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Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

theguardian.com

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Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#21

Post by ethanbond »

reedf1 wrote: post #7

When did we lose the moral authority to make things illegal for minors? I believe in 50-100 years it will be a worldwide scandal that these skinner boxes were ever given to children let alone adults. AI optimised attention slideshow that likely drains you neurochemically and disrupts your reward circuitry the same way heroin or ecstasy does? On paper this shit should clearly be regulated.

One contributing factor is the surprisingly recent meme that corporations exist solely for the benefit of their shareholders. It’s a totally ahistoric and obviously antisocial meme that gets repeated like it’s gospel, even by otherwise intelligent people. This perspective should be literally laughed at and made fun of as a moral system suitable only for the greediest and most myopic among us.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#22

Post by andy_ppp »

lawlessone wrote: post #13
andy_ppp wrote: post #6

Can we switch social media off for 8 hours per day, 9-5pm maybe. I think it would make everyone happier and I bet nobody would miss it.

>9-5pm maybe i feel like that would just be convenient for work and nobody else.

I'm not saying the proposal is finalised or even marginally thought through. But neither is everyone being horrifyingly distracted by social media.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#23

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

aeraea wrote: post #14
TSiege wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we have blame the parents for kids smoking cigarettes and juuls when are corporations targeting them as a means to get rich? Obviously parents need to get involved to correct things, but blaming them for the outcomes of another party's schemes is cruel

[dead]

That seems unreasonable if the parents have made their views on smoking well known to the kids, which then leads to the kids making efforts to hide their habit from their parents. It's fair enough to blame parents for behaviour that they encourage, but not so for behaviour that they are unaware of.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#24

Post by vidarh »

i_am_jl wrote: post #11

>‘We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,’ said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"? I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findi…

It is both fairly common to say you're addicted to something as a way of saying you're really into something as well as to indicate actual addiction, and you can't expect people asked a question like that without detailed additional guidance to be able to give a clinical assessment of whether they are in fact suffering from an addiction.

Unless you probe what the respondents mean by addiction, or provide them a clear definition before asking, there's very little reason to assume they will be using a definition of addiction that justifies assuming anything approaching a clinical definition, or even anything negative.

My opinion goes in other direction: I think even with that caveat, what she went on to say suggests she's making assumptions about what people meant - especially given the age of the respondents - that I don't there's basis for unless the survey provided a lot more context than just the question given in the article.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#25

Post by paxys »

megaman821 wrote: post #18
i_am_jl wrote: post #11

>‘We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,’ said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"? I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findi…

Well, yes if the suggestion is some sort of intervention. There are large groups of people that will say they are addicted to coffee, TV, video games, etc. Not a lot of them will meet the medical definition of addiction.

Probably the most obvious example of this is everyone who says "I have OCD!". No, you don't really have OCD.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#26

Post by karaterobot »

i_am_jl wrote: post #11

>‘We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,’ said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"? I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findi…

Seems reasonable to separate self-identification from a diagnosis. Flip the logic: if someone says they aren't addicted to something, does that make it true?

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#28

Post by tenebrisalietum »

reedf1 wrote: post #7

When did we lose the moral authority to make things illegal for minors? I believe in 50-100 years it will be a worldwide scandal that these skinner boxes were ever given to children let alone adults. AI optimised attention slideshow that likely drains you neurochemically and disrupts your reward circuitry the same way heroin or ecstasy does? On paper this shit should clearly be regulated.

Overdramatic. Social media may be bad but it is not like heroin or ecstasy.

Engaging in moral panics, on the other hand, seems to provide a high to some individuals just like heroin or ecstasy. Let's regulate them instead.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#29

Post by jclardy »

flfdslkfdsla wrote: post #16
aeraea wrote: post #3

[dead]

It is troubling just how many intelligent, educated parents I see are perfectly happy to give children and babies a tablet or phone to placate them. On the other hand, have you thought about the difficulties of handling this as a principled parent? You can either turn your child into a social pariah during key developmental years, or spend hours of your and their lives trying to regulate a device that is designed to…

I think the problem likely goes deeper - most of the parents are likely smartphone addicted already, so they see no issue with it. Or they may see the issue with their child's usage of a phone, but they justify their own constant need for using a phone with it being "for work" or what have you and the child is just following in their example as they constantly see them pulling out their phone.

I'm not a parent yet, and I don't have any answers..but as a 90's kid I can't imagine what it is like now growing up with access to all the world's information in your pocket.

Re: Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study

#30

Post by nonethewiser »

ImAnAmateur wrote: post #9

> “Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction,” said Turner. Orben’s team and others argue that this is likely to be oversimplistic and are investigating whether the teenagers cluster into groups whose behaviour can be predicted by other personality traits. > It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behav…

This is the solution for a lot of behavioral problems. The instinct is to do the bad behavior less, but the solution may instead be to do something else more.
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