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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

#401

Post by lukeasrodgers »

Karellen wrote: post #260
amluto wrote: post #230

One of cited objections is absurd: > I don't trust any area of research where the odds ratios are below 3. Then what’s the point of researching even slightly more subtle effects? This person might as well start smoking: they wouldn’t trust any amount of evidence that smoking causes cardiovascular disease — the odds ratio seems to be 2.

Yeah, that seems completely absurd. If the experiments are rigorous enough, and the p value is low enough, you should be able to trust the results, no matter how small the effect is. If, for example, research shows that social media use increases one's risk of depression by, say, between 32% and 34%, with p can only show a 1/3 rise in risk, rather than a 3x rise? That's not skepticism. That's dogma.

Yes but in very large datasets, isn't it the case that you end up finding correlations for many things at very low p values? That is (one of the reasons) why effect size matters. Still, the "odds ratios are below 3" requirement seems excessive.

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

#402

Post by [deleted] »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #117
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.

[deleted]

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

#403

Post by taeric »

saltcured wrote: post #395
taeric wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ish. Trash talking is a huge thing in sports. Similarly many prudish administrators go out of their way to punish the players for celebrations and such. Edit: And I'm curious how this relates to the topic at hand. Not that I think it is unrelated, but specifically how. We seem to be in rather strong agreement that it is the relationship with a thing that is unhealthy, with regards to sports. Why or how would that be…

The connection I see is something like "imaginary tribalism". The members of an audience form a one-sided sense of belonging that distorts their behaviors. The mechanism seems to be the "media" part. All the promotional content is blasted out at scale in a way that triggers this false or amplified sense of social engagement. It's not the social part of social media that hurts, so much as the media platform part that…

How much is an amplified sense of authority? It isn't just that there are promoters, but many of these promoters really dig into the ideas that they have the answers.

This leans into all media and aligns with how much credence is given to pundits. People with good ideas wind up digging in and pushing that they have the only reasonable idea.

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

#404

Post by max51 »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #378
max51 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I think not enough people here are understanding the distinction between a communication tool (eg. discord), doom-scrolling platform like tiktok, and video games. A discord server can be ve…

The lumping of these together might help explain the gender imbalance in the mental health effect. It's pretty well documented that boys play more videogames, especially going into the later teen years, and that's more conducive to smaller, tight-knit (today, likely discord) communities. If the time being spent on a discord call with your friends playing Minecraft are being counted as social media use the same way do…

>The lumping of these together might help explain the gender imbalance in the mental health effect.

I never thought of it that way but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

It would also explain why the only people I know who developed IT skills on their own were boys. Running videos games or trying to create them back in 2004 required you to learn a lot about how computers work and how to use them. There were no free-to-play easy-to-install AAA games like we have today. We didn't learn it because the process was fun, we did it because it was required if we wanted to play games. If all you do is browse the web, you don't need any IT skills. I'm sure there are many security specialists now who started their career by trying to remove the virus that came with a pirated game on their parent's computer in high school. It's crazy how fast kids learn on their own with the right motivation.

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

#405

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

amluto wrote: post #230

One of cited objections is absurd: > I don't trust any area of research where the odds ratios are below 3. Then what’s the point of researching even slightly more subtle effects? This person might as well start smoking: they wouldn’t trust any amount of evidence that smoking causes cardiovascular disease — the odds ratio seems to be 2.

Haidt's quote leaves out the following explanation:

> That doesn't mean I only believe in 3–1 or greater effects. If you can show any 3–1 effect, then I'm prepared to consider lower odds ratios. If teenage girls with heavy social media use are three times as likely to be in the experimental group for depression 12 months later than otherwise similar teenage girls that don't use social media, then I'm prepared to look at evidence that light social media use has a 1.2 odds ratio, or that the odds ratio for suicide attempts is 1.4. But without a 3–1 odds ratio as a foundation, it's my experience that looking at any random data can produce plenty of lesser odds ratios, which seldom stand up.

I found this a little confusing, but I think what Brown is saying is that if all of the effects found in an area of research (not a single study) are small, it's probably not a real phenomenon.

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

#406

Post by kayge »

max51 wrote: post #363
softwaredoug wrote: post #113

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 j…

>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. I think not enough people here are understanding the distinction between a communication tool (eg. discord), doom-scrolling platform like tiktok, and video games. A discord server can be ve…

Video games are a sore subject in my house... I grew up with them and I turned out arguably okay (healthy, employable, sociable, etc). But my wife thinks they are the bane of society. And it wasn't until recently that I realized how much the "endgame" of video games has shifted since my childhood in the 90s. Back then, it seemed like the majority of games had an actual end, or they continued to get progressively painfully harder, or both. The number of mainstream games that went on 'forever' (and encouraged you to keep playing) seemed much lower. Now it seems like it's quite the opposite, and of course its the addicting, never-ending, always-online games that our kids and their friends want to play.

For now I'm mostly letting my kids play on one of those mini Super Nintendos with a bunch of built-in games, which they always eventually get tired of and decide on their own to go do something else. When it's Minecraft... I basically have to peel it out of their hands.

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

#407

Post by kzrdude »

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…

I think it's the addicive nature of social media is causing mental illness. Lack of sleep, lack of time to just let the mind wander (=lack of time to actually lift your gaze from the small and take care of your bigger things in life).

It can of course be a mixture of several effects.

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

#408

Post by xapata »

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…

> So your "friends" in essence, force you to use these platforms. If you don't you will be treated as a social outcast, a pariah.

We seem to have different friends. Maybe it's a generational thing? Very few of my friends are highly active on social media. At least, not as far as I can tell, because I rarely check the feeds.

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

#409

Post by hackerlight »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #284
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…

You can always just delete your account. Granted, that's easier for me to say as an adult than it would be for your average peer-pressured teenager. But that's where parents can help. I think eventually, teens will see social media as "uncool" in the same way as they see smoking cigarettes as "uncool" (in some countries). It takes a lot of social propagandizing to popularize that idea, but we did it with cigarettes a…

One of Haidt's points is that you can't escape by deleting your account, because everyone else is still online. Suppose you're a teenage girl. The gossip mill about you is still going to be doing the rounds on social media, so the cyberbulling can't be stopped whether or not you're participating. If anything, being the strange outcast by refusing to go online will inflame things. That's one reason why a ban for those below 16 or 18 is a good idea.

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

#410

Post by hackerlight »

softwaredoug wrote: post #113

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 j…

> 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?

Haidt says male use of social media in the form of gaming is categorically different to Instagram/Snapchat/Tiktok-type social media use. Because that social activity is less about performing for the camera and bullying and social comparisons, so he doesn't see it to be a problem in need of a ban.

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