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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

#461

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #377
freejazz wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is not a majority coalition in support of voluntary gender norm breaking in the name of self expression. As opposed to in the name of what else? your posts are so weird - no one is trying to fight you, so maybe tone it down. Like, you post at me like I'm going into your community and making you do things with your children, it's a bit ridiculous. We are just chatting on a website. >No, sorry, standard brown im…

> As opposed to in the name of what else? To conform their outward presentation to the gender they identify with, which is a fact rooted in biology. >No, sorry, standard brown immigrant socialization—which is why both DeSantis and Youngkin won on this issue. > What? The vast majority of the world does not embrace white American notions of individualistic self expression. We think norm enforcement and conformity are g…

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by caddemon »

amelius wrote: post #46
bigbacaloa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The converse argument is far more plausible.

It's still just guessing. Can we please go from "plausible" to "we studied this"?

It's pretty hard to study beyond doubt though. You're not going to get much parental consent (or probably even institutional approval) to run a study where you require the experimental group of teenagers to spend 3+ hours a day on social media. And if the experimental group limits screentime, well I think parents of teens know how hard that can be to actually enforce across devices if the kid really wants to get on social media. You can't control what their peer groups are doing, and there are privacy limitations on what info you can even collect on specific phone activity from consenting adults, let alone teens.

In general, for studies of difficult long term behavior adjustments you basically need cooperative participants that will be honest when they slipped up. Teens are a tough population for this.

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

#463

Post by MichaelZuo »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #376
throwaway9191aa wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just moving into this phase as well. The same parents that said it was ridiculous kids have phones, are now getting their kids phones. I've heard that not having a phone is essentially like knowing the whole school is invited to party, except you. I'm really not sure what to do.

It's definitely a coordination problem. While all the kids might be better off without access to social media, the one kid who doesn't when everybody else does gets a significant alienation downside, probably more than cancelling out the benefits.

That seems more like an upside if their 'peers' are indeed so easily addicted.

It seems preferable to be alienated from such a coordinated network of addicts.

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

#464

Post by kaibee »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #457
zdragnar wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone who smokes cigarettes gets cancer. If you take young minds which are stressed and unfulfilled, and give them a device which provides short dopamine bursts at the expense of finding actual fulfillment, you get depression.

If you drink extreme, excessive amounts of water, you die of water poisoning though water is essential for life. Too much of anything can be bad for you. Edit: Let me add: If you take young minds which are stressed and unfulfilled, and (do anything other than fix the problems causing their stress and lack of fulfillment), you get depression.

Should we let preteens buy and drink alcohol at school, under the logic that for some of them, the fun/socializing benefits will outweigh the downsides? While this would be funny for a while, I don't think its a good idea.

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

#465

Post by DoreenMichele »

kaibee wrote: post #464
DoreenMichele wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drink extreme, excessive amounts of water, you die of water poisoning though water is essential for life. Too much of anything can be bad for you. Edit: Let me add: If you take young minds which are stressed and unfulfilled, and (do anything other than fix the problems causing their stress and lack of fulfillment), you get depression.

Should we let preteens buy and drink alcohol at school, under the logic that for some of them, the fun/socializing benefits will outweigh the downsides? While this would be funny for a while, I don't think its a good idea.

No and I cannot for the life of me see where this question grows logically out of things I've said.

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

#466

Post by bratwurst3000 »

codegeek wrote: post #399
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…

Great points. I was just in Spain (Madrid) and noticed teenagers playing in parks and even on swings etc along with small children. I never see that in American parks, never. I don't know the mental happiness of teenagers in Spain/Madrid in general but my wife and I thought it was interesting.

Reading the posts here I can say this seems to be an American problem. Kids here in Europe are still way more fucked up then in the 90s but still the states seem like a shithole of loneliness for kids.

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

#467

Post by protoman3000 »

freework wrote: post #118

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 re…

It’s saddening to hear about your years of depression. Parental abuse traumatizes deeply, and while I may not feel the same pain like you, I can imagine it is destroying life completely. I hope you can receive my and other people’s compassion and won’t relapse into depression.

I would still like to give some response on your content in hopes that you can benefit from it.

Psychology, or the part of what is accessible to the non-academic public, and Clinical Psychotherapy are related but different fields. Psychology alone can be very disappointing to people in pain - I can relate, and shared your sentiment, as I was in pain back then, too. Since I dug deep into the academic literature of Clinical Psychotherapy and the books for the general public, I realized I was just looking in the wrong corner of the library.

Compare Psychology being talking about what a nail is, to Clinical Psychotherapy being talking about how to construct a hammer and hammer the nail correctly into the wall. It’s related but not the same. And only one is really useful for us if our goal is to hang a beautiful painting on the wall.

Hope you find some inspiration from this. Whenever it comes back, please remember to get help quickly before the wounds get septic and require much more difficult intervention. There are good people out there.

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

#468

Post by vuln »

yodsanklai wrote: post #452
libraryatnight wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left facebook a long time ago because it just felt like low value interaction. None of my friends on there were people I actually spent time with, and the whole thing seemed to just bring out the worst sides of people. I never specifically experienced the peer surveillance you describe, but I believe it's real or that social media has made people believe it's real (to a degree worthy of concern) I think what I'm tr…

> the whole thing seemed to just bring out the worst sides of people I wonder if it's still the case though. It's been years I haven't seen anyone arguing on my quiet feed. Maybe people have learned? or just deserted it? Nowadays, the really toxic place is Twitter, orders of magnitude worse than FB has even been in my opinion.

Twitter is first with the news and political hot takes. Those and memes boil down to Facebook posts and reshares.

It’s pretty similar to what was the 4chan to Reddit to Facebook. But politics became more polarizing and every government official was giving their hot take. Instant short replies. I guess all those seconds of engagement add up.

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

#469

Post by burnished »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #455

Furthermore, when you zoom in on girls, the relationships are not small: girls who spend more than 4 hours a day on social media have two to three times the rate of depression as girls who spend an hour or less. The common refrain “correlation does not prove causation” is certainly relevant here, but I showed that when you bring in the three other kinds of studies, the case for causation gets quite strong. I know fro…

You really should have gotten through the rest of the article, it addresses everything you bring up and more.

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

#470

Post by mrbungie »

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.

Of course you should trust the results and publish them anyway (or so should happen in an ideal world ;) ), but they may be disregarded as uninteresting or unworthy in their domain when reviewed.

P-value and effect sizes by themselves are not meaningful enough, you should always consider the full context of the experiment, subject of study and domain.

Edit/PS: 3x or more is excessive though.

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