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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

#261

Post by afavour »

stuckinhell wrote: post #232
chmod775 wrote: post #224

> Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller. Bullshit. These numbers are self reported and show exactly the opposite of reality. Boys aged 15-24 are about four times [0] more likely than girls to die by their own hands, so clearly relying on self reported cases of mental illness is not very helpful and is likely to shift focus away…

[flagged]

> The world is so dysfunctional with radicals trying to drag your children into their agendas

This was always the case but it was incredibly difficult for those people to reach your kids. Arguably an equivalent of this is dragging children into "capitalistic" agendas via advertising on kids TV, that's certainly not new.

Maybe an unpopular view but I think a lot of the blame lies with the tech giant. It's well documented that YouTube pushes you towards more and more "engaging" (and not so coincidentally extreme) content over time. Same with TikTok and all the others. In the ideal world we'd be removing "engagement" as a goal anywhere but good luck sealing that Pandora's box back up again.

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

#263

Post by Aunche »

mrpopo wrote: post #87

I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but the dismissal of other factors is insufficient: > Why did a measure of loneliness at school go up around the world only after 2012, as the global economy got better and better? The economy didn't get better for everyone, in fact inequality rose starkly; this might be a correlating factor. > It’s not because of the 9/11 attacks, wars in the middle east, or school s…

It sounds like you're projecting your own beliefs onto teenage girls. Even if they cared about income inequality or climate change as much as you think they do, that's still the fault of social media. It's counterproductive to be overly worried about something that is outside your control, especially when it doesn't affect you yet. Everyone is going to suffer the effects aging and death, so it's a very logical worry. However, if social media is filled with reminders of sickness and death, which is causing you anxiety, then you should quit.

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

#264

Post by corbulo »

samstave wrote: post #105
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…

Nature is the best solution by far. Everything else is a half measure IMO.

The thing that these devices take away from us is time to think, or 'boredom'; we're meant to walk everywhere. The only solution is to restore that, what better environment to do so than a forest?

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

#265

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

rootusrootus wrote: post #209
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 migh…

Thanks for sharing!

> Parenting is by far the most difficult, stressful thing I've ever undertaken.

From my observations, I don't think this can be overstated, at least from an American perspective. It is easily the single largest factor in my decision-making on this topic, and seems to be something which many people underestimate.

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

#266

Post by stuckinhell »

LesZedCB wrote: post #201

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 :/

I agree. Between this article on young women being failed and young men being failed in this following article. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...

I think its clear society is on the verge of failure. We've allowed radicals and a small minority to take control of culture, and break it for the vast of amount of normal people. We need to return to the first principles we know most societies are based on.

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

#267

Post by stuart78 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #242
stuart78 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my kid's school the target is no phones until 8th grade. It seems many people adhere to the guidance, but that is only based on what we see casually, and we'll see how it looks over the next few years. Some 3rd/4th graders have smart watches which allow comms but not meaningful apps. Not sure it is a great compromise for my family, but interesting to see what results other folks find as we all navigate it.

> At my kid's school the target is no phones until 8th grade. Public or private? I've got a lot of insight into local school districts in my area and a little into local private schools (good ones—not poor-quality evangelical schools for parents who don't want their kids taught about evolution, or something like that) and the public schools have all completely given up on policing phones and wouldn't dare suggest tha…

Public, but a very small separated section of a larger school district - only one grade school and one high school. So it is basically a public school that feels private. Having attended private school myself, I think the distinction you are making sounds about right.

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

#268

Post by watwut »

andix wrote: post #206

Are 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.

I don't think social isolation of girls is reasonable knee jerk reaction to their issues.

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

#269

Post by ALittleLight »

afavour wrote: post #240
chmod775 wrote: post #224

> Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller. Bullshit. These numbers are self reported and show exactly the opposite of reality. Boys aged 15-24 are about four times [0] more likely than girls to die by their own hands, so clearly relying on self reported cases of mental illness is not very helpful and is likely to shift focus away…

I'm not writing off what you're saying (I agree that young men are suffering and less likely to admit as much) but you are equating mental illness and suicide. I think it's important to note that it is possible to be depressed and anxious without being suicidal. It's quite possible that young men are less likely to be depressed but that those who are depressed are more likely to turn to suicide. If that were the case…

One way to think about it is that we can't reliably measure mental health conditions. So, we can't objectively quantify how many boys or girls are depressed, we can only rely on self-reports. However, we can see the extreme consequence - suicide, and that is an objective measure. If the one objective measure we have indicates boys are suffering much worse, then that's reason to suspect that our subjective measure (self-reporting) may not be giving us an accurate reading.

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

#270

Post by try_the_bass »

nerdponx wrote: post #101
shagie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 financia…

> You know who fed her that BS? Her delusional parents.

I thought the Wait but Why article made a point of calling that out. It didn't come across as blaming Lucy for her delusions, saying "she has _been told_ all her life that 'she's special'".

"Been told" seems to put the blame for that squarely on those doing the telling.

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