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Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

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Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#241

Post by lynx23 »

NoPicklez wrote: post #173
rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

Everyone has the ability to exercise personal accountability for how much they gamble, smoke, eat junk food, play video games, use social media etc. However, if these consumer products become so addictive, or are designed to be so engaging and as a result people are by and large struggling to exercise personal accountability and it is causing adverse health outcomes. Then the government should step in, either should…

So, why are alcohol (and nicotine) still legal then? Maybe there is a 100 year old lesson hidden somewhere...

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#242

Post by kstenerud »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

Why stop there? Why not drop all laws prohibiting sales of tobacco and alcohol to minors? Why should these producers have their right to sell impinged upon by scared parents pushing a bunch of laws through congress?

After all, you're free to use or not to use tobacco and alcohol, right? So it should be every kid's choice.

In fact, why stop there? Why not allow fentanyl pills at the counter of every convenience store for anyone who wants them? You have the freedom to choose to use or not to use them, so there's no problem, right?

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#243

Post by astro- »

> girls who spend five hours or more on social media per day are three times as likely to be depressed as girls who use social media only a little or not at all

I mean, I can't possibly imagine the state I would be in if I spent 5 hours on Instagram every day for extended periods. But the same applies to watching reality TV or reading tabloid newspapers.

Social media clearly affects young people — some of them negatively. That said, it's not 100% negative all the time. Maybe it's just changing the structure of society. In the same way that computers gave nerds the option to be the cool hacker kids and highly-paid FAANG engineers later, some skills/traits/behaviours are becoming more valuable while others are losing their usefulness.

Things won't be the same, just like things aren't the same as they were 200 years ago. People will adapt and learn to deal with the new challenges.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#244

Post by matrix87 »

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…

> and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity.

doesn't have to in the general case

maybe just have it at the OS level, have parents set up the phone, prompt on setup whether it's intended for use by a minor or not, use that flag to enable/disable access to social media

that's not really the same as banning social media for all minors and imo makes too much sense, more likely that congress will push something that fucks over anonymity more

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#245

Post by raziel2p »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them

It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions.

There's a nice quote from Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, which IMO hasn't aged at all in 60 years: "Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the 'content' of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind... The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance."

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#246

Post by nwiswell »

gitaarik wrote: post #160
miki123211 wrote: post #95

This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…

Of course people think of solving this problem again by constraining the consumer, instead of the producer. What we should do is make rules for social media platforms to disallow them to develop algorithms that make people addicted. You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore. It would sure be an elaborate task and will surely…

> You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore

Hardly. Addictiveness does not exist in binary. There are many people who obsessively check their email or refresh news websites. There is no doubt that social media companies choose the algorithms that maximize engagement and so most probably they also maximize addiction, but _any_ algorithm will cause addiction to some extent. What's the limit? How do we even measure this?

Something that is maybe a little more interesting is banning the practice of recommending "negative content" because it produces more engagement than "positive content". How this is defined is also somewhat squishy, but we can at least try to define it -- content that is likely to provoke negative emotions, like anger, fear, aggression, etc.

I think there's a much clearer through-line to argue that recommending negative content on social media produces a substantial negative externality, and that moves this into the category of things like environmental regulations.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#247

Post by johnchristopher »

lynx23 wrote: post #241
NoPicklez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has the ability to exercise personal accountability for how much they gamble, smoke, eat junk food, play video games, use social media etc. However, if these consumer products become so addictive, or are designed to be so engaging and as a result people are by and large struggling to exercise personal accountability and it is causing adverse health outcomes. Then the government should step in, either should…

So, why are alcohol (and nicotine) still legal then? Maybe there is a 100 year old lesson hidden somewhere...

And maybe that lesson is hiding in ellipsis or maybe it's not. Who knows...

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#248

Post by Ekaros »

andrepd wrote: post #30
mrob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mobile devices, not electronics in general. Social networking was around before widespread mobile computing, e.g. MySpace, but it was a supplement to offline social interaction, not a replacement. Back then, you had to make a conscious decision to use the computer and log in. Having the device in your pocket at all times drastically changes how it's used.

Absolutely. Being "online" changed from being a place you go (your computer) at a certain time (after school/work, a couple hours a day max) to becoming an always-on experience. It's a qualitative change.

It is both qualitative and quantitative change... From limited time to unlimited time with limited place to unlimited place... From couple of hours with other tasks, to ever present thing you turn in slightest moment of boredom...

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#249

Post by eviks »

> First, if the skeptics were right and the null hypothesis were true (i.e., social media does not cause harm to teen mental health), then the published studies would just reflect random noise2 and Type I errors (believing something that is false). In that case, we’d see experimental studies producing a wide range of findings, including many that showed benefits to mental health from using social media

No? What's the connection? No harm doesn't mean health benefits, just... no harm

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#250

Post by barrysteve »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

You are not given a choice to opt out. You are included in an ever-increasing dragnet of surveillance. The incentives are set up for it.

You either play the sisyphean game of personally blocking a billion dollar company from including you. Or you reach for the long arm of the law.

We all know FAANG gave us no choice but to use government ruling.

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