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

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

#841

Post by anon-3988 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:45 AM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #658

anon-3988 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't put phones as the responsible one so generally. From my experience, phone is an extremely common factor. If you randomly take a peek at any person in the 1st and 2nd world during their "downtime", I bet that you will 99% of the time see them on their phone. Phone have absolutely consumed everything we used to do. I cannot remember seeing a person just sitting on chair staring blankly, they almost always…

> I cannot remember seeing a person just sitting on chair staring blankly heh, i have to ask, what is so great/healthy/engaging/enlightening about staring blankly? I think anything, reading a book/newspaper, talking to a stranger, petting a dog, would have been better than "staring blankly".

I am not saying its useful or anything but I remember just being absolutely bored to death constantly when I was a child. I have to wait for 2-3 hours every day for my mom to come pick me up with absolutely NOTHING to do during that time. I don't have phones, all my friends already left, and I can't wonder outside of school. So I spent those time simply just sitting at the entrance gate and wander about random stuffs.

Now that might be psychopathic but being constantly poked by phones is not good either.

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

#842

Post by mantas » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 6:08 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #722

mantas wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are protecting from anything outside of one's comfort zone. What's next, shout down politicians you don't agree with? That's not how democratical societies work.

Or it's merely intolerance of intolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Then both sides start doing the same and using same excuse. Final result is decay of democracy and ultimately civil war.

Looking from afar, US left/woke/whatever is nowhere close to objectively tolerant. Unless you use a very nuanced tolerance definition. It’s long past „live and let live".

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

#843

Post by ascorbic » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 6:34 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #412

ascorbic wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That assumes people aren’t induced towards self harm due to an increased awareness? If you believe suicide or self harm are common (and valid/acceptable) solutions to your issue, would you not be more likely to do so?

If this were true, what happened around 2010-2012 to make this the case? And if that were the case, wouldn't the most likely explanation be because suddenly all these kids got easier access to the kind of online communities that would encourage this?

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

#844

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 7:06 AM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #830

WalterBright wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No he didn't. His employees did. Gates traded money for the work of his employees. It was a fair trade, as both parties freely agreed. (Pedantically, Gates wrote Microsoft's first product - BASIC.) > The transfer of wealth was from the employees of Microsoft to Bill Gates by means of information asymmetry: Bill Gates knows what his employees are worth (i.e. the value they create, on average), but they don't. You im…

Walter you know I hold you in tremendous esteem: your achievements are among the most noteworthy of any of the regular commenters and frankly of living hackers, and many including myself wouldn't be in this business without your contributions. So please know I say this with the utmost respect. But I think you make an error when you say or effectively say via implication that market failures don't happen in way that i…

Thanks for the kind words. I'll provide a decent reply tomorrow. Right now I'm about to turn in, and learned a long time ago that I should not write or program when I'm tired :-/

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

#845

Post by atmosfir » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 7:33 AM UTC

Everyone who is skeptical of the proposed plausible cause of social media in causing depression in this thread should explain why their alternative theory holds up to the evidence that no significant increase happened both pre-2010 and is global

To my knowledge there is currently no other better theory other than the rise of social media use that explains the phenomenon. Other proposed explanations such as Bad economy, capitalist alienation, terrible politics, parenting habits, global warming, atomic individualism, and lack of purpose all either cannot be generalized globally or did not start in 2010.

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

#846

Post by croo » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 8:09 AM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #242

This is a super interesting thread, but (un)fortunately Haidt's claims about a teen mental health epidemic have been pretty convincingly debunked. https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide... Aaron Brown checked a sample of the papers Haidt relies on to build his case and found that they couldn't support his claims. They're of the sort of quality we've come to expect from the field, dominated by ti…

Saying that we most likely don't have a problem because garbage studies fail to capture that by numbers is not the right conclusion.

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

#847

Post by hutzlibu » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 8:21 AM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #823

hutzlibu wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"However, I would also (anecdotally) say that the teen culture in Germany around drinking is healthier and less prone to binging than in America." There are huge local differences. In my youth and hometown, it was definitely binge drinking - and we just followed tradition. But what I learned of other areas, was actually quite similar. Healthy alcohol consumption was rather the exception, but there is a trend towards…

In addition to local differences (I was in very northern Germany) I'm sure my perceptions were colored by being at a Gymnasium, but I did also interact with kids from other schools. I'm not saying that alcoholism isn't an issue in Germany. However the data I've found says alcoholism is about twice as prevelant in the USA as in Germany. Healthiness of drinking behavior isn't all all or nothing thing but a spectrum. Ha…

"I'm sure my perceptions were colored by being at a Gymnasium, but I did also interact with kids from other schools."

I was at a gymnasium as well ... and we were drinking with the teachers on occasions.

"However the data I've found says alcoholism is about twice as prevelant in the USA as in Germany. Healthiness of drinking behavior isn't all all or nothing thing but a spectrum."

It is of course possible, that you have it even worse. But my point was that I cannot confirm, that we have a healthy drinking culture in germany. We do have a drinking culture and some of it may prevent some escapades, but all in all I do not think it is healthy as indeeds promotes regular drinking as something normal.

"It's also possible (indeed likely) that many of the Germans kids I knew started drinking before 16 and that accounts for some of the differences I observed."

Very likely. We started with beer with 12 ... and the first time totally drunk was with 14.

"tendency to celebrate and brag about losing control, especially among the young for whom it is more novel"

And this was (and still is) totally a thing as well.

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

#848

Post by mantas » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 8:26 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #791

inglor_cz wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of aggressors consider themselves to be righteous ad good when they attack some unpopular person/people. The paradox of intolerance stems from the 1930s. When we stay there for a bit longer - do you think that the participants of the Kristallnacht considered themselves evil? No, they were brainwashed into thinking that they were righteous , fighting to save their country from corruption and evil brought u…

[flagged]

His point was that Kristallnacht people thought they are „cancelling“ evil too.

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

#849

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 8:30 AM UTC

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…

I think you should put deaths from drunk drivers next to those figures

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

#850

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 8:31 AM UTC

lupusreal wrote: post #788

Grustaf wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? If you're a novice to wine it's much easier to drink way too much. It tastes like juice and you can drink way too much too fast. At least liquor tastes like gasoline to warn novices off. Of liquor, beer and wine, wine is easily the most dangerous for novice drinkers.

You need to drink a lot of wine for it to get dangerous. A novice drinker on his first glass of alcohol is not going to slam them back unless they’re already determined to get violently drunk (e.g. crazier than most).