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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

#561

Post by sibeliuss »

Alex3917 wrote: post #525
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 a father to four little girls, though, it makes me feel really defeated. As a father of two girls who also runs a social network, this article is bullshit. They’re only considering social media that fundamentally looks and feels like Facebook. That’s like saying all outdoor activities are extremely dangerous, when only looking at wingsuit base jumpers.

You clearly didn't read the article, because what they wrote mostly about was... Instagram.

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

#562

Post by _carbyau_ »

jimt1234 wrote: post #453
Xylakant wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly, that sounds exactly like most parents I know these days (just doing what other parents are doing).

Problems are problems. On the one hand, you find out stuff yourself. On the other hand, sharing with your peers(parents) and getting info from them can help an enormous amount too. shrug

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

#563

Post by sgath92 »

vlunkr wrote: post #244
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Then they get to blame the parent. "I want to use social media but my lame parents won't let me." Then they're left out of some things, but they get to deflect that social stigma. I'm willing to accept being the lame parent. That ship sailed a long time ago.

> Then they're left out of some things, but they get to deflect that social stigma. I'm willing to accept being the lame parent.

I know this is anecdotal, but my experience doesn't show that pans out. I am on the older edge of the millennial cohort age-wise and had a very strict parent growing up who would not allow me access to TV, most movies, and contemporary music. Which meant I never listened to what my classmates did, wasn't familiar with their pop culture references, couldn't go with them to movies, sometimes had to sit out movies shown in class (!) and none of my classmates, all of whom picked up on it and most of whom bullied me for it, cared that it was my parents forcing the situation upon me.

Strangely, I was given unmonitered and unrestricted access to the pre-social media internet and used it to associate online mostly with adults and found it very rewarding re: my education & hobbies. Until smartphones became popular it made me a firm believer in this idea that "the internet is infinite knowledge" and "once everyone gets it we'll be infinitely smarter!" The idea of "crap, X broke let's research online how to fix it" has saved me a lifetime of hiring people for car or home repairs.

Anyway I am starting to go off topic but I am very skeptical of this idea that "my lame parent won't let me" means much when bullies latch on to "hey, little Jane/Johnny over there doesn't know what X is!"

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

#564

Post by logicchains »

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…

It's never too late to teach them some values. The vast majority of religions and philosophies teach that striving for material things and to satisfy the ego is not healthy, you could research some of the arguments behind it and educate your girls on the harms of comparing themselves to other people. Teach them to value other people (and themselves) by their moral character, not their material possessions or achievements.

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

#565

Post by zeroonetwothree »

js2 wrote: post #314
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-repo…

Boys also had an increase in self-reported mental illness, so your assumption is wrong. The article is claiming that the increase is larger for girls than boys. However there could be reasons that it's now more acceptable for girls to report mental illness and not for boys, so it doesn't really resolve the sex comparison issue.

BTW the chart you linked shows that we had higher rates in the 1980s than now. It makes the recent increase look like it's just part of a long-term cyclical trend.

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

#566

Post by zeroonetwothree »

kashunstva wrote: post #318
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…

Boys may be less likely to either admit that they have depression or classify their feelings as depression in the first place. This seems consistent with how we differently socialize the two sexes.

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

#567

Post by xattt »

jimbo9991 wrote: post #501
maegul wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some form of collective action could go a long way here to the point of being imperative. Get like minded parents and teachers and administrators together on this and work together to preview and encourage alternatives. Tangentially, I’m curious if smoking went through a phase similar to this, where all the parents were doing it but there was still some recognition that children/teens shouldn’t and some p…

I think you are on to something here. That's exactly what happened with smoking. Factors for that being successful was mostly just repeating the information about how bad it was a lot in the beginning. Once everybody agrees about that, then you slowly start making it socially unacceptable. I could see a similar thing happening with social media of awareness of the seriousness of the damage becomes as widespread as fo…

I‘ve got young boys, so I can’t speak directly to the fears that parents have about their daughters.

I think the door can swing both ways. While consumers can take tobacco as a playbook, there was recent reporting about the stickiness of iOS with Gen Z. I can imagine there a number of people want to (indirectly) keep it that way.

Platforms will come out with some feature that mitigates the social outrage, creates FUD around the true scale of the problem, and kicks the can down the road a little further while millions more get addicted for a little while longer.

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

#568

Post by maegul »

jimbo9991 wrote: post #501
maegul wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some form of collective action could go a long way here to the point of being imperative. Get like minded parents and teachers and administrators together on this and work together to preview and encourage alternatives. Tangentially, I’m curious if smoking went through a phase similar to this, where all the parents were doing it but there was still some recognition that children/teens shouldn’t and some p…

I think you are on to something here. That's exactly what happened with smoking. Factors for that being successful was mostly just repeating the information about how bad it was a lot in the beginning. Once everybody agrees about that, then you slowly start making it socially unacceptable. I could see a similar thing happening with social media of awareness of the seriousness of the damage becomes as widespread as fo…

Yea, interesting!

If there's something to this analogy, I feel like it'd be worth being more commonly known.

For me, as a Millennial/Xennial, I sure as hell criticised the elders close to me for their smoking and their taking up the habit in their youth. For parents now who have similar stories, it might be a helpful perspective to have on how these things tend to happen and what's required to actually address any problems.

It might also lead to some uncomfortable reflections on the world us Millennials are passing on.

Maybe the best first step for parents would be to quit social media / smartphones themselves and get more active in creating alternative ways of being (however easier said than done that is)?

Interestingly, I'm also struck at how unclear it might be as to which is the worst of these two "generational original sins".

Despite all the health effects, maybe no one lost the ability to think deeply or critically assess propaganda or fall into a cult or become obsessed with their appearance or spent thousands of dollars to throw perfectly functioning pocket computers in the bin for slightly bigger ones from smoking?

A funny image comes to mind of senile Millennials refusing to give up their social media smartphones despite their carers' best efforts, wildly declaring that they've been scrolling timelines since before the carers were born and have been fine.

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

#570

Post by zeroonetwothree »

notjulianjaynes wrote: post #373

I think it's worth considering that we've already had a generation or two that have grown up with social media being pretty much ubiquitous. I'm in my early 30s (male) and was on myspace by age 14. Has social media contributed negatively to my mental health over the years? Probably. It's not something I think anyone views without a modicum of anxiety, but I have no frame of reference to compare the alternative to. I…

It's a bit weird that we only focus on it with the age of smart phones. Why wasn't MySpace/Facebook equally problematic? I acknowledge it's easier to spend many hours on your phone, but on the other hand I know people spent many hours on their computers on these sites even before smartphones.
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