Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by luzojeda » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:46 AM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #47

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

I feel so bad for teenagers/kids who we essentially screwed over with this tech experience. That said, I don't feel great for the rest of us either! I feel like my phone has become a significant negative in my life. And in general, I'm quite scared because we have put things in place that we know are bad for mental health: 1. Even if we may not like it all the time, there is tons of data that show that personal inter…

Your points here are worth more emphasis. As a chronically unemployed software dev who's burnt out and crashed at least 3 times, I've spent a hell of a lot of time reflecting, and try my best to communicate these ideas to people who have the opposite problem; lots of work, but no new friends since highschool, and desperately single. People tend to rely far too heavily on the easiest way to convince themselves they're…

>My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness. You don't become a pro anything spending 30 min a week on it, and no valuable personal relationships come about that way either. That's how you met people in Uni, that's how you met people at work, you gotta branch off of those places and ya gotta keep it going gradually. If you don't live in a place that facilitates that, vote with your wallet and try to find a new one.

This is why for many of us the last place we made meaningful relationships was university: lots of time in a same place physically + common objectives + relativeley same age and interests = friendship.

The formula is simple but today the first component is what is most difficulty. Along with #3 I'd say. Many people recommend taking "classes" such as theater, ceramic, etc. but after doing all the hard work of finding a place near you, that you can pay if you find the average age is +- 15 your age it gets really desmotivating. There is nothing bad of going to classes with seniors but reality is you can't make true friendships with someone your grandfathers' age.

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

#472

Post by improv » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:46 AM UTC

akomtu wrote: post #101

One thing that social media does to young minds is it shatters their attention into pieces, with all those flashing and moving rectangles on phone screens, and squeezes all the value it can from each piece. What's left is a mind unable to focus, that passively floats from one distraction to another.

Couldn't think of a more efficient way to manufacture ADHD

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

#473

Post by StefanBatory » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:46 AM UTC

skilled wrote: post #337

I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…

But isn't there a question of what causes what?

Is she terminally online because she's ill or is she I'll because she's terminally online

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

#474

Post by luzojeda » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:47 AM UTC

spxneo wrote: post #82

When we was teenagers we had unrestricted broadband access to the internet but what was missing was the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. WaReZ, KaZaA, Ogrish, CD-Keys, drugs, weapon making tutorials, Mail-order-drugs. This was the wild west days of the internet. You could literally put up anything you could sell anything and everything. Classmates were downloading roms, porn…

We didn't have a portable pocket computer with access to all the practically infinite multimedia refined (to be increasingly addictive) content either...

Sounds a bit cliché but those days we used internet to escape the real world. Now it's backwards. But the real world is getting worse. Those days with internet 1.0 that was a wonderful digital world for lots of us.

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

#475

Post by lm28469 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:50 AM UTC

yawboakye wrote: post #409

skilled wrote: post #337

I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…

i find this to be, unfortunately, the current western stance on responsibility towards anyone: irresponsibility. for some reason, leaving people to go their way, wherever it may lead them, has been interpreted to be the good and the moral duty of anyone who understands what freedom (for intelligent beings) means. with all due respect, that’s cowardice and a neglect of duty. i explained to my sibling the other day tha…

> i find this to be, unfortunately, the current western stance on responsibility towards anyone: irresponsibility.

The complete destruction of religions, then traditions and now families/education (lack of education, lack of authority, &c.) probably had something to do with it.

You can't replace god/families/education with an iphone 15 and expect society to continue on the same path. And I'm saying that as a complete atheist, people need a framework, goals, rules, models, outlooks, a moral compass, &c. if all we have left is complete relativism and consumerism it's much harder to find a personal meaning and straight up impossible to find a global one

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

#476

Post by hibernator149 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #322

signaru wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there are also those companies/institutions/orgs/news/shops that make you left behind from otherwise useful information or services by not being on social media platforms.

And then there's Therapist who keep saying everyone should be in therapy and drug companies with the latest in psychopharmacology. Histeria (and the virbrator), ice pick lobotomies, electro shock therapy, Quaalude, Benzodiazepines (valium) as mothers little helpers, MAOI's, SRRI's (PSSD), Benzodiazepines again (Xanax, klonipin). And for good measure a few variations of adrenal Ritalin and other methamphetamines. Mayb…

Why not both? Pharma and Social Media profit from depressed people. Nothing ever has a single root cause. There are always multiple causes often working together in a vicious cycle. Also, what's wrong with vibrators?

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

#477

Post by Springtime » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

ZaoLahma wrote: post #402

Springtime wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, is the scope of social media being referred to here particular, typical apps (eg: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), or any app/service that has interactive social and media elements (eg: Discord, Reddit)?

I really think we need to make a (large) difference between platforms focused on user interaction and discussion (Discord, Reddit, old school forums, ...) and platforms where the person behind the user is the focus and placed in front of the entire world to be judged (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, ...). The former is not focused on you as a person and you are judged by the discussion that you participate in, while th…

I agree about more specific definitions of what is being referred to in discussions under the umbrella term 'social media', particularly given those pushing for regulation.

A couple things that stand out in discussions about social media negative consequences are: service-led algorithms and UX which actively fuel addictive patterns, an emphasis on a single and often IRL identity (Zuckerberg famously saying there should only be a single user identity[1]) and audience reach which is far too broad for various content.

On Discord people often become familiar with other users via their pseudonymous handles, even sharing IRL details as they're comfortable. However a few things help with this: no leaderboard-style gamification of posts like there is with Twitter or Reddit, chat is inherently lower stakes and the scope is limited to that community not the wider internet.

Traditional forums are interesting since I know various who were addicted but in a user-led rather than service-led way (ie: they've been addicted through habit of non-gamified checking of content/participation). Even expressing having anxiety posting threads due to the expectations of peers. However the benefit is still an awareness that the primary audience is mostly an in-group of (mostly friendly) peers. Whereas on Twitter for example, a user may say something for a specific intended audience but someone in bad faith re-contextualizes it and initiates dogpiling—which is an inevitability of almost any community but for sites with such broad scope is extremely difficult to moderate.

Like you mentioned, on Reddit there is almost zero emphasis on the user, whether as an OP or commenter, so there's much less interpersonal community building but OTOH much easier distancing from self 'performance'/anxiety.

[1] Some critique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37284960

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

#478

Post by skilled » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

heresie-dabord wrote: post #458

skilled wrote: post #337

I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…

I understand your frustration and -- perhaps -- a feeling of having no agency in the situation. But at the same time I find this sentence fascinating and scary: > It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either. Inverting the order of your explanations (to examine the weighting), we have: estimated low return for investment/effort avoi…

I understand what you're saying, but that's not how life works. If a person has no anchor and they deliberately avoid establishing that anchor in their lives, then how do you expect them to stay stable when going gets tough? I have to respect her as a person first and foremost, and I cannot enforce my own thoughts/ideas because I think that is what's best for her.

She needs to find it for herself, and then establish that as her anchor. If it is cosmetics, then so be it. I have no gripe with that. What I do have a gripe with is reluctancy to be a functional human being and engaging with your family and friends.

As I said in another comment, I offered to help her to do stuff online on multiple occasions. But she can't even accept that, or come to terms with it. Hypothetically, that might also mean she knows that perhaps it's not what she truly wants for herself, as far as building a life (anchor) around it.

I'm not detached, and neither is anyone in my family.

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

#479

Post by marmaduke » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:53 AM UTC

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…

> there's nothing more dangerous than a teenager with very little money and a lot of time on their hands, so a simple DNS-based block definitely won't suffice, you probably need Chinese-style deep packet inspection and such

Or just give them some money and something to do? Why fight fire with fire, just makes bigger fire

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

#480

Post by sourcecodeplz » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 10:53 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

I feel so bad for teenagers/kids who we essentially screwed over with this tech experience. That said, I don't feel great for the rest of us either! I feel like my phone has become a significant negative in my life. And in general, I'm quite scared because we have put things in place that we know are bad for mental health: 1. Even if we may not like it all the time, there is tons of data that show that personal inter…

Depends on where you live and maybe for how long. For me for example, I live in the city in an apartment. I go out in the morning to buy bread. It is 50% likely I will meet someone from my neighborhood and chat for a minute or just say hi.

If I really want to chat a little, I will go to one of the other small shops next to me and buy a beer/coffee and talk with the owner or whoever is outside the store.

Because I work from home most of my friends are at work during the day. But come evening and you can hang out for at least an hour, with someone you know, every single day if you want. There is no planning, you just go to the places you know people hang out, and they will be there. And if you don't want to talk much, you can just listen.

I feel I am blessed to have this because I was an expat for some years and you don't know what you have until you don't have it anymore.