The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023) • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

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…

> reagonomics

Now Reagan caused teen mental illness, too?

What's next, Reagan caused Covid?

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

#422

Post by softfalcon » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

leksak wrote: post #249

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…

What would reagonomics and the Vietnam War have to do with teen mental health in say northern Europe?

A lot, I recommend finding a library subscription to read a portion of "Diplomatic History - Europe and the Vietnam War: A Thirty-Year Perspective" [0].

The effect was quite dramatic for all of Europe. Way too many things to even enumerate here.

[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24915113

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

#423

Post by trealira » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

grupthink wrote: post #310

mbgerring wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agreed. It's like dining out versus having a healthy home cooked meal. Restaurants will sell you delicious food loaded with sodium, sugar, and fat because they want you to crave their food. Likewise, when you outsource your family values, entertainment, news to social media, you meet a similar problem. Relatedly, beware of the hidden ads in social media. It takes much less money to astroturf a community like reddit t…

What's worse is that people do genuinely advertise products they like, so it's hard to tell if a conversation is astroturfing. I've done the same thing. I see it particularly for video games and software. There's a meme about how Hollow Knight fans advertise it so much that they suggest you play Hollow Knight even if you were asking about a completely different genre.

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

#424

Post by jvvw » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:03 PM UTC

coderenegade wrote: post #76

llIIllIIllIIl wrote: post #5

It’s not just social media. Free roaming and spending time outside on their own or with peers went down dramatically for the last 30 years.

I think this is a huge part of it. Kids need to be able socialize and spend time in their environment without constant supervision. It's not just kids either. What ever happened to parents taking their young children to the local playground? Part of it was for kids, but it was also an avenue for meeting other parents and socializing with them. I think dog parks serve more of a social role than playgrounds these days,…

Parents definitely still take young children to the local playground - at least where I am in the UK!

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

#425

Post by carlosjobim » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

leksak wrote: post #249

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…

What would reagonomics and the Vietnam War have to do with teen mental health in say northern Europe?

Nothing, except that the poster was probably at an age where his or her worldview became cemented around that time.

There will be people in 50 years from now blaming everything bad that happens in 2074 on Trump.

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

#426

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #96

vkou wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

In the 1930's movies were blamed for the decay in society. In the 1960's comic books were blamed for teen problems. In the 70's it was rock music.

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

#427

Post by jampekka » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #414

ta8645 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do Danes, Norweigans, Swedes, and Finns agree with you? I doubt it.

The idea of the welfare state is so popular around here that even the rightest of the right can't really criticize it much.

Almost all economic reforms are done "to save the welfare state". Especially reforms that slowly dismantle it.

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

#428

Post by groby_b » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #421

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…

> reagonomics Now Reagan caused teen mental illness, too? What's next, Reagan caused Covid?

He's responsible for a ton of AIDS deaths, so we'll let him be with one pandemic.

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

#429

Post by kredd » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

drukenemo wrote: post #132

JohnMakin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being always online wasn’t quite so shitty til the last 10-15 years. Many people did it and were just fine for a long time. To me this feels like blaming food poisoning on the fact you have to eat food. Maybe the food is just bad. the current state of online is the food. it just really sucks.

In the past we could stay online for long hours doing some few activities (chatting, playing games, browsing few sites). These days we can barely survive without a mobile phone always on, permeating every little interaction we have with the world. It’s quite a difference.

15 years ago, we would somewhat choose whom to be “always online with”. It was more of a selected in-group of people, having similar interests and ideas. Right now, it just feels like “everyone screaming into the void” as “every app is for everyone”. It feels much different for some reason. Or maybe I’m just getting older and not a teen anymore.

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

#430

Post by api » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

2devnull wrote: post #410

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…

s/social media/books/g

Social media is nothing like books. It's also nothing like eBooks, Wikipedia, regular discussion forums, telephones, etc. Modern social media has some completely novel characteristics that are responsible for its damaging effects on mental health.

- It's optimized to "maximize engagement," which is code for making it addictive. When anyone says engagement in our industry it's usually a euphemism for addiction.

- It does this by sorting content to present "engaging" content first, which due to how humans' brains are wired tends to be content that is emotionally triggering in some way.

- It's primarily consumed on a device that people carry with you and that has an interface that makes infinite scrolling easy, replicating the basic design of a slot machine.

There were dumb panics about books, but citing those to dismiss concerns over social media is intellectually lazy. They are very, very different things. Books don't watch you while you read them and fine-tune their content in real time to maximize the amount of time you spend reading them.