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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

#481

Post by ativzzz »

Tade0 wrote: post #454
zamnos wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you teach them what the right choices are if you don't actually see their choices? if your teenager is texting on TikTok with a 40 year old man who's asking them to send them underwear pictures, how do you find out about that except by reading their text messages? we don't know from the singular fact that they're reading through teenagers text messages how heavy handed that monitoring is. Maybe there's a recur…

> how do you teach them what the right choices are if you don't actually see their choices? if your teenager is texting on TikTok with a 40 year old man who's asking them to send them underwear pictures, how do you find out about that except by reading their text messages? General rules, like: -Assume everything you send can at some point become available to everyone, forever. -Anyone saying "don't tell your parents"…

> -Assume everything you send can at some point become available to everyone, forever.

Forever is a hard concept to grasp for a kid - I was doing stupid things in my 20s that could have had forever consequences. Much worse than something available online forever. I was lucky and had none, but this argument wouldn't work on me

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

#482

Post by gsinclair »

srackey wrote: post #465
jmathai wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. A .7% chance of being at a school with a mass shooting is unfathomable. It's so high.

Far higher chance you’ll die on the way to school in a car accident. School shootings are to the left what terrorist attacks are to the right —- fear-mongering over an ultimately rare and insignificant problem to drive desired policy change.

Insane.

School shootings are genuinely frightful, not the subject of artificial fear-mongering.

This shallow and ideological analysis represents such a callous disregard for the trauma that any child would experience is they had to go through that.

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

#483

Post by molteanu »

CalRobert wrote: post #381
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…

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is un…

I have to re-watch that movie.

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

#484

Post by galdosdi »

anigbrowl wrote: post #301
somethingreen wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that any of these would normally worry an average young teen is hilarious to me. I grew up during cold war, USSR collapse, multiple wars in the region. At no point was I (or any of my peers to my knowledge) gravely concerned for our future. Because none of us yet had any idea what our normal future is supposed to look like. The only way these mild horrors get into children heads is, again, through social med…

I grew up in approximately the same period and grim possibilities, along with local economic problems to a lesser extent, were certainly a concern for me and my peers. Other risks existed as well, kids in my neighborhood school died of drug overdoses, accidents, and medical problems. Others had to deal with poverty, abusive parents, or a family member behind bars. Back then middle aged people blamed television your a…

> I imagine previous generations blamed radio and newspapers.

Speaking of which, when people bring these things up it's usually framed as "see? there's ALWAYS been some new media to complain about!"

But this isn't really true. The treadmill of new mass media really only began at all (in a very small primordial way) with the printing press, and in earnest with radio. Prior to radio, things really were very different, and did not change dramatically for hundreds of years. Radio brought about massive change and people did have a hard time adapting to it, although they did eventually, but ever since then, we've been on a treadmill where just as one generation manages to get a handle on how to deal with a new media technology, yet another one comes out, throwing everyone off balance again.

The idea that this is how things have always been for humans is ignorant. This is new to the last hundred years or so. Prior to this people had the privilege of learning how to deal with the world and pass on their wisdom to their kids without having most of their wisdom invalidated before they could finish raising their kids.

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

#485

Post by galdosdi »

kredd wrote: post #380
lumb63 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I understand. Do you not understand that every child in this country is acutely aware of the existence of school shootings, and for many of them it absolutely is a cause of significant anxiety, because the media has shown them school shootings, and has told them to be anxious about them? Look at death statistics for young people [1]. There are many causes of death which children are not scared of, despite them b…

You’re arguing 0.7% chance of being in a school shooting shouldn’t worry a teenager, for other commentators that’s just a mind-blowing percentage. I think that’s a cultural distinction, since if that was the case, most of people I know would do anything that’s possible to avoid their child to beat that statistic.

Mental health problems are a far greater threat though, and have dramatically increased in the last decade, perhaps partly because it's so easy to worry about big problems outside of their control. The probability of being affected by suicide is significantly more than being of being shot in a school shooting.

We can do two things at once. We can both, within our control, advocate for making school shootings less common, making climate change less problematic, etc, etc, while also try to actually worry about these things less, and not spread a culture of constant fear and disempowerment. Research who makes sense to vote for, what letters to write to lawmakers, and do that. Then, with the rest of your 364 days of the year, relax and focus on what you can control and having a good time.

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

#486

Post by galdosdi »

escapedmoose wrote: post #473
jlawson wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year in America 900 kids age 0-19 die from drowning. 3,058 teenagers ages 13-19 die in motor vehicle crashes. [0] In a country of 332,000,000 people, if 32 deaths stemming from parking lot arguments seems to require a society-wide blanket of fear and dramatic political anger, you are just badly miscalibrated. You're thinking like it's a village, which is natural, but if you want to discuss broad issues at scale…

But in other developed countries, kids still die from car crashes and swimming pools. It’s less of a “one is too many” argument for me and more a question of “if everyone else is able to get this right, how the hell are we getting it so wrong?” Looking around the world really drives the point home that these are avoidable fatalities.

That's a great argument for policymaking, but that's not what we're talking about -- we're talking about whether the children themselves should be worried sick, literally, about it. They clearly should not. Obesity and car wrecks will kill far more of them, and dealing with those issues is far more preventable. Smash the soda vending machines in their lunchrooms, and you'll save far more lives, plus avoid traumatizing the vast majority needlessly.

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

#487

Post by sampling »

carabiner wrote: post #410
rovolo wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner's mom read her diary at ~11 and then got mad at her for writing about her frustrations with her mom. She then grounded my 18yo nibbling a couple weeks ago for writing the same sort of frustrations on the notes app on their phone (she's the legal guardian). My partner became withdrawn from her mom and kept all of her social life to herself, hidden from her mom.

"If you punish honesty, expect to be lied to."

This is quite profound, is this quoted from anywhere or are these your own words?

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

#488

Post by kredd »

galdosdi wrote: post #485
kredd wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re arguing 0.7% chance of being in a school shooting shouldn’t worry a teenager, for other commentators that’s just a mind-blowing percentage. I think that’s a cultural distinction, since if that was the case, most of people I know would do anything that’s possible to avoid their child to beat that statistic.

Mental health problems are a far greater threat though, and have dramatically increased in the last decade, perhaps partly because it's so easy to worry about big problems outside of their control. The probability of being affected by suicide is significantly more than being of being shot in a school shooting. We can do two things at once. We can both, within our control, advocate for making school shootings less com…

Agreed in spirit, but fortunately school shootings isn’t a problem in the country I reside. Mental health though is definitely a huge issue though, but I’m not sure how we can fix that. Remembering myself as a teen, anything that was told to be “bad at that age” was a call for experimentation.

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

#489

Post by dayjaby »

tyjen wrote: post #406
runarberg wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most recent IPCC report stated that we are very likely to hit 1.5° in the next five years. If all our current policies hold, and we don’t continue to increase our annual emissions we will likely be looking at 2.7° - 3.2° at the end of this century. At 3° the oceans die. I think it is safe to say that the world as we know it is very likely coming to an end between 2050 and 2100. We will be living in a far more inhospi…

Oceans will not die, their biological makeup will change and adapt to new conditions.

Just that the adaptation process might be too slow. I don't think the speed of evolution can keep up with us throwing new kinds of garbage into the ocean.

It's the same with mono-cultural farmlands. By reducing the habitation areas of animals, the population becomes so small that thinking "they just have to adapt" becomes a ridiculous statement.

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

#490

Post by nmfisher »

srackey wrote: post #465
jmathai wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. A .7% chance of being at a school with a mass shooting is unfathomable. It's so high.

Far higher chance you’ll die on the way to school in a car accident. School shootings are to the left what terrorist attacks are to the right —- fear-mongering over an ultimately rare and insignificant problem to drive desired policy change.

My biggest fear is my kids dying in a car accident. I'd really prefer not to have to worry about school shootings on top of that, even if they are less likely.
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