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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

#191

Post by polishdude20 »

jt2190 wrote: post #114
creshal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The non-native social media people have grown up fully on in-person relationships where trust is very important. They apply the same trust to people on social media that they do to their friends and family. The social media natives treat social media as different things.

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

#192

Post by sw104 »

donkeyd wrote: post #77
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole activism thing doesent do a lot anymore, since the social plaza belongs to cooperate and the state, and activism was shown to be easy exhaustable compared to the endurance of lobbyism aka cooperate activism. Future frustrated voices will turn straight to violence and skip this unproducitve state of affairs.

> the social plaza belongs to cooperate and the state I think it's too easy to just blame corporations and governments for this. They are definitely part in this, but a large part of lack of activism around climate change is also the people themselves who don't want to change. The Netherlands is a great example where, in recent elections, nearly half of votes went to political parties that want to reduce response to…

I'm completely in the 'given up hope boat' with you. It's clear that almost nobody is willing to truly change their lifestyle to practice what they preach.

I live in a UK city and despite having a pretty good bus network, so many people come to work along the same routes as the buses in their own personal 4x4 vehicle.

We'd require a literal environmentally friendly autocracy to pry people's cars out of their garages or to even encourage the notion of walking / cycling / taking public transport.

Not to speak about the amount of complete and utter garbage for sale everywhere, people flying around the world at a whim to see a few landmarks or to get a tan.

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

#193

Post by naravara »

DrThunder wrote: post #183
rqtwteye wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Yeah the 24/7 news cycle was definitely a precursor for this. There's not enough newsworthy things to cover in that time so they resort to sensationalism and drudging up anger wherever they can. Now, that 24/7 news cycle gets carried around in your pocket daily and you get to see other people commenting on it.

> There's not enough newsworthy things to cover in that time

There is seriously no end to the number of newsworthy things to cover. The problem is that there are limited resources for coverage. It's expensive to staff a desk full of people who can find interesting topics and tell good stories about them for every subject area under the sun. It takes a lot of people with very variegated kinds of subject matter expertise.

It's much cheaper to have 4 or 5 people whose main skills are theater criticism level analysis of political events (i.e. how does this play with various demographics) and a skill of manipulating emotions to spend all their time speculating over nonsense instead. Just put them in a suit and have somber music on and we can pretend this is a serious matter instead of idle gossip.

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

#194

Post by DrThunder »

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.

Nah, LinkedIn takes the cake in that regard. If you wanna feel full on narcissism and a bunch of meaningless fake posts with people trying appear as something they're not... LinkedIn is the place to be.

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

#195

Post by DrThunder »

ethanbond wrote: post #82
tmikaeld wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone's in a gang and god help you if you aren't everyone will have a go at you Is this really a modern-tech thing? More like, it's easier and in the open now.

Yes tech does fundamentally change this. Prior to social media, the set of everyone’s gang options was defined by a relatively small geographic area. This means people were largely looking at and likely caring about the same reality, same set of problems, same considerations around the problem, same individuals in mind, etc. Now you have people forming quasi-religious conviction on issues that are not directly releva…

Yeah... but alternatively you can easily find a group of like minded people. I suppose you could argue this just fractures society more though. People migrate off into groups of others they agree with and don't even bother trying to coexist anymore.

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

#196

Post by Slava_Propanei »

q1w2 wrote: post #98
rqtwteye wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 also important to remember that there are specific threat actors in other countries who spend many many millions on polarizing western countries by amplifying the most extreme voices in their online forums. AI is going to take this to a new level.

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

#197

Post by discreteevent »

muyuu wrote: post #182
1827162 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in order to compete with the other channels, news started becoming more and more sensationalist. Those channels contributed to the moral panics behind "Stranger Danger" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse", which resulted in parents becoming overprotective towards their children, stunting their development. When these children grew up into adults, they carried this "safetyist" worldview with them, where freedom is traded f…

It's a powerful combination of safetyism and concentration in urban and suburban areas that has pushed the American political compass strongly towards collectivistic priorities this generation. Basically a strong "europeisation" in metropolitan America. Perhaps extortionate real estate prices and telework will put some counterbalance to it, but I don't expect this trend to buckle during my lifetime.

What has this got to do with collectivism? People can collectively decide to do whatever they want. Germany collectively decide to have risky playgrounds for kids. Sweden collectively decided not to lock down hard for covid. It sounds to me like America could do with collectively standing up against these channels and rejecting the rubbish they are peddling.

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

#198

Post by vehemenz »

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…

Narrative content is not the same as interactive content. The quality of the content is not the same. I'm not sure what compelled you to make your point in the presence of such obvious points.

This is quite a big pond, my friend. The "get a better argument" line might go over well in your social circle, but HN is a big place with many smart people. Have some humility.

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

#199

Post by bluefirebrand »

kuschku wrote: post #121
mafro wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing with your statements, but the key question in the research is why did depression spike in children worldwide _after 2012_. At various points in my lifetime there have been reasons to be sad about the world - but what changed in 2012 that predominantly appears to affect teenage girls, and has been observed in several countries globally?

I'm saying that social media didn't cause the fears, but that social media ended the millenia of social pressure to just accept everything the way it is. Cities once did the same, by increasing the population density you could hang out with people that had the same thoughts you did. But many countries successfully ended that through suburbanisation, isolating people once again.

Sounds like you could make an argument that cities make people depressed as well then.

I wonder if population density is a driving force for depression, both online and offline.

I'd buy that. I find cities miserable.

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

#200

Post by Slava_Propanei »

msla wrote: post #106
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…

> There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the mid…

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