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Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#111

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

creshal wrote: post #56
mawadev wrote: post #40

It is truly remarkable to which great lengths people go to justify their unhealthy relationship with social media. It is nearly the same as telling an alcoholic they have an alcohol problem and then hearing excuse after excuse and re-framing and mental gymnastics to jump around the elephant in the room. I'm glad write-ups like this one are a thing. Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to…

> Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to our devices and should go touch grass. And yet, their generation seems to be the most addicted these days, and the most unhinged when it comes to following conspiracy theories.

This is a good point.

I suspect that one reason is that "digital natives" have been raised with the tech, so have sort of a "natural resistance," yet the oldtimers were hooked almost immediately.

For myself, I have been using electronic communications, almost since they were invented (BBSes and UUNet, anyone?), so I have "more resistance" than most of my peers.

Yet, I still have to stay off of Facebook. This is pretty much my only social media venue. The main reason I stay, is because people play [relatively] nice, hereabouts.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#112

Post by reaperducer »

hasmolo wrote: post #57
mawadev wrote: post #40

It is truly remarkable to which great lengths people go to justify their unhealthy relationship with social media. It is nearly the same as telling an alcoholic they have an alcohol problem and then hearing excuse after excuse and re-framing and mental gymnastics to jump around the elephant in the room. I'm glad write-ups like this one are a thing. Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to…

this glued to devices meme is tired. look at a picture of folks on public transport from before phones. note that _everyone_ is reading a newspaper or magazine. i know it seems crazy, but humans reading information is a constant in public, and the only reason you didn't see more of it in the past is that you were part of the group consuming media, while also assigning intellectual value to the fact that a periodical…

look at a picture of folks on public transport from before phones. note that _everyone_ is reading a newspaper or magazine.

I know the image you have in your mind. I've seen it, too.

What you actually mean is "I saw this one picture on social media of a bunch of people on a train all reading newspapers at the same time because war just broke out."

Using that as a logical crutch for social media addiction is like the alcoholic saying "everybody does it."

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#113

Post by softwaredoug »

As a parent. It's a hard topic. And not black and white.

For the 10+ crowd, the days of kids roaming the streets, finding their friends and playing are gone. I think the causes for this are complicated, and social media (and screens) are just one part of the puzzle.

Consider a few things:

1. The percentage of households with kids has gradually declined over time, while the percentage of retirees has gone up. So you just generally have an older population. Not everyone lives in a neighborhood where kids can roam and likely some other, known, parent will keep an eye on them.

2. Tolerance for children (esp teenagers) IMO has declined. Understandably, they... can be obnoxious :). There used to be more IRL activities for teens. I've seen, however, even movie theaters don't want ANY minors there without a parent. There's not a shopping mall to drop them off at. And the pandemic has REALLY hurt this.

3. The pressure for teenagers to fill their time with activities is very high. The parents feel to perform / get into whatever good college / do well in life, they need to have their time spoken for by a large number of activities. Helicopter parenting has really taken new heights in the last decade.

Combining these, society, for a myriad of reasons, doesn't have a lot of opportunities for teenagers to truly be independent. And that too has been cited as a cause of mental health issues (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230309101330.h...).

It's a doom spiral too, the fewer kids that are free roaming, the less likely your own kid, when kicked out of the house, will find friends to play with. The less likely other parents will be conducive to your kid knocking on their door, etc etc.

So without kids roaming the streets, how do they connect with their friends? They use some kind of screen / video games / social media / etc. And depriving them of this can mean limiting an outlet of some degree of independence.

Case in point, my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. This not the same as scrolling TikTok / Instagram. But it's a degree of independence somewhat away from parental eyes.

Should I ban them from screens, and send them to ride bikes out in a world with few other kids? Or let them have this niche of a social / independence outlet?

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#114

Post by jt2190 »

creshal wrote: post #56
mawadev wrote: post #40

It is truly remarkable to which great lengths people go to justify their unhealthy relationship with social media. It is nearly the same as telling an alcoholic they have an alcohol problem and then hearing excuse after excuse and re-framing and mental gymnastics to jump around the elephant in the room. I'm glad write-ups like this one are a thing. Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to…

> Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to our devices and should go touch grass. And yet, their generation seems to be the most addicted these days, and the most unhinged when it comes to following conspiracy theories.

I suspect that those who grow up as social media “natives” will have some social norms that protect them somewhat, whereas many of those who came of age pre-social media will not have learned the social norms that can protect them.

We can see lots of useful examples of a protective social norms with alcohol. For example, it’s quite common for people to not drink any alcohol before a certain hour of the day. It’s not illegal to drink alcohol earlier, but it’s “just not done”. We can easily see the benefits of not drinking at the start of the workday.

I’m not going to guess what kind of social media norms people are developing in general. For me I only follow boring, topic-focused people on Twitter, and I only use the “Following” feed. Nobody is making me do this.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#115

Post by cmilton »

frostburg wrote: post #60
cmilton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think it is?

I'm not sure about what you're asking, but taking a guess: I think that it's safer to have children raised by a larger amount of figures (primarily the parents, but also grandparents in a multi-generational household, other relatives if they exist, family friends - this would have been other people in the tribe or village traditionally - etc.). Having all the responsibility fall on two mostly unsupervised, inexperien…

I think most would agree that more is better than fewer caretakers. This works well when families are located close geographically, but not so much when spread out.

I would also argue, why does the community automatically bear the responsibility for a decision made by two?

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#116

Post by 1827162 »

creshal wrote: post #56
mawadev wrote: post #40

It is truly remarkable to which great lengths people go to justify their unhealthy relationship with social media. It is nearly the same as telling an alcoholic they have an alcohol problem and then hearing excuse after excuse and re-framing and mental gymnastics to jump around the elephant in the room. I'm glad write-ups like this one are a thing. Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to…

> Maybe our parents were indeed right when they told us we are glued to our devices and should go touch grass. And yet, their generation seems to be the most addicted these days, and the most unhinged when it comes to following conspiracy theories.

Likely because that generation was raised to believe everything they were told, starting from an early age with school, religion, then with television and newspapers, etc.

The younger generation were raised with media that spread obvious untruths such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, etc. and they learned to think more critically about what they are reading.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#117

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

1827162 wrote: post #94

I think it's the total visibility that's causing mental illness. There is no space where you can be with your friends, screw up, and not have it become known to everyone in your peer group. There's little space to make mistakes. No space to be yourself. You are under the watchful gaze of your friends, i.e. peer surveillance, nearly all of the time. Which induces stifling conformity. Everything's under constant scruti…

If this is the case, is this reflected in the suicide rate of small, nosy towns? Small towns are notorious for everyone knowing everyone else’s business.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#118

Post by freework »

If you ask 10 different people why they are depressed, you'll get 10 different answers. This illustrated why I think the scientific method is the wrong way to go about understanding the human mind.

Also, if you ask a depressed person why they are depressed, they may not know exactly why they are depressed. I spent my entire high school years depressed. It wasn't until a few years after I graduated college before I realized the reason why I was depressed: it was because I had abusive parents. If you had asked me in high school why I'm depressed I would have said something like "I'm a bad person but I have no reason why". At the time I thought my parents treated me like I was a bad person was secondary to the actual problem.

If you really want insight on what makes the human mind depressed, then ask people who have overcame their depression. The first step to overcoming depression is to discover what is making you depressed. If someone is still depressed, they probably don't know what is making them depressed, and so their "data" is just noise.

The problem with the psychology field is that it has an obsession with "data". Everything has to be on a pie chart of a line graph or something like that. Every "study" has to be on a grand scale and then averaged together to make a single conclusion.

The problem is that the human mind of not replicatable. You can perform a "study" on a sample of people and get a result, and then replicate that exact same study on the exact same sample of people at a later time, and still get a different result. In order for the scientific method to be applicable, you have to be able to get the exact same result each time you replicate the study. This is not possible in psychology.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#119

Post by MandieD »

rqtwteye wrote: post #83
psychphysic wrote: post #21

It's quite hard for me to judge this topic because I am so thoroughly convinced that social media is toxic for mental health. I think unfortunately it has become pervasive enough that you can't avoid experiencing it's toxic influence. There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality. T…

I think social media amplified trends that were there before. I remember when I came to the US in 2000 it was pretty fashionable to say “I am angry” all the time. And the hatred at politicians was pretty pronounced too. And the cable news was already spreading fear and anger. Personally I think modern media starting with cable TV allowed hatemongers to easily reach large groups. The internet just made it much worse.…

It's like a societal autoimmune disease - when there's not a real, immediate event to react to, something has to be found to fill the airtime that is compelling enough to keep people watching and reacting, and social media has the added "benefit" of finding that filler algorithmically.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#120

Post by rjmunro »

bradleyjg wrote: post #90
psychphysic wrote: post #21

It's quite hard for me to judge this topic because I am so thoroughly convinced that social media is toxic for mental health. I think unfortunately it has become pervasive enough that you can't avoid experiencing it's toxic influence. There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality. T…

Twitter really is the worst. At least the other platforms have some good mixed in with the bad. It is nice to stay vaguely connected to people in a sort-of holiday card way. Twitter has nothing to redeem it. Even in communities where there’s attempts at substantive conversation the medium makes a horrible mess to follow.

I think it depends on who you follow (which filter bubble you are in). Try unfollowing everyone who is not an actual personal friend (or use a pinned list to see only their tweets).
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