects of these platforms’ existence, or we remediate them.