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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

#311

Post by [deleted] »

nerdponx wrote: post #113
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…

This effect is just as true for adults as for kids. I largely lost touch with the music scene I was involved in because I didn't want to do everything on Facebook, and now Instagram.

[deleted]

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

#312

Post by concordDance »

watwut wrote: post #235
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…

Raising sexual harassment and rape rates can be contributing factor too. The boys commit more of those last years.

My understanding is that if you hold both the definition of rape and the ethnic origins of the boys constant rape has been going down for decades. Is this compatible with the evidence you've seen?

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

#313

Post by denton-scratch »

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…

Gosh, your daughter is impressively eloquent and literate. I've come across rhetoric like that from a 12-year-old, but not very often. You should both be proud.

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

#314

Post by js2 »

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…

Boys 15-24 committing suicide at 4x the rate of girls is not something that has changed much since at least 1975. If anything, the disparity was even greater between 1985-2000:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm

Meanwhile, the premise of this piece is that social media has increased mental illness for teen girls. Yes, that's self-reported, but it's always been self-reported (and can only be self-reported), so that's not a factor which has changed for boys or girls. So why are girls, but not boys, reporting more mental illness and at greater rates than boys now than they have in the past. That's what this piece is trying to figure out.

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

#315

Post by tristor »

Unfortunately, you can't just ban social media for teen girls. That has negative mental health impacts as well, including on your own mental health as you try to enforce said ban. Social media is integral to the lifestyle of teenagers now, and not having it socially isolates you. It makes you a "weirdo" in the same way that being homeschooled or being in a religious cult would 30 years ago, in fact if you try to do such a ban, other parents assume you're a conspiracy theorist, in a religious cult, or some other sort of "weirdo" yourself.

Whether we like it or not, unfortunately social media is now an integral part of how people are expected to behave in modern society. So we have to figure out how to address the consequences of it on an individual basis in our home without resorting to flat bans. This is addressed to some extent in the article as well.

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

#316

Post by sva_ »

moremetadata wrote: post #116

Social media is a psychological weapon that leaves no physical evidence which is why the state is making a big play on mental health. Its a control mechanism on the population because the state deliberately doesn't teach law and parents cant be relied upon, so social media can also be a way to psychological and biologically profile people before choosing to radicalise individuals, set them up for blackmail, or have t…

> have them carryout a variety of Darwinism tasks,

What do you mean by that? And how is this currently achieved?

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

#317

Post by Xylakant »

IncRnd wrote: post #214
theGnuMe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to parent anyway?

Even chatgpt knows. (prompt:) what does it mean to parent? To parent means to raise and nurture a child from infancy to adulthood, providing them with love, care, guidance, and support as they grow and develop. Parenting involves a wide range of responsibilities and activities, including providing for a child's physical needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care, as well as their emotional and psychological needs…

ChatGPT has no idea what parenting means. It parrots what other people have written about parenting.

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

#318

Post by kashunstva »

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…

> These numbers are self reported…

But aren’t the data for both girls _and_ boys self-reported in the cited CDC study? In which case, if the data for boys is unrepresentative relative to that of girls, then there is either systematic underreporting or a gender-based methodological flaw in ascertainment. Either is possible but I’m not sure how one would glean that from what was published.

I didn’t read the methodology carefully but the ascertainment almost certainly did not involve asking (non-silent) people with distress to identify themselves; but rather to take a representative sample and assess the rates of mental distress within that population. So the point about being aware of silent suffering is entirely valid but I’m not sure that it explains the delta between observed rates of emotional distress in boys and girls.

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

#319

Post by RangerScience »

Zetice wrote: post #229
eastbound wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pro…

Boys are for sure not exempt from harm, but the harm seems to be as a result of equity: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo... > “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.” Powerful stuff.

Quote in more context:

> Women are tiring of their stereotypical role as full-time therapist for emotionally distant men. They want a partner who is emotionally open and empathetic, the opposite of the age-old masculine ideal.

> “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”

I think it’s pretty clear that the harm isn’t caused by equity, but that the equity exposes the harm caused by other things.

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

#320

Post by elliottkember »

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…

I once read a phrase that was something like "smoking cures the anxiety it causes" and I think it's a similar concept
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