Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:27 AM UTC

js8 wrote: post #59

woodruffw wrote: post #5

Just to levy a single criticism among several: I find Haidt’s rebuttal of the climate change hypothesis unconvincing: fears around climate change are not “energizing” in the way that prior crises are, in a significant part because public sentiment around climate change is that we’re already doomed in a way that isn’t really possible with social crises. Similarly: I don’t think most teenage girls were voraciously read…

Although personally I am very concerned about AGW, I think the dismissals that talking about climate change is causing some "existential crisis" among young people are BS. Whenever I hear that theory, it's always an armchair hypothesis. But you could actually go and ask young girls what they are anxious about and how they deal with it. I think proponents of that theory, if they want to dismiss social media effects on…

Even in just the last few months there have been stories posted here about specific people who killed themselves stating it was because of worry about climate change.

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

#532

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:34 AM UTC

Veen wrote: post #168

woodruffw wrote: post #5

Just to levy a single criticism among several: I find Haidt’s rebuttal of the climate change hypothesis unconvincing: fears around climate change are not “energizing” in the way that prior crises are, in a significant part because public sentiment around climate change is that we’re already doomed in a way that isn’t really possible with social crises. Similarly: I don’t think most teenage girls were voraciously read…

It might be worth considering other crises and their impact on teen mental health. I grew up in the UK in the 80s during two crises. First, it was the Cold War and there was a very real risk of nuclear Armageddon; we were all aware of it because it was all over the media. Second, it was the height of IRA bombing campaign in the UK and we heard of children our age being blown to bits while out shopping with their pare…

They aren't the same. Climate change activism states that you - yes you - are a bad person for not radically changing your lifestyle. Those changes may not even be achievable, but that doesn't change your moral culpability. Through your wanton lust for warm homes and nice red meat you destroy the world leaving nothing for the children. It's an incredibly moralized story.

The other examples you name are different. IRA terrorism? Not caused by you, not influenceable by you, nobody claims it is. MAD? Likewise, it's all decisions by politicians you never met who live far away.

Also, IRA terrorism probably wasn't going to affect you or your children and with MAD there was always a chance that it wouldn't happen. This was never in doubt.

The climate change narrative is uniquely calibrated to destroy people's mental health, and especially the mental health of over-socialized teenage girls, because it directly blames them for the worst possible things (literally the end of the world) and demands they change, whilst simultaneously telling them they actually can't change and the world is inevitably doomed no matter what. It also rather uniquely expects you to reject the evidence of your own eyes. The world is clearly not burning or on fire, the Pacific islands are clearly not sinking and politicians clearly do not believe there's any actual crisis, yet nobody is allowed to point those things out without social exile of the type that's especially dramatic for teenage girls.

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

#533

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:37 AM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #418

max51 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 fr…

In my perhaps anecdotal experience, the risk of getting a virus from a crack is and was hugely overblown. And we now know that copy protection came with malware too, most infamously with Sony's SecuROM (same group also seems to have made Denuvo).

Only if you define any driver as "malware". SecuROM didn't actually come with malware in the way normal people define it, it was just described that way by salty pirates.

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

#534

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:39 AM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #508

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no sharp bend in 2012. I can easily interpret it as an gradual increase more from 2010 or so. Eyeballing charts is not science.

Call it whatever you like, it still has to be explained for a potential cause to be viable.

Not necessarily. It depends on whether this increase is just natural long term variance. The charts Haidt shows are very truncated. Data about suicides exists for far longer than the lines he shows.

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

#535

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:40 AM UTC

Drew_ wrote: post #512

tssva wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The child mental health industrial complex which started in the 2000's and has boomed over the last decade as parents have been bombarded with the message that they need to rush their kids off to a therapist at the slightest sign of normal teenage angst or they are bad parents. Schools have bought into this and participate in the messaging. Once under "treatment" kids are repeatedly told they have anxiety and/or depr…

I find it very hard to believe that an otherwise healthy person can spiral into depression simply by hearing about it a lot.

Therapists have a long history of creating entirely false memories in children, telling them that they were abused by satanists as a child! Teenagers often go through some depression-like episodes due to love interests or whatever, so telling them they're medically depressed is a much smaller leap than what came previously.

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

#536

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:46 AM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #449

woodruffw wrote: post #5

Just to levy a single criticism among several: I find Haidt’s rebuttal of the climate change hypothesis unconvincing: fears around climate change are not “energizing” in the way that prior crises are, in a significant part because public sentiment around climate change is that we’re already doomed in a way that isn’t really possible with social crises. Similarly: I don’t think most teenage girls were voraciously read…

What is special about the year 2012 in regard to these fears?

Most of the graphs he shows actually inflect earlier, around 2010 or so. This is around the time the media to start systematically hardening its line on all things climate, and the "great awokening" that started flooding the news with claims the world was dominated by systemic hate and -isms. The two are related, both being ideological in nature.

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

#537

Post by revelio » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 7:49 AM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #289

kloch wrote: post #145

I just want to say this was one of the most enjoyable articles I have read in a long time. It's informative, respectful to critics, and exudes a "confident but restrained" tone that is so rare in public discourse these days.

We must have read different articles. What I read amount to special pleading where the author confuses scientific and judicial epistemology, doesn't do a literature review, and comes cross as hopelessly naive.

Yeah it needs a proper takedown. Haidt is respectful but his arguments are pseudo-scientific.

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

#538

Post by wizofaus » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 8:21 AM UTC

revelio wrote: post #532

Veen wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be worth considering other crises and their impact on teen mental health. I grew up in the UK in the 80s during two crises. First, it was the Cold War and there was a very real risk of nuclear Armageddon; we were all aware of it because it was all over the media. Second, it was the height of IRA bombing campaign in the UK and we heard of children our age being blown to bits while out shopping with their pare…

They aren't the same. Climate change activism states that you - yes you - are a bad person for not radically changing your lifestyle. Those changes may not even be achievable, but that doesn't change your moral culpability. Through your wanton lust for warm homes and nice red meat you destroy the world leaving nothing for the children. It's an incredibly moralized story. The other examples you name are different. IRA…

Many religions make a far stronger moral argument about our failures as individuals, and yet arguably have far less influence over young minds than they have in the past. I can't say I've seen any evidence that teenagers (including my own) are especially burdened with any personal sense of guilt over their lifestyle and its contributions towards ecological damage. Whereas I'd certainly accept there is a sense of pessimism about the future health of our planet and what it might mean for what sort of existence they might have in 40 or 50 years time - and absolutely a sense of helplessness to do anything about it, given the fact very little positive change in behaviour has been seen by those in the best position to do so.

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

#539

Post by Aerbil313 » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 8:43 AM UTC

I see such links in HN to be a very good example of mental illness, if you need research to know social media causes mental illness, then you’re mentally ill (or never used social media). It should be obvious to anyone who used social media for any significant amount of time. Yet social media usage is so normalized, especially in places like HN where people are chronically online, that people just self-rationalize.

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

#540

Post by Aerbil313 » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 8:50 AM UTC

0xBABAD00C wrote: post #413

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something has to be behind the seemingly coordinated rise in depression among children globally, that's the leading indicator he's using to assess the problem. His argument is that it can't be anything other than social media. You're making the case in the micro scale: what is one person's relationship with depression and social media, and he's arguing in the macro scale. Something has caused depression to spike in c…

It's not a strong argument to say "what could it be other than X? therefore, X" > What could it be? Sense of community is gone. Trust is at an all-time low. Traditional social institutions and scaffolding that held society together are gone. Families are more broken apart than ever. It's an entire regime change, and we're still operating with our old instincts/hardware, which expects to be raised in a village by a la…

And it’s all due to the very existence of progressing technology. Dr. Skrbina in the book Technological Slavery makes the case that humanity has no control over the impacts of technology on humanity, and that technology has an emergent will that is independent of humans who create and operate it.

https://ia600300.us.archive.org/21/items/tk-Technological-Sl...