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Social media does not cause depression in children

norwegianscitechnews.com

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Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#11

Post by jeroenhd »

EGreg wrote: post #4

Something about this doesn’t seem right Norway also has Seasonal Affective Disorder. But in the USA, all of a sudden with the rise of social media we get such huge statistics: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/us-teen-girls-considered-a... Moreover, it isn’t necessarily the AMOUNT of social media one consumes that makes one depressed. It is other factors: 1) Body image 2) Expectations 3) New norms of behavior 4) New…

I think it's unmistakable that mental health is declining across the board, but definitive proof of causation is still lacking.

Social media has been omnipresent for years, it's not a new phenomenon anymore, and the continuing toll on mental health doesn't really coincide with just the introduction of social media anymore.

It would be easy if we could just blame Instagram for everything, but there are much worse factors at play. The yearly climate extremes, the massive inflation, the covid pandemic, the housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, and so many other factors give any young person reason to get sucked into depression.

I'm sure the changing social landscape is part of the problem, but many other negative factors got started around the time social media took over the world.

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#12

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

EGreg wrote: post #4

Something about this doesn’t seem right Norway also has Seasonal Affective Disorder. But in the USA, all of a sudden with the rise of social media we get such huge statistics: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/us-teen-girls-considered-a... Moreover, it isn’t necessarily the AMOUNT of social media one consumes that makes one depressed. It is other factors: 1) Body image 2) Expectations 3) New norms of behavior 4) New…

I'm not sure what explanation you're proposing here. Wouldn't this just as well describe most mass media of the past ~50 years?

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#13

Post by saiya-jin »

Yeah not buying this bullshit and half-assed study at best, you just need to look around you how negatively these things and smart phones in general affect kids when they are introduced to them too early, unsupervised, in typical leave-me-alone-for-some-time failed parenting manner.

I am not claiming it outright immediately causes depression (it probably does in same vein girls' magazines set unhealthy standards on looks for example but that's nothing new), but it definitely causes some hard damage in their long term happiness. For every success story there are 10 or 100 quiet failures. Many apps, be it social or games, also cause outright addictions and kids are very vulnerable to those and designers aim exactly at that. Does addiction create depression? I think everybody can answer for themselves.

Its failure of both parents and regulators to not see this harm, or see but ignore/give up on it. I have plenty of examples around me, seeing say 10 year old kids or younger playing hard mental games with their parents to get more time on phone is not much better than seeing some heroin addict craving for his next kick.

I think we generally lack some serious education step about current parenting, what are challenges faced, how to cope with them, and assist at least some form of actual help (not meaning some generic call helpline). I see more than not utter shock of people conceiving a kid or 2 and only later realizing how fucked they are in terms of free time, hobbies, passions, lack of sleep and overall sacrifices required, not for a year but much more. And no, you can't effectively outsource these to grand parents or nannies and call yourself a good parent, kids development will suffer in various ways, to be seen mostly later in life.

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#14

Post by naasking »

EGreg wrote: post #4

Something about this doesn’t seem right Norway also has Seasonal Affective Disorder. But in the USA, all of a sudden with the rise of social media we get such huge statistics: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/us-teen-girls-considered-a... Moreover, it isn’t necessarily the AMOUNT of social media one consumes that makes one depressed. It is other factors: 1) Body image 2) Expectations 3) New norms of behavior 4) New…

They discuss all of these in Section 4.

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#15

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

tinrab wrote: post #10
survivorBias wrote: post #5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aiEqINoa-I You now can create unrealistic standards via machine and earn hard cash doing so. Monetize all the things, everything has to go. PS: Psychology is mostly studies on pschology students or other students, which prefilters the result pretty hard. So ever study is basically: "And how does the local well-off elite feel about that?"

Why do people always complain about unrealistic standards? I can't see how that would be bad. The problem is repeated dopamine hits.

It's both.

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#17

Post by dchung333 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #11
EGreg wrote: post #4

Something about this doesn’t seem right Norway also has Seasonal Affective Disorder. But in the USA, all of a sudden with the rise of social media we get such huge statistics: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/us-teen-girls-considered-a... Moreover, it isn’t necessarily the AMOUNT of social media one consumes that makes one depressed. It is other factors: 1) Body image 2) Expectations 3) New norms of behavior 4) New…

I think it's unmistakable that mental health is declining across the board, but definitive proof of causation is still lacking. Social media has been omnipresent for years, it's not a new phenomenon anymore, and the continuing toll on mental health doesn't really coincide with just the introduction of social media anymore. It would be easy if we could just blame Instagram for everything, but there are much worse fact…

These issues aren't really factors in most children's lives. Many of these issues are fairly recent though mental health has seen a steep decline with the introduction of social media. But there are also things that could coincide with this such as the increase of funding and awareness of mental health. Though, that's a hard argument to make for the deep rates of change that have been occurring which often, directly coincide with changes to algorithms and social platforms.

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#18

Post by Mistletoe »

jeroenhd wrote: post #6

Actual paper this is quoting: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756322... This website seems legit, even though the domain sounds like it's some kind of blogspam website.

I think the main thing I notice right off the bat is this is in Norway. Norway is very different from the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

Maybe I can believe teens there can use social media responsibly but I don’t see anyone not damaged by social media in my own social circles in the USA, regardless of age, from old to young.

Re: Social media does not cause depression in children

#20

Post by krzysiek »

"the results were the same regardless of whether the children published posts and pictures via their own social media pages or whether they liked and commented on posts published by others." - so basically the study compared people that use social media actively and passively. It's harder to compare children that use social media with the ones that don't.

It seems to me that building expectations based on social media (e.g. just by browsing) is the real problem, not posting or not.

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