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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

#291

Post by afavour »

ALittleLight wrote: post #269
afavour wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (se…

Reason to suspect, perhaps. Reason to call bullshit... IMO, no. There are way too many alternative factors to jump to a conclusion.

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

#292

Post by andrewflnr »

jrumbut wrote: post #177
andrewflnr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much for the "play based childhood", then. (And no, of course assigned sports don't count)

In another thread I mentioned the need for organized (in the sense of same place, same time) unstructured activity. Gather at the basketball court, if practice or a game break out that's good, if not that's OK. It seems like everyone wins in that scenario, it's healthy but playful and low stress while accommodating parents' need for scheduling. Is such a thing common? I don't hear about it much.

This seems like a solid option. A fair bit of my childhood was like this, actually, and it was great for us. I don't hear about similar things much, but I bet we will eventually.

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

#293

Post by [deleted] »

timst4 wrote: post #123
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…

Middle School educator here. I can assure you that your daughters will not be alone when it comes to a moratorium on social media. However, the girls they may very well want to be friends with may be very much into social media and group chats. My advice is to be firm but also take steps to create social opportunities for your daughters. I have a 12yo and I host board game nights with amazing snack trays. I help her…

[deleted]

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

#294

Post by _0ffh »

ALittleLight wrote: post #269
afavour wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (se…

I agree which the general sentiment. If we want to determine how much worse things got in recent years, though, we would need to compare those numbers to what they were a few years ago. I understand that boys were always more likely to die by their own hand than girls, but I'm not sure by how much.

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

#295

Post by thrtythreeforty »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #219
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…

I had my 12 year old daughter read the article and after she argued a while I said: Ok, write up your rejoinder and I will post it and see what others think. For context we severely restrict access to social media in our house, but of course they find ways around this as expected (I don't pi-hole because I want them to learn to be hackers) ----------------------------------- *Why I think it’s reasonable for me to hav…

I enjoyed thinking about this more than I thought I would.

> First of all, the article stated that people using social media moderately (half an hour to one and a half hours a day) had little to no decline in their mental health, compared to a large mental health decline in those using it a lot (3-5+ hours a day)

This is an excellent, solid point.

> Another thing that the article mentioned is that people these days who do not have social media may feel excluded or left out, and may even miss things because they don’t have social media, which can lead to a decline in their mental health as well.

Not convincing unless it can be demonstrated that the expected harm from being isolated from social media is greater than the expected harm caused by being exposed to social media.

> Yet another point was that people will compare themselves to other people on there [...] I don’t usually compare myself to them

This is not well reasoned in my opinion: this is described as a consequence of social media usage. It hasn't been shown to be a preexisting personality trait that, combined with social media usage, causes the mental health issues. That is, you may not compare yourself to others precisely because you do not use social media regularly.

All that said, however, the first point (moderate usage) combined with the last point (excessive usage later in life) is fairly persuasive for a strategy of allowing small doses of social media.

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

#296

Post by ddmma »

Maybe the algorithm that controls the newsfeeds are the cause. Social graph networks that were created by connecting billions of people was necessary human evolution but corporate management or dystopian government want to control the social parameters. So there u have it!

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

#297

Post by giraffe_lady »

Animats wrote: post #198
sverona wrote: post #154

Here's a question I don't know the answer to. How does an already depressed and dysphoric trans person --- who doesn't know they're trans --- with unsupportive parents ever, ever find out what the cause of their depression is without a robust network of connection to people from elsewhere? Let's assume they live in a deeply rural area in which variant sexualities and genders are frowned upon. They are the only person…

Most of them grow out of it.[1][2] [1] https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/441784/the-controversial-re... [2] https://statsforgender.org/desistance/

Ever seen that graph of left handedness over time?

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

#298

Post by akiselev »

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…

The author discussed suicide in his previous article [1], also discussed here on HN [2]. Boys succeed more often than girls due to choice of method but hospitalizations for self harm in general are far more prevalent among girls. See section four and five as well as his collaborative doc.

[1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-illness...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707734

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

#299

Post by bertil »

I’m surprised to see so little distinction between what causes this, to help with addressing the issues separately and proactively: the need to curate your personality (which university applications seem to have cornered for a while), body image (which fashion magazines have been leveraging for a while), or pseudo-social relations that break validation circles (which seems new, at least the apparent intimacy of it, unless you count some personality on TV and radio).

I think there are approaches to handle each aspect, many of which are never recommended in debate about this, seemingly because people want single, absolute solution:

* I have no idea if anyone I follow on Twitter, or here too, has perfect teeth, a thigh gap, or whatever is the latest unrealistic goal; teenagers could be asked to use text-only media or one without humans presented as attractive: Reddit has a rule about selfie for instance.

* social media companies can choose to let you see more friends over people with large audiences; I remember that was a big debate at Instagram when I worked there (and a couple of brilliant people left because the decision went for a stickier audience, slowly slipping towards pros over friends). There’s definitely an appetite to revert that decision.

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

#300

Post by serverholic »

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 inclined to believe you. In my experience men are socialized to downplay mental illness whereas women are the opposite, they wear their illnesses on their sleeve.
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