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

#641

Post by wepple » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #315

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…

There are two kinds of freedom [0]. What we are missing in our society today is some essential negative freedoms. Most of us follow J.S. Mill's idea on restricting the influence of the state. See the many comments in this thread decrying government intervention to ban social media. That's a negative freedom, from tyranny. Mostly, we tend to emphasise positive freedoms, freedom to ; run a business, share speech, own t…

Very well written

> No services for government, schools, health available only on proprietary and "smart" platforms

I wish this were a movement, I feel very strongly about this.

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

#642

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #486

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 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…

[deleted]

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

#643

Post by slothtrop » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

Andrex wrote: post #530

whstl wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers. Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have. It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

> The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers. Sorry, I see this a lot but: oh well? They'll get over it. Social media on the other hand gets its hooks in deep. If every teenager were guzzling gallons of soda everyday and telling them to stop "alienated and ostracized" them, I'd still do it for the good of their health.

> oh well? They'll get over it.

Alienation and ostracization is not something to be taken lightly.

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

#644

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

amerkhalid wrote: post #631

afavour wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, are you a parent?

These type of comments almost always come from non-parents. In a way, they are right. You can raise your kids without influence of social media but that is not easy or cheap. It would definitely require homeschooling. One of the parent will need to be stay at home parent. Probably need to avoid urban and suburban areas where kids can easily hangout with neighborhood kids. Avoid social gatherings where other kids will…

> You can raise your kids without influence of social media but that is not easy or cheap. It would definitely require homeschooling.

I have some neighbors who insisted on raising their kids this way. The parents are insane. Their kids haven't turned out super great, either.

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

#645

Post by evilduck » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

avensec wrote: post #606

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?

There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Threads aren't conducive to conversations that build psychological safety and trust. A natural conversation of curiosity/questions, in 1:1 or small group settings, doesn't exist. This leads to talking *at* each other instead of with each other. The reduction in empathy follows. Thanks for asking the question and spawning the conversation threads!

> There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory.

Part of the problem lies here, and I'm doing it right now too.

In online public spaces we never have a conversation with another person, and rarely even then within a small group like enthusiast forums of yesteryear, we comment to the lynch mob. We reply to someone's statement with our own thoughts but it is not judged by the original poster if it was a good or insightful reply to what was originally said, it's judged by the mob with upvotes and downvotes and being flagged, misconstrued and nitpicked in fifty different ways. It happens here, Reddit, Facebook, YT, and any popular venue where comments are allowed. Even Github issues and pull requests.

I think it's why Discord is a popular alternative choice for many people. If you're not actively present, you can't chime in with your two cents and derail the conversation into some energy draining defense against someone's insane straw man attack. Comments needing to be in real time and the conversation being locked away and lost are a virtue for some folks.

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

#646

Post by amplex1337 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #486

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 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…

You certainly can just throw things out there, but if you are obsessed with making every single person satisfied with your thoughts, you are going to have a bad time. The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion. I still change my mind sometimes based on others thoughts and opinions, so you can't say I am fostering avoidance too much, just very selective, as my time is valuable.

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

#647

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #638

hatenberg wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns kill people but that’s only because the vulnerability of the flesh has always been a problem. Like guns, we have a hard time coming to the right conclusions

It seems only Americans are struggling with the guns issue, so your conclusion falls very flat

That's true. America is the only country where people are killed by guns in the entire world.

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

#648

Post by carimura » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:00 PM UTC

gdilla wrote: post #637

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a kid? The parent comment is either forgetting what it was like being a kid and doing things behind their parents back, not out of disrespect, but because they're young and it's what young people do, they are their own people as much as one might try to control them. Also, good luck ostracizing a child from their peers for their "benefit"? (I remember a time where not having the same brand of clothes would get you…

for real. enterprising kids had access to porn in the 80s - via dad's stash. i was there.

yes but you a) had to be enterprising, and b) had pretty limited access to whatever was available in the recycled magazine bins and blurry TV channels (which wasn't much. I was also there), etc. Now it's 100% of anything you're told to desire, mainlined directly to your undeveloped brain with the flick of a finger.

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

#649

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:00 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 spends most of her time in her room on the phone

They said the same thing about TV for most of my childhood.

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

#650

Post by maxrecursion » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:01 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…

This shows the real problem is more getting sucked into online social groups rather than having constant communication with real life friends.

The toxic part of social media is the online personas and interactions with strangers, who are perceived as friends.

There is a balance of letting kids have messenger and play games online with friends, than letting them have social media accounts, and burrow into cesspools of online activities that a lot of these social sites are.