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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)

#581

Post by yellow_lead »

vjk800 wrote: post #231

I would like to see a chart that shows "physical activity vs mental illness". Physical exercising is known to be one of the most effective methods to prevent and cure mental illnesses and especially kids' activity levels have plummeted in the past one or two decades. I think this might easily be the whole story and no other intervention is needed than to get the kids to play outside and do sports again.

Physical exercise also has many confounding variables, like going outside, or seeing other people.

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

#582

Post by cynicalsecurity »

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.

Cool, I've always wanted to live in the North Korea (not).

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

#583

Post by 65 »

Maybe it's because with corporate Capitalism, we've given up all our freedoms for comfort and safety. Comfort and safety are nice and all, but when we are no longer free to exist in reality, with other people, we get depressed.

Our technological overlords (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Epic Games) have engineered digital life for young people to be as "engaging" as possible for their own benefit. We spread out to the suburbs and there's no where to go without the automobile overlords. Privatization of everything means teens have no where to go, except to buy shit at the mall. And who wants to spend life buying shit? The life of distraction and engagement makes companies billions of dollars, forces people to conform to their frameworks (because guess what, everyone else is doing it, and if you don't join in you're even more bored and lonely than everyone else), and kills all freedom.

Life in the west is materially very comfortable. But the premise of playing in real life, of hanging out, isn't cool because no teen is doing that. They're trapped by potent digital media wasting all their time. Life is somehow more boring than it used to be. Maybe because seeing crazy videos or playing super fun video games makes everything else seem boring. It makes reality seem boring.

We're losing our freedom to giant corporations. I think Capitalism is a good system, but corporate Capitalism kills freedom. Oppression by Corporatocracy is killing people.

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

#584

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

nitwit005 wrote: post #549
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.

> Few deny that a drinking age is necessary. Because of drunk driving. If that was not an issue, we certainly wouldn't have a drinking age of 21 in the US. Several states still allow your family to serve their children alcohol, which is closer to the example of letting your kid use the internet.

I've honestly never heard those two being linked before. That would seem to imply that Canada, with a drinking age of 18, would you have a a higher drunk driving rate than the US, and I wonder if that's the case.

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

#585

Post by s1artibartfast »

everdrive wrote: post #561
wait_a_minute wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure if we can ever go back to that without some major catastrophe. We easily can. With the network effect, we can just encourage everyone we know that socializing with real people in real life is important and set up some coffees, lunches, dinners, walks, board games, etc, and then encourage those people to do the same with the people they know. Won't take very many hops to reach everyone this way and get back…

This is like saying we can easily stop the obesity epidemic. The problem is pretty simple conceptually, but it's not going to be solved. The requirements for ignoring social media and practicing true impulse control lay outside of the bell curve of impulse control for much of humanity. People _could_ stop using social media, but they're not going to. Same reason why most people are fat. Yes, I know there are environm…

However, global behavior does change, and not always for worse. It is usually just slow and people and culture adapt.

The good news is that individuals don't have to wait on society. They can choose to be early adapters.

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

#586

Post by mindslight »

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.

I've actually got to wonder if part of it is the disappearance of frontier-type online spaces in favor of corporate real-name social media. Spending "too much" time online used to be a refuge that allowed you to be a completely different person - IRC, forums, etc. I'd say that most people who grew up online 20-30 years ago view the digital world as a welcome escape.

Now that outlet has been replaced by a digital version of the exact same inescapable social matrix from school. Perhaps this theory is less supported by the observed effect being greater on girls (at first glance one would think a frontier would be more important to boys). But on the other hand psuedonymity allowed everyone to have personas not tied to gender, and perhaps girls actually need the escape more.

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

#587

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

rescbr wrote: post #545
croutonwagon wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the inflection point was about here: https://imgur.com/ALMObBv Not that I am blaming porn. I am not. But once the screens and bandwidth became large enough, UI's easy enough to navigate etc AND the devices themselves became quite commonplace, the always online mentality became one used much less for essential communication and business and transitioned more to a cultural way of life (porn is just an easy…

Infinite scrolling was also present in desktop. I blame the pivot from the chronological feeds to algorithmically generated feeds based on engagement (or whatever other metric).

> algorithmically generated feeds based on engagement

This is one thing that really gets me.

Your feed is based on engagement. It doesn't have to be GOOD engagement, just engagement.

So when you angrily reply to a tweet you hate, that's engagement. You will be shown more content that makes you angry.

Most of the things people complain about in terms of what Twitter shows them, I don't experience. I don't follow people I hate, and if someone quote-tweets, I avoid replying. Definitely don't click the original tweet to see what other people have said.

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

#588

Post by cynicalsecurity »

syngrog66 wrote: post #368

causes are a mix: smartphones, social media, doomscrolling habits, carbon climate crisis (and its dire implications). and the rise of the so-called Woke/DEI propaganda cult in academia. all add up

There could be a much easier explanation. Life in the past wasn't much easier, in fact, it was much harder and crazier. But no one really cared measuring the problem and it appeared it did not exist.

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

#589

Post by PicassoCTs »

65 wrote: post #583

Maybe it's because with corporate Capitalism, we've given up all our freedoms for comfort and safety. Comfort and safety are nice and all, but when we are no longer free to exist in reality, with other people, we get depressed. Our technological overlords (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Epic Games) have engineered digital life for young people to be as "engaging" as possible for their own benefit. We spread out to the suburb…

This "your stuck in a cell with only a tv to talk too" used to be a prison sentence.

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

#590

Post by ndiddy »

ro_sharp wrote: post #295
drukenemo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did the future looked like for a kid living through 1929’s crisis? A world in between wars. Or living through the Cold War and the possibility of a nuclear extinction of humans? Despair and hope have always been cyclical and yet we always think we’re “doomed” when living through hard times.

The doomsday clock is closer to midnight than it’s ever been https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ and now we avoid another 1929 by inflating away the gains of the middle class and siphoning value off to the 1%

I don't understand how the doomsday clock is closer to midnight now than it was during the Cuban missile crisis. It makes me think that it's not an objective measure.
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