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Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

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Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#71

Post by twelfthnight »

password54321 wrote: post #57
twelfthnight wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being admittedly a little polemical, personally I'm freaked out by the future. But that aside, I'm curious to hear more about your argument. Are you saying worry about the future can't be causing this issue because scary stuff only started recently?

Some of the examples you gave are too recent to explain the rise in depression that has been going on for over a decade. And climate change worry has been going on for much longer.

Those are good points. I would have thought that the trend would started around 2015/2016 if global crises were the main cause. There is a small jump in 2016 for 18-25, but, I don't want to read too much into it.

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#72

Post by ta1243 »

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #51

I'm guessing not just teenagers. Every day on Twitter, I see posts like [this]( https://twitter.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/17741956933237925... ) by accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that are indistinguishable from schizophrenic ideation. These consist of extremely idiosyncratic delusions that, thanks purely to social media, find a community of believers who can reassure each other that no, they're not…

I see that post, on its own (I don't do twitter), and think it's just a clever satirical post. Something above the stage of "John Wilkes Booth drank water, and so did Joe Biden. Coincidence?"

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#73

Post by pedalpete »

When I was a kid, it was video games that were ruining a generation, in my parents generation it was "the devils music" that was turning them into a bunch of degenerates.

I wonder what the issues where when Galileo was a kid?

They title says "epidemic of teenage mental illness", but do we not discriminate between mental illness and mental health? Where is that line?

I'm not suggesting social media doesn't have it's challenges, but it is the tool. We need to take responsibility for what we view/engage with, just like diet, we now must understand we have a mental diet and we need to treat our digital tools as the kitchen.

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#74

Post by j-bos »

jeffbee wrote: post #68
jowea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youth suicide rates are going up, I think that's quite objectively measurable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf Not proof that social media is behind it of course.

The same agency publishes this other chart that adds quite a bit of context IMHO. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm

For visibility, youth suicides are up compared to a low period in the 2000s preceded by higher rates than today in the 90s

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#75

Post by ta1243 »

twelfthnight wrote: post #16

Seems more plausible to me that young people are just realizing they will be inheriting the consequences of decades of selfish leadership and they are reasonably worried about the future. The narrative that social media is the cause and not the obvious looming climate change, war and wealth inequality is frustrating.

In the 1960s the teenagers of the day (who are the people who have been in charge for the last 10-20 years) were inheriting the very real threat of global nuclear war, something that those born after about 1980 didn't need to worry about as teenagers, and it's only really the last few years that it's cropped back up again as a possibility, but it's still nowhere near the level of the 60s.

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#76

Post by bitzun »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #62
jowea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youth suicide rates are going up, I think that's quite objectively measurable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf Not proof that social media is behind it of course.

Drastically reduced economic opportunities, housing affordability, and political disenfranchisement seem more proximate causes.

I think both you and sibling abirch are right in different contexts and I love the contrast in what issues you identify.

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#77

Post by obunta »

datascienced wrote: post #42
huytersd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Feels like 1952 again. When Alan Turing was jailed for homosexuality. To be generous I would say maybe some people have a disorder and that causes them to state they are non binary, but the implication isn’t the other way. Similarly a mental disorder may make someone obsessed with levels and coding 80hrs a week!

[flagged]

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#78

Post by Spivak »

brnaftr361 wrote: post #40
Spivak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's such a good thing that we're finally paying attention to this stuff and treating it (insert graph of left-handedness over time). But then everyone is out here trying to figure out what must be wrong with the world today when Boomers and Gen X are traumatized as hell and full of undiagnosed mental illness. But they grew up in a culture where unless it was life-debilitating or presented in exactly the stereoty…

Conversely, were over-diagnosing and now everyone is ill. Which necessarily follows because the closer you look the fewer people are "normal". In fact I'd go so far as to posit that everyone is aberrant, to nobody's surprise. And of course this is all derivated from a basis of largely qualitative soft-science which had ought be treated as an art than it is a science, however there are pressures which force both pract…

Okay so to summarize, casual dismissal of an entire field of medicine, insinuation that patients are faking mental illness to "look cool," justify their selfish behaviors, or get access to drugs, and that interventions for severe symptoms of mental illness either don't work or make things worse.

It really does feel like I was bred in a lab to exist as the counterexample for all this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school and my parents thought exactly as you did and refused treatment. For a long time I held this as a point of pride and thought of my parents as saving me from those cruel teachers that just wanted to keep me down, any why would I question them? I have no other frame of reference and was marked "different" by my teachers and other kids so all of my struggles were just framed in terms of that. And so it went with my anxiety and depression, I didn't have an illness, I was a worrier that just needed to calm down. I didn't have depression I was lazy, angsty, and logical -- that's why I didn't get out of bed all day, thought everything sucked and existence was pain, and so numb I could give Spock a run for his money.

Fast forward to college where I was getting my annual checkup and flu shot and I got my first ever mental health questionnaire. I answered honestly because at the time I genuinely thought that my experience wasn't unusual -- "Doesn't everyone think about killing themselves all the time?" I got referred to a therapist and eventually a psychiatrist for confirmation (because teaching hospital) who both didn't even take an hour to be clock me with all three. I got put on an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety, and a stimulant over the course of about a year and a half and I felt something and then cried for the first time since sixth grade, realized what not having anxiety feels like, and what life is like when you're not constantly in pain from under-stimulation.

I just can't bring myself to think it's all quack science when I was so thoroughly dressed down by these two guys so fast and who took a little less than two years to get them all sorted. It was surreal when the psychiatrist just described my whole life experience without even missing a beat. Life changing undersells it so much and it came out of literally nowhere for me.

Re: Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

#80

Post by gwervc »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #37

The problem with social media is it is a paralysis engine. It drives the most seemingly credible, brain-wormy and engagement-driving discourse to the top, promoting the most violent, exclusionary and aggressively undertoned rallying cries of trending angst-fueled ideologies. As a consequence, whatever your opinion, identity, or circumstances, you will surely encounter the echo chambers of people who want you dead or…

I don't agree. As far as I remember somewhat extreme opinions were present in the public discourse (for instance far left positions on university campus, far right ones at the local pub).

Moreover, people who want me dead or removed from society because of my political views are in my immediate social or professional circle, no need for social media to meet them.

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