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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)

#601

Post by soylentcola »

CalRobert wrote: post #134
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.

We just moved from three painfully lonely acres in the countryside to a small city and my kids seem much happier.

Seriously, we moved to the middle of nowhere when I was a kid and it sucked. Nobody to play with. Not much to do outside (it was mostly just fields).

So of course I found things to get up to that often got me into trouble. Boredom and lack of mental stimulation are not great for anyone, but for kids who don't yet have the skills to deal with it, the results can be a lot worse.

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

#602

Post by hospitalJail »

ascorbic wrote: post #212
Aeolun wrote: post #27

I feel like people in general more easily diagnose themselves and others with depression or other mental diseases recently. I find it hard to judge whether it’s due to any external factor or some form of zeitgeist.

That's addressed in the post. There is some of that, but there are similar increases in hospitalisation for self-harm, which wouldn't be affected by an increase in awareness of mental illness.

Mental illness has become a badge to wear. "I have depression/ADHD/Autism/Bipo/sch"

Once you think you have it, you notice all the systems.

As a medical owner, I'm not going to deny someone money if they are coming. With grey areas, and the lack of science in medical, it very well could be a tracking thing.

I certainly wouldn't tell anyone I had a mental issue in the 90s or 00s. Today, its almost cool.

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

#603

Post by noelherrick »

echelon wrote: post #9
kbos87 wrote: post #2

I’m not a parent nor am I a teen so take my comments with a grain of salt. The one thing that has consistently jumped out to me on this topic is how quickly people seem to jump to convenient answers. Of course you can’t ignore the rise of social media since 2010, but what about the level of control, structure, and surveillance that most young people have been subjected to over the same arc of time? That gets no atten…

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.

Humans, including kids, are inherently social creatures, and are happiest when communing with their fellow creatures (including pets, but mostly other humans). Kids are most happy when they and their friends are playing together, and my personal belief is that they are happiest when helping other people together (so much of my childhood play was around pretending being a hero, sacrificing and risking my life for the sake of others - what if that was channeled to real world aid).

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

#604

Post by j4yav »

kredd wrote: post #440
j4yav wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there must be some generation coming that feels like being highly online is weird and embarassing, having grown up and seen the way their parents and other adults behave, and use the internet more as a utility rather than a place to try to primarily live. What makes this hard I think is how addictive it is for children, so by the time they might realize how embarassing it is they have already been addicte…

Looking at my nephews, it’s highly unlikely to happen. From what they’ve told me, if you’re not online and at least aware of the “latest trends”, you become an outcast in school. Their way of trying to be less cringe and protesting is just being on “less mainstream apps”. Which yields the same results but with different colors. Not having any social media is also pretty awful as you’ll just be an outsider again. I wi…

Maybe it will just be a counterculture thing but I could imagine a group of people thinking it’s really lame to follow all the latest internet trends. We need a version of punk rock that hates the internet.

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

#606

Post by BobaFloutist »

ars wrote: post #38
dghlsakjg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your parents know where you are with 3m accuracy it isn’t really free roaming. In other words, being watched or tracked will definitely affect a kids behavior.

If a kid changes behavior because of a parent watching then that kid absolutely needs watching. It's still free roaming because the kid is 100% in charge of where they will go. That's the part that matters, not that someone can tell where they are.

That sounds awfully close to "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"

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

#607

Post by Tainnor »

nox101 wrote: post #437
Tainnor wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is of course not responsible for all our problems, but I do blame specifically social media for making people (including myself) who are materially well off and live a comfortable life irrationally angry about things outside of their control and think that everything is going to get worse and worse (which is a reinforcement loop because then some of these people start exhibiting destructive behaviour whi…

I know the various social media companies supposedly optimize for engagement and angry posts supposedly do best as that ... I can't imagine an entirely neutral social media platform would be any different. people are going to follow whoever engages them the most. the inventives, regardless of the algorithms used, are exactly the same. no manipulation by the social media companies required. all that's needed is a publ…

Of course, people are people and react to certain stimuli.

But I still remember the internet of old. Not only the small, semi-gated internet forums, but at also when Facebook just started out and you would just talk to your friends and not everything would be about polarising subjects.

This is clearly something that has changed due to social media algorithms, though maybe as a society we're now already brainwashed by it and I'm not sure if we can go back.

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

#608

Post by bentley »

theaussiestew wrote: post #282
j7ake wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person sitting on a chair alone staring blankly would be considered a sociopath these days.

I often worry about what others will think of me if I put away my phone and rest in silence.

…You do?

If you actually want to put your phone away but avoid doing so because you’re worried about what people would think, let me encourage you to ignore them. In my experience, one doesn’t suffer serious (or even moderate) social problems from being a phone‐skeptical person.

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

#609

Post by Grustaf »

lupusreal wrote: post #559
ajmurmann wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Hard to drink yourself into the hospital with wine? I know Europeans drink a ton but remarks like this really drive home the point. One bottle of wine is easy to drink and enough to get me vomiting. Two wouldn't be hard and is definitely in alcohol poisoning territory for people who aren't experienced alcoholics. Anyway, I don't think America should emulate European drinking laws until it can be shown that Europeans…

If you’re not a veteran wine drinker, which few adolescents are, then it takes real effort and dedication to get crazy drunk on wine. If you pass out it’s because you wanted to pass out.

With distilled spirits, and especially cocktails, it’s not at all hard to get dangerously drunk without intending to, so it’s a lot riskier.

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

#610

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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.

Alternatively, we could get better at killing off businesses that capitalize on bad dopamine hygiene. Being over the likely smartphone age doesn't give me superpowers.
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