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

#581

Post by kennyadam » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:08 PM UTC

michaelsalim wrote: post #499

skilled wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried being supportive on multiple occasions. I offered to help with building her a platform online since she spends so much time there. I offered to team up with her in case she wants to create an eCommerce site. The discussion always ends with, “I don’t know”. I have tried various approaches, including being provocative, and that is why I said it is not worth it. I am not abandoning her by any means and we t…

I don't normally comment on these kinds of topic but I thought I should chip in on this one. The things you have listed are all solutions to a problem that you think she has. Something in the line of "If you/we do X, you'll be happier. Trust me" Honestly, it doesn't have to be that complex. I was shocked to read about the platform and the eCommerce site. That's such a HN solution to an ultimately human problem. I bel…

Agreed. I was expecting something like asking her to go for a walk outside, visit a beach... something grounding and enjoyable away from the phone. Not trying to teach her frontend dev lol.

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

#582

Post by kombookcha » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:10 PM UTC

worldsayshi wrote: post #576

kombookcha wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's two major drivers here - scarcity of attention (1) and social distance (2). 1) Your attention on social media is monetized by others, which means there is always something tugging on it like so many street peddlers, in addition to all the 'organic' content made by other users. When there's a shortness of attention, you're always going to be more snippy and inclined to the short pithy retort, instead o…

I think you're on to very good points. One kind of obvious suggestion on how to fix it: We have to grow a culture of more deliberate attention. Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media. But this is not an easy solution. Every social media space is saturated with good content as well as bad. It might become easier if we grow s…

I do think this is one pathway, and it has kind of been happening - we're seeing people increasingly stop participating 'open' social medias and retreating into more sequestered communities with fewer, but enduring participants that you get to know, and who are united around care for some topic but also talk about other stuff. Discord servers are probably the most prominent of these just now. They have more in common with oldschool forums in the sense that you get to know the regulars, but are notoriously impenetrable if you're new and trying to search for information on some topic that's been covered in the past. But it's a start!

Now that Discord is apparently opening up to ads, it remains to be seen whether that cultural shift will be able to hold or if people are going to be driven into even deeper hidey holes, like the freed humans in The Matrix who have to hide out deep in the earth from all the robots ;)

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

#583

Post by ck2 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:10 PM UTC

I'm old enough to have experienced the invention of cellphones and then smartphones and then "social media"

I am also on the roads every single day on foot or bike all those years.

People have absolutely lost all self-control and are absolutely addicted to connectivity and media, not a little bit, overwhelmingly toxic levels.

Everyone is constantly holding and looking down at their phone, no matter at a bus stop or driving. Even walking and I've seen people biking while constantly looking down at their phones.

We need to start treating it like alcohol or drug addiction, it's the exact same thing.

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

#584

Post by slothtrop » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:11 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #415

worthless-trash wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either. If you loved your sister, you should do something, if direct confrontation isnt working, take another route. > In my culture this is exactly what family should do. I assume you mean "family should intervene here", because if you don't who would ?

Sure, you may try (I did and don't regret it, sounds like OP also tried), if only for you to feel better about it yourself. But my experience with addiction in the family is that they can and will drag you down with them. To love is to let go, at some point. My experience (with alcohol addiction) is: Tried to help once, got into problems (set family up with house of a friend), almost got into financial problems mysel…

Interventions can work, they're just no silver bullet. I think it's something you do in good faith, but after that for the sake of your sanity you have to let go as you said.

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

#585

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:13 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #570

randomdata wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She doesn't share her actual thoughts That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that i…

> These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I would expect this to some extent when conversing with strangers IRL too. If it was a chat between friends, a rant here or there is OK because your friends know the real you and understand where you'r…

[deleted]

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

#586

Post by paul7986 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:13 PM 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…

She might have really bad social anxiety, ocd and or some other social disorder that's pretty common in your early to mid to even late 20s. I had it and withdrew too until I started talking about it with others my age only to find out they were all crazy / normal too. Thinking your the only one dealing with such and never talking about and or hearing others ur age or close in age deal with it too is the worst thing ...she needs to talk about it and know she is completely normal and many many others her age deal with the same too

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

#587

Post by bingbingbing777 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:13 PM UTC

api wrote: post #14

hot_gril wrote: post #5

It's electronics in general. I was in 7th grade at the inflection point, when the iPhone 3G first widely popularized having a pocket computer. Facebook went mainstream around the same time. Suddenly kids became a lot less social, and that never flipped back.

Hard disagree. It’s algorithmic “engagement maximizing” systems, specifically. (Engagement is code for addiction.) If those pocket PCs had useful and creative apps only and maybe some non-addiction-optimized games they’d be fine. The problem is the apps, not the hardware. With kids the absolute worst seem to be YouTube, TikTok, and Roblox. All three are banned in our house. The kids have their own devices (with monit…

I've seen parents with babies in a stroller with their phone strapped to the handle, so the babies can watch YouTube while they go for a walk. They are all going to be completely fucked.

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

#588

Post by silverquiet » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:16 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #572

silverquiet wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the psychiatrist his idea or the parents'? I assume the parents, but if it was his then that's something. I heard something interesting on a podcast recently - Kara Swisher was interviewing her son who said that if you're Gen A, it's sort of hard not to be a nihilist. For me personally, I sort of look at how fast the world is heating up and do some basic math about life expectancy, and I'm sort of expecting to se…

The oldest Gen A person is 14yo, I was plenty nihilistic then too, and that was in the golden age of the 90s.

I was as well, but I was under the impression that I was a weirdo. I can't say I ever really grew out of it either. I think the interviewee was a bit older though.

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

#589

Post by ryandv » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:18 PM UTC

VA0 wrote: post #531

worldsayshi wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is touching on something very important but I feel there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of mystery around this for me. Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?

Social media is designed to make money, whether that be from selling data or conglomerating it and advertising to you. They want the user to be purely a consumer. They are designed to make people reactive and have a short attention span, they are easier to sell to.the users mental reward system is essentially brainwashed to be an easier target to sell to.

Advertising is one of the main reasons modern social media is experiencing continued enshittification in this era. Noam Chomsky in his "Manufacturing Consent" wrote of three "filters" that determined which content would be presented to viewers, and while he wrote on the mass media in 1988, I believe this framework applies equally to social media in 2024: access to capital; the "advertising license to do business;" and a symbiotic relationship with government, who provides access to authoritative sources of news.

Take X, for example: its access to capital allows it to eclipse most other social media and build network effects that are difficult for other startups to disrupt; after the Musk acquisition, advertisers began withdrawing from the platform; and as the Twitter files have claimed, its collusion with the U.S. government in the promotion/demotion of certain viewpoints.

If you want to see genuine viewpoints, you'd best seek out media that are largely independent of these three "filters" over what messages are permissible on the medium.

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

#590

Post by Funes- » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:18 PM UTC

Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing because "past a certain point" you can't do shit about it, and God forbid they try to develop themselves into a worthwhile adult without using any of those time-sinking, mindless apps, because then they will be "left out". Left out of what? A vile cesspool of shit in which everyone seems to bathe nowadays, at the expense of their potential?

Lack of impulse control, no critical thinking, laziness and general negligence have always been at the root cause of many of societal ailments like this one, and until a large enough group of people chooses to come up with healthier alternatives and sacrificing hedonistic and mindless tendencies, they will keep festering across the globe. In the meantime, I absolutely prefer to be "left out" and interacting solely with similar minded people.