Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

afterbabel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 1001 posts

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

#271

Post by dotinvoke »

lynx23 wrote: post #236
thegrim000 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny .. earlier today there was a front page HN post about the federal government mandating safer circular saws. It seemed like the majority of users in the thread were in favor of the federal government mandating technology changes to prevent harm from being done to the population. Now for this issue, there's harm being done to children, and the majority of users in the thread seem to be against government int…

Because it is the parents responsibility to set boundaries for their children. It can be complicated at times, granted. But that doesn't make it less of their job. Heck, I got my first CD player with 14. Yes, I felt left out at school, but... guess what, I didn't die. Children need to learn that there are rules, and someone else dictates them. Throwing tantrums is a typical reaction that needs to be weeded out as a p…

I was one of the last people in my class to get a phone, which taught me that not having the cool new thing was not nearly as bad as I had thought.

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

#272

Post by ergl »

logicchains wrote: post #152
Buttons840 wrote: post #149

The charts in this article are deceptive and cause me to not trust the author. Look at long term teen suicide rates and you will see that suicide rates were quite high around 1990, and then rates dropped until about 2005, and are now on the rise again but have not yet reached 1990 levels (I think). So, the author of this piece wants to make it look like suicides and self harm are on the rise because of social media ,…

They also don't compare with other countries. Social media use isn't unique to America; if it's responsible for teen suicide rates, we'd expect to see similar rises across the globe, but that's not the case.

> They also don't compare with other countries

Did you miss the graphs showing the same trend in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Nordic countries?

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

#273

Post by microtonal »

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. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.

If it was only this simple. It's similar to the green bubble problem. Disallowing your kids to use these platforms leads to social isolation. All the other kids are on these platforms and a lot of the talk is about what happened on these platforms (it's similar with games like Roblox for a certain age bracket). Excluding them is also going to teenage mental illness due to exclusion.

It's only going to work if all parents would restrict access to these platforms, but that's not going to happen. A lot of parents do not see the issue or do not want to be the first mover.

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

#274

Post by unclebucknasty »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #257
thegrim000 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny .. earlier today there was a front page HN post about the federal government mandating safer circular saws. It seemed like the majority of users in the thread were in favor of the federal government mandating technology changes to prevent harm from being done to the population. Now for this issue, there's harm being done to children, and the majority of users in the thread seem to be against government int…

The reason I am against government intervention is the fact that governments seem to not be competent enough to solve problems like this and they would use content controls for their own purposes. It is vastly different and more complex than regulating saws. The comparison falls short by a huge margin and a false conclusion that any federal legislation would be desirable just because it is the case for saws. Some sug…

Irrespective of where people fall on this particular issue, I find it odd how the people who are so distrustful of government would allow things that are overtly dangerous, as long as it prevents government from...governing.

It's like we have this generation of people who believe government overreach is a) inevitably the outcome in every scenario; b) present in every situation; c) always the worst possible thing that could happen. As in, literally worse than mass sickness and death.

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

#275

Post by stareatgoats »

epolanski wrote: post #258
raziel2p wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?

> What do I care what others do?

While a perfectly fine rule of thumb in general, I think you might find the sticking to "I don't care what other people do" as an overriding principle doesn't hold water in a substantial number of edge cases. One such case is where someone is willfully influencing others to act against their best interests, or against the best interest of society as a whole. That's when one needs to make a judgement call on a case by case basis. Is this such a case? Not sure. I just wanted to point out that "I don't care what other people do" can't be your guiding light, always.

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

#276

Post by hgomersall »

jimz wrote: post #227
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…

Except "struggle" is entirely subjective. In fact, outside of a few things that causes physical dependence (which vary in length except they all, eventually at least, end), the concept of addiction as used by the government does not necessarily match up to how those in the particular field of research would. Government makes laws and laws prefer bright line rules. Something like "did you, without authorization, use t…

Addiction is well defined in research and it certainly does not preclude things that don't cause "physical dependence" by which I assume you use to mean psychoactive drugs.

Wikipedia has a better definition right at the top than I can offer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

The crucial point is it is characterised by neurological changes that lead to short circuited reward pathways. The idea of addiction to social media a perfectly consistent with its action and moreover, consistent with the notion that its effect can be enhanced by design.

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

#277

Post by [deleted] »

thinkingemote wrote: post #265
epolanski wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?

Do you live or work with others? Do you have a family or children? Do you interact in meaningful ways with people online? I ask seriously (but no need to reply, this is to aid understanding) as many here on HN do not have all of these so the range of examples may be narrowed for some people. I would however imagine you have some relationships of some kind that you care about. Can you imagine your relationships changi…

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by geocar »

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…

> they're advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.

That sounds exactly wrong. I think they want their "personal parental" decisions to not be the decisions of the entire nation, but "personal" and private to themselves and to be free from judgement for wanting this thing.

> prevented access to education medical information ... you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them.

This is pretty important to me:

Abusive parents deny their children access to communication platforms.

I believe these problems cause problems for the child if the child is already lacking support, but they also represent a way to escape that abuse, so I feel strongly that controlling access to asking-for-help is not okay;

This should not be a personal decision good people can make for themselves in their homes for their own kids, because they should be able to understand that "bad" people are actually using laws and rules like this to hurt children.

> I don't use any of these products

I think you're using one right now: Hacker news is absolutely a communications platform.

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

#279

Post by ergl »

maxcoder4 wrote: post #34
cyanydeez wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Just like in 1939, ...wait. Maybe blaming social media for fascism is a step too far. But I'm interested to hear what you have to say about that. Why did social media enable fascism now, and why did fascism exist before it?

There are actually a bunch of studies that explore the role of mass media, in particular the radio, in the spread of Nazi propaganda in the years before Hitler came to power.

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

#280

Post by epolanski »

stareatgoats wrote: post #275
epolanski wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?

> What do I care what others do? While a perfectly fine rule of thumb in general, I think you might find the sticking to "I don't care what other people do" as an overriding principle doesn't hold water in a substantial number of edge cases. One such case is where someone is willfully influencing others to act against their best interests, or against the best interest of society as a whole. That's when one needs to m…

I might have expressed myself poorly.

I "don't care" what others do in the strict sense that I don't let it influence me.

But I can tell you that me quitting socials did impact relatives and friends to quit those too, and thus I absolutely do not relate with his statement:

> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not

Post reply on HN