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Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

nytimes.com

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Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#221

Post by germyj »

KoftaBob wrote: post #203
zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

> Wages stagnated since 1980 Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q > Rents doubling every decade. Nope, the average increase per decade is 42%, not 100%: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA > 30% credit card interest Nope, the latest rate is ~20%, and that only comes into play if you don't pay…

On stagnated wages they're likely thinking of WTF Happened in 1971 (https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/) where productivity/wage growth detached from GDP.

On credit card interest, per Forbes this week (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/average-credit-c...) the average APR is 24%, indicating that there are rates above 24%, potentially well above.

On childbirth, don't forget the tails as the distribution shifts. 25-29 isn't too late, but as the average age increases you're raising the risk of various issues and you're going to have more people in "too late" side of the distribution. Add in egg-freezing and IVF turning out to not have such a success rate as predicted, you can wind up with a lot of disappointment.

OP is being rather... histrionic, but it doesn't do to overcorrect, either.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#222

Post by slothtrop »

yumraj wrote: post #187
iamacyborg wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand being this careful with young children's usage of a device but giving teenagers zero privacy (to the extent of going through their personal messages) seems wild to me.

> but giving teenagers zero privacy (to the extent of going through their personal messages) seems wild to me. Why? Teenagers are kids too, or have we forgotten that? They are actually worse than kids in some respect, still immature but with changing body and new hormones. It may seem weird to them at this time, but hopefully they’ll appreciate when they grow older - or even if not, at least one did what they could.

Teenagers also want and value privacy. Or have you forgotten what it's like?

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#223

Post by swader999 »

omginternets wrote: post #78
swader999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolating them from their peers can be just as mentally devastating. I don't think there is a good solution to this.

Thankfully, there are other ways of interacting with one's peers, most of which create more meaningful connections than social media. To put it more bluntly: if social media is the only thing standing between a child and total isolation, that child has far bigger problems. Maybe sign your kid up for little league?

Don't forget how brutal the last two years has been on these ages. They are in a bad spot still.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#224

Post by greatwave1 »

bart_spoon wrote: post #135
standardUser wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I didn't watch the Simpsons, play Nintendo and listen to the local alt rock radio station when I was a kid, I would have had very little in common with my peers. Same situation today, just different media. Turns out, shared experiences facilitate bonding. Who knew?

Funny, I didn't watch the Simpsons or listen to alt rock radio, but I had no issues socializing or finding friends. Turns out no one thinks the Simpsons or and alt-rock are essentials to children being able to properly socialize with one another. And yet people are arguing that social media, despite all its harmful effects, can't be withheld from a child without damaging them.

How much of youth culture while you were growing up was shaped by the Simpsons and alt rock, and how much of youth culture today is shaped by the internet and social media?

I would argue that almost all of Gen-Z culture today is driven by internet communities and social media, and raising a child without access to online media will make it difficult for them to relate to many (not necessarily all) of their peers.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#225

Post by ajsnigrutin »

KoftaBob wrote: post #214
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is how you get violent revolutions... people look at the average rent and an average paycheck/pension, realize they literally have nothing left to lose, and once they realize who's to blame, things (sometimes literally) explode. Luckily (/s) we have social media to shift blame off of politicians to other groups of people, to fight eachother instead of the ones who profit from all this.

> once they realize who's to blame You mean the NIMBYs in their metro area that try to slow down new housing production as much as possible?

There's a tiny percentage of those, compared to people either paying too much for housing, having adults "kids" at home, trying to get a bigger place, or get rid of roommates.

There are a few large investors in housing markets though, who have a lot more political power than a few karens in mcmansions.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#226

Post by KoftaBob »

germyj wrote: post #221
KoftaBob wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wages stagnated since 1980 Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q > Rents doubling every decade. Nope, the average increase per decade is 42%, not 100%: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA > 30% credit card interest Nope, the latest rate is ~20%, and that only comes into play if you don't pay…

On stagnated wages they're likely thinking of WTF Happened in 1971 ( https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ ) where productivity/wage growth detached from GDP. On credit card interest, per Forbes this week ( https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/average-credit-c... ) the average APR is 24%, indicating that there are rates above 24%, potentially well above. On childbirth, don't forget the tails as the distribution shift…

Valid points. Also, the word "histrionic" is new to me and a great term to describe comments like OPs that I see online about how the sky is falling.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#227

Post by nineplay »

im3w1l wrote: post #133
nineplay wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can they claim that this is all backed up by research if they don't know what social media is? What is the link they are finding? It doesn't feel like science. It feels like hand-waving, correlation, and anecdote.

Well imagine this experiment. You take 100 kids and put them into the animal enclosures at a local zoo. Some are put with sheep, some with birds, some with sharks, and lions and others with elephants. You notice that more of these kids these die than the control group that went to the zoo but outside the animal enclosures. Conclusion: wildlife dangerous. What you cannot conclude certainly is which wildlife is dangero…

If I'm doing the zoo study with 100 kids, I might turn it in for my 6th grade science project and enjoy my A.

If I'm the Surgeon General of the United States, I'm doing the follow up study. As far as I can tell, that follow up study hasn't been done with kids and social media.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#228

Post by StrangeATractor »

A lot of comments in this thread remind of cigarette companies dismissing health concerns with tobacco.

In my circle of friends and family I've seen the majority of them go from being people you could talk to and spend time with to people that just stare at their phones constantly, I've heard others say the same about their circles. Parents let Youtube raise their kids because they don't want to get their eyes off the screen themselves. You could be on a luxury vacation on a yacht in the Mediterranean but they never get off their damn phones. There's no way that's healthy.

That's not even getting into how social media shapes your mind at a young age. I have two teachers in the family and they both say that kids have become borderline retarded since around 2010.

The multi billion dollar attention economy wants to dodge responsibility by holding an unrealistic standard of evidence for their externalities but use your common sense. Humanity has never had anything that constantly demands your attention, are we just supposed to pretend it will have no effect on our mental health?

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#229

Post by Aunche »

zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

If you look at literally any point in history, you're going to see what seems like "infinite problems". Even if you're 100% right that we face an unprecedented number of problems, this take still doesn't make any sense. You acknowledge that we have a lot of "real problems" that can occur simultaneously, but when it comes to social media, that is somehow a fake problem? The solutions proposed by controlling social media are very mild such as prohibiting phone use in class, and they aren't very popular. Yet somehow this is akin to the War on Drugs, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people in several countries?

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#230

Post by somenameforme »

KoftaBob wrote: post #203
zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

> Wages stagnated since 1980 Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q > Rents doubling every decade. Nope, the average increase per decade is 42%, not 100%: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA > 30% credit card interest Nope, the latest rate is ~20%, and that only comes into play if you don't pay…

I'm quite sympathetic to this view, since I think people tend to exaggerate how bad things are, to say the least. But on the other hand, a lot of these things are quite indicative that something's really wrong. Wages were already at a local min in 1980 and had been plummeting especially since 1971 [1].

But even in the "good" picture, you're looking at real wages increasing by about 10% over 44 years, while real rent prices increased more than 400% over the same time frame. To say nothing of dramatic cost increases in education, healthcare, and the introduction of countless new defacto necessary costs like internet and electronic devices. This is all obviously a complete catastrophe. In some ways it's kind of surprising that society has been getting along as "well" as it has, all things considered.

I suppose it's largely because we've managed to mythologize the past where somebody could do things like graduate college debt free on a part time job, and even have enough tucked away to get started on a down payment for their first house. That past simply no longer sounds even possible, let alone real. Yet it was.

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

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