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

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

481–490 of 689 posts

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

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s ok for a 12yo to be out of the loop for a few hours. They see their friends every day at school.

"Oh my god, did you see what Stacy posted last night!" But your daughter missed it because " you didn't let her have an Instagram account!" It seems to me that such worries are well-founded. At best, she made the decision herself and still feels the pain of it.

This feels very similar to a manager with late night emails. A type of hostage situation.

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

#482
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's letting kids parent themselves.

You're looking at it in isolation because you are not privy to the kids' social circle. What the gp is describing is a social cost imposed on the non-participant kid. If repeated often, this will lower their status within their social circle and (much like chickens) the least popular kids become the default target for emotional abuse and bullying. If they withdraw form their social circle to cut their losses, then th…

I get what you're saying but we shouldn't escalate this into a type of prison gang situation, there's significant middle ground.

When the research is becoming clear that these dynamics and these years of a teen life cause so much harm, we can't be so fatalistic to say that giving in is mandatory.

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

#483
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 have a 13 year old who just got a phone. I do not think things are as hopeless as you seem to believe. My daughter mocks social media (including my own use of it) and, so far, wants no part of it. That is, I think, largely because her mother and I have been educating her since she could use a computer on how stupid and vapid social media is. As far as I know, none of her friends has any social media accounts either, I believe for similar reasons.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's hard to learn about another country without personally visiting it. To wit, I've made it a point to take my family to other countries, for us to learn other languages, and to get to experience different lifestyles around the world. There are a lot of things that my wife and I do to try to help my stepdaughter interact with information in healthy ways, but that's also easier said than done. To a large d…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I would guess that maybe the peer group is the core of the problem. Probably even most, though of course far from all, teenagers realize that issues they might have with people on social media whom they do not know in real life can be resolved by simply not interacting with them. Maybe social media just makes it easy for the peer group to be present in a person's life almost 18 hours…

I think that's a big piece of it. I think another part of it is that even /if you/ do not use social media, it doesn't meant others won't post you (including pictures/video) on social media and talk about you. In the past, you might get gossip about who went to what event/party/group activity and who didn't, or what they did, but there wasn't a constant stream of photos and video of said acts and occurrences followed by difficult to impossible to monitor comments made semi-anonymously and possibly exposed without your consent to strangers and third-parties.

It's not just that it can be challenging to deal with your peer group being present in your life constantly, it's that you have little recourse or ways to escape without intentionally withdrawing from your social peer group, especially as a teenager where social media is so embedded in their very existence. As an adult, it's easier, we can be much more intentional about our relationships and lifestyle, but teenagers exist in a microcosm of the larger society, with all of the same problems but without the same recourses.

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

#485
post #284
post #68

Earlier 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…

It makes sense to me that they would do it at the school level. The pressure to use social media and etc will come from those around them. Being the one student not on social media would have it's own pressures I imagine.

I'm in my 30s, but still remember being the only Senior in highschool without a cell phone. It made it really hard to meet up with people, go to parties... really do anything. Social media was really just starting though and was something people maybe spent 1/2 hour on at night. The iphone had just came out, so no Instagram and apps like Snapchat. I can't imagine going through that hellscape now.

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

#486
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…

This is the Chinese approach and this is one of few things where I'm not creeped out by it. Enforced max screen time and content is forcefully educational, fun, age-appropriate.

Nobody likes this but the consequences of not taking action are huge.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else is she supposed to reach out to her friends if she can't use a phone?

She sees them at school every day?

Not every day of the week. And plans/things change all the time. Luckily we can message everyone in a group saying we'll be late/can't go/let's do this new activity instead. Everyone was doing everything on imessage. People don't call other's home phones anymore to make plans. Do you even own a landline?

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

#488
post #185

I 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…

Sometimes we should just accept that we don’t know why.

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

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When you look into why they "grow out of it," it's usually because the world is so inhospitable to them that they cannot bear it. [0] The proportion that detrans because they realized they were wrong is estimated at 2.4%. [0] Also, previous studies that look into detransition have been methodologically wanting. [1] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8213007/ [1] https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2021-802…

Jack Turban lol

That guy is a total hack

Dogshit research

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - and as an Australian I find America’s tolerance for school shootings utterly baffling. Here in Australia we play all the same video games as American kids do, and we don’t have school shootings. The problem isn’t the video games.

But you do have football, sunshine, beer and Australian women which probably goes along way to resolving problems with young men

America has all those things in spades too.

The Christchurch shooter was an australian (to our eternal shame). But he shot up a school in New Zealand instead of in australia because it was easier to buy guns in NZ. (Was easier. They pushed through stricter gun controls after that incident).

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