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The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#91

Post by 303uru »

latentcall wrote: post #57

Not just social media, but always online mentality. Spending all your time online gives you a skewed perception of the world and I believe being online always is a major negative. Spending time outside is good for you. Socializing with real people in front of you is good also. Not sure if we can ever go back to that without some major catastrophe.

So quick to blame social media, even the article just waves it's hand and makes the assumption.

Why not declining social mobility? Why not climate change anxiety? Why not late stage capitalism? Nah, it's always easy to blame Tik Tok as if the chosen release isn't indicative of something much greater going on.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#92

Post by nradov »

geodel wrote: post #85
nradov wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory can't be correct. The rate of world GDP growth hasn't increased significantly. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/gdp-growth-r...

~2% or above growth rate is huge when compounded over decades.

You mentioned the "effect of ever faster economic growth across the world". But economic growth hasn't become consistently faster.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#93

Post by Longhanks »

usr1106 wrote: post #8

Few deny that a drinking age is necessary. We also need a smart phone age. It's quite obvious that many teens are addicted to their phones and the mostly useless content they consume there.

Except with drinking, there's at least many adults that can effectively consider the risks of drinking. With smartphone usage, I'd argue that adults are just as bad, if not worse, in judging their own usage.

I fail to see how this is anything but blaming the youth (or, modern speech "ageism").

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#94

Post by ajmurmann »

Aeolun wrote: post #36
samr71 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deny a drinking age is necessary. From what it sounds like, the kids should be out there drinking more!

I certainly think a drinking age below the driving age is appropriate. Either by increasing driving, or lowering the drinking age.

When I grew up in Germany you were allowed to drink beer and wine at 16. It's hard to drink yourself into the hospital with those and you are still living with your parents. It provided a safe environment to experiment and learn how to deal with alcohol. At 18 you were able to get a driver's license and start drinking stronger drinks. However, you weren't as excited about the novelty of liquor. It's the only policy are I feel Germany has nailed better than anyone else I'm aware of

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#95

Post by AnarchismIsCool »

I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. It's 100% bad but it's just trash filling the hole society is making.

Looking top down at the problem, humans need self actualization or propose to be happy. Originally we evolved to live in medium sized social groups that worked together to ensure their survival, we took care of each other and that was what drove our purpose, or rather why that need evolved, it helped increase the odds a group survived.

Fast forward and we're now trying to derive purpose out of pure competition. What percentile is your IQ, your GPA, your income, your stack rank. Society is becoming hyper competitive because that is what makes the most money. Nobody interacts with their local community, they interact with those that provide the best chance of making enough money to survive: coworkers, their "network", prospective employers.

This is all great for perpetual exponential economic growth but not so great for humans. Instead of just being the best we can be for our community we're trying to make them compete, keeping people switched on in survival mode 24/7 to extract maximum profits. Instead of community we're trying to create a nice plastic wrapped substitute with social media and phones, they're not the cause, they're the symptom.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#96

Post by zdragnar »

vkou wrote: post #83
mathgradthrow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are quick to blame social media because there are exceedingly plausible mechanisms by which social media could cause such a phenomenon, and there is tremendous profit in doing so and not just of the money variety. State level actors run secret influence campaigns on facebook, and more recently, just create and control whole social media platforms without oversight. The time for skepticism about the scale of th…

What about the public influence campaigns that are ran openly on television? How well have we managed to quantify the effect that has on the public? They also take place without any oversight.

People have long complained about television, both in terms of bad behavior of fictional characters and tone of news shows.

At this point, though, young people are far more likely to doom scroll, fantasize about influence or whatever online than they are to be watching television.

It's also worth noting that this is a "teen mental health crisis"- television has been around long enough for several generations to go through teenage years without a similar experience.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#97

Post by ajmurmann »

woleium wrote: post #64
AlexandrB wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this applies to kids just as well as adults: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect But what scares me more is how this trend has the potential to normalize surveillance in general. It's not uncommon to for people to treat their employer or the government as a surrogate parent. So why wouldn't kids raised in a digital surveillance family accept a digital surveillance state?

elf on the shelf is a frighteningly common indoctrination to a life of surveillance

I have the related theory that the whole Santa Clause and Easter Bunny lie thing makes children more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. If all adults, including the weatherman conspire to lie to me for no actual gain, why wouldn't politicians and media personalities conspire to lie to me about the earth being flat or climate change if there is profit or power to be had?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#98

Post by Mountain_Skies »

Aeolun wrote: post #36
samr71 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deny a drinking age is necessary. From what it sounds like, the kids should be out there drinking more!

I certainly think a drinking age below the driving age is appropriate. Either by increasing driving, or lowering the drinking age.

I'm very curious what will happen to the drinking age in the US if full self driving cars ever come to be. The justification for adults age 18-20 being denied the ability to drink alcohol was the outsized frequency with which drivers in that age group ended up in wrecks while intoxicated. If they're no longer driving, that restriction on their liberty is more difficult to justify.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#99

Post by ajmurmann »

woleium wrote: post #66
echelon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids need more time away from other kids. They're spending too much time in the insane asylum with the other inmates. This leads to bullying, gossiping, comparing themselves against one another. Social media made it worse. Kids at home on the farm, reading books, exploring nature - that was healthy. Now they're addicted to algorithmic peer pressure before their brains can even adjust to filtering it out.

there are insufficient farms to offer that to all kids. At least social media levels the playing field somewhat, it does need improvement though.

It doesn't have to be a literal farm though. I spent so much time in my childhood building Legos or with metal construction sets or reading in my room alone.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#100

Post by mbgerring »

elzbardico wrote: post #39

People blame social media, but they never ask why social media is like that. I think that the cultural changes that lead to that have been running for far more time than people give credit for, and that social media is just the proverbial canary on the mine that made things explicit. Those changes are multi-generational changes, and more probably there are a multitude of factors behind it. Family structure, economy f…

Social media is like that because it was deliberately designed to be addictive and we have a decade of documentation to back that up.
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