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Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

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Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#11

Post by j4yav »

rightbyte wrote: post #7
gchamonlive wrote: post #6

> [...] Gen Z cannot go online or be a part of a social setting without being exposed to the sheer amount of horrors happening around the globe. You can’t turn on the television without being shown the terrors of school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles. Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regar…

> It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors. I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to s…

Yeah, I am not sure it's actually the being aware part, it's the pressure to performatively take a stand - "upvote this comment to change the world" sort of stuff, which turns into "you're a bad person for not upvoting" through the social media treadmill. Stating your position unequivocally as possible and/or demonizing your opponents acting like an influencer gets more clout than actually volunteering or working on problems. It's got to be a nightmare if you fall into that cycle and it seems a lot of kids do.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#12

Post by tmn »

gchamonlive wrote: post #5
viraptor wrote: post #2

I don't get why this is framed as "nowadays". Bad stuff happened all around millennials too. I can has cheeseburger and related sites were huge almost as soon as they launched in 2007. Then the same thing happened with much older generations as well - my parents and a lot of people from that generation repeated lines from old political comedy shows - basically memes before the internet. Kilroy was a WW2 meme. It's mo…

> I don't get why this is framed as "nowadays". > "the same thing that always happened happens now, just increased by the presence of the internet". Didn't you answer yourself? It's not that teens never had stress before, the article explores how they are coping with stress increase.

Jonathan Haidt would argue that their coping mechanisms are not as well developed due to less unstructured play time (conflict resolution without appealing to an adult).

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#13

Post by BiteCode_dev »

gchamonlive wrote: post #6

> [...] Gen Z cannot go online or be a part of a social setting without being exposed to the sheer amount of horrors happening around the globe. You can’t turn on the television without being shown the terrors of school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles. Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regar…

On the long run I believe it's a good thing.

I just hope the take on it will be to understand the watcher is also suffering a lot, and the people you hate as well.

Life is full of of suffering, for every body.

Yes, even the person you are thinking about right now.

And sure, we can always rank suffering by taking examples and saying a raped tortured 6 years old suffers more than your average tech billionaire.

But the main point is, suffering is universal. It's a common ground we all share. It's goes beyond context and morality, because we all agree we don't want to suffer, and we do anyway. That's one of the rare things we all get to experience again and again, and that shapes your life.

I really wish people looking at the internet window will get this as the message, as a way to get closer to the other humans, instead of classify suffering and divide us in categories. Maybe develop a deeper understanding of suffering, which is not just pain or other obvious manifestations.

And also be more kind, tolerant, wish others, and oneself.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#14

Post by jraph »

switch007 wrote: post #8

[flagged]

> Nobody is forcing them

Well, yes, the peer pressure and possibly the deep rooted insecurity you are talking about, and FOMO / the fear of isolation / being excluded. That's actually a big part of the issue.

(as someone who has always resisted social networks except HN for various reasons, pretty sure it's a net positive, but I've known since the beginning that interactions happened there and I was excluded from these)

I know I cut your sentence mid way, but I believe that reacting to stuff you see when you are there is probably only natural.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#15

Post by rightbyte »

j4yav wrote: post #11
rightbyte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors. I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to s…

Yeah, I am not sure it's actually the being aware part, it's the pressure to performatively take a stand - "upvote this comment to change the world" sort of stuff, which turns into "you're a bad person for not upvoting" through the social media treadmill. Stating your position unequivocally as possible and/or demonizing your opponents acting like an influencer gets more clout than actually volunteering or working on…

> actually volunteering or working on problems.

This is a huge problem for communities. The same people that you'd want to run the local kids hockey association or sewer board are drowning in work.

I think the fundamental problem is that society has become to competitive, optimized and effective for our own good.

Like, you'd want the genius entrepreneur guy to run a pub, not some 100 million dollar tech company.

You notice that when visiting poorer countries, that normal people have restaurants and that they are way better. Where as restaurants where I live are run by shady bad people to a big extent -- and by bad people I mean both in a moral sense and a practical sense.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#16

Post by i8comments »

Memes are the propaganda device of the 21st century.

I remember the White House under Obama studied how to instrumentalize them, and their instrumentalization got much worse during Trump. There is quite a bit of persuassive science behind them.

Memes do not meme well.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#17

Post by maCDzP »

gchamonlive wrote: post #6

> [...] Gen Z cannot go online or be a part of a social setting without being exposed to the sheer amount of horrors happening around the globe. You can’t turn on the television without being shown the terrors of school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles. Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regar…

For anyone interested in Susan Sontag I can recommend the POD “Philosophy this!” and the episodes about Susan. They are well worth a listen.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#18

Post by rightbyte »

gchamonlive wrote: post #10
rightbyte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors. I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to s…

Although I agree the scale in which we are exposed to shit on the internet is unprecedented, I disagree that we can run from it. Just go to a library. Start browsing. Eventually you will stumble upon a book about the Secons World War. Or about Rwanda... In the information era, you will be exposed accidentally to these kinds of stuff, and learning to recognize that and to develop strategies that prevent this exposure…

Ye well I didn't mean running away from eventually knowing something, but rather running away from the nagging propaganda spam.

Re: Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

#20

Post by gchamonlive »

rightbyte wrote: post #18
gchamonlive wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree the scale in which we are exposed to shit on the internet is unprecedented, I disagree that we can run from it. Just go to a library. Start browsing. Eventually you will stumble upon a book about the Secons World War. Or about Rwanda... In the information era, you will be exposed accidentally to these kinds of stuff, and learning to recognize that and to develop strategies that prevent this exposure…

Ye well I didn't mean running away from eventually knowing something, but rather running away from the nagging propaganda spam.

Yes... This really is a problem. Coupled with the fact that big social networks are designed to maximize engagement, they work in a way that depending on how you interact with it you get fed only the worst most horrifying news articles. I see that with my parents. Talking to them and seeing their feeds it looks like the world is ending before we had time to prepare for dinner today.
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