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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

#651

Post by amplex1337 »

BadHumans wrote: post #623
runamuck wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a good rule. I NEVER reply to someone who comments on my comment w/ hostile intent. For example: I made an innocent comment on a YouTube video, and someone completely misread the comment and posted a hostile reply. I wanted to explain to him that he misread my comment but I just let it go. You never need to defend yourself. If you want to post a comment, post it. If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let the…

> If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them. Very easy to say when you aren't going viral and 100,000+ people aren't trying to get you fired or hurling insults at you ranging from calling you an idiot to telling you to die. I'm not saying you're wrong but it's much easier said than done.

It is definitely easier to ignore when there are 100,000 comments than 100, this is correct. You really need to be in control of what you want to spend your time on these days, and replying to cancerous YouTube comments is not one of them generally. Let it be.

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

#652

Post by dpkirchner »

anhner wrote: post #352
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…

Teenagers are so judgy about the color of the text message bubbles they receive, imagine how judgy they would be if one didn't participate at all in some digital platform most of them use.

It's less about the color and more about the lack of feature parity. If one person joins it can downgrade the experience for everyone. This isn't the teenagers fault, they're just responding to product behavior.

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

#653

Post by s1artibartfast »

ergonaught wrote: post #526
_heimdall wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some backward people don't understand that "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" or "getting tons of destructive cosmetic surgeries" or "Amway" can also be a torally fine purpose in life. I really can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment or not, so just to be clear none of these examples are examples of purpose. How one spends their time isn't purpose, it's just a description of their day.

I think the main point is that it isn’t anyone else’s business how an individual chooses to spend their time. Absence some other criteria for concern, “I don’t like that they do this therefore they must stop doing it” is a line of thinking that desperately needs to be eradicated from human culture.

I think the criteria for concern is clear, and it never was about if they personally like of the activity.

The concern is because they care about the person and "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" is objectively destructive and self-sabotaging.

It's not a relativistic “different strokes for different folks“ and don't judge situation.

Being nonjudgemental might make sense if someone you care about is at least happy, not miserable and throwing their life away.

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

#654

Post by mbesto »

myspy wrote: post #338
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.

That's true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I'm fucking annoyed by other parents that don't set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too. We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. Th…

> I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.

So, like smoking in restaurants?

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

#655

Post by pixl97 »

worldsayshi wrote: post #495
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…

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?

>Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?

So I'd like to point out something I've not seen mentioned yet. That is what I call 'small down behavior', that is nit picking on those that don't fall into some small group that is acceptable.

It seems that social media has not caused any new behaviors, but instead given a new and expansive venue for the behavior to spread.

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

#656

Post by spacephysics »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #613
afavour wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, are you a parent?

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…

I think there’s a thread of truth here that it’s always “the kids are doing detrimental things” (which is kind of their duty in a way, to rebel and learn the lines of society)

But equally valid argument is the general moral decline we’ve seen in society over the last 80 years or so. Is it from a lack of spirituality/higher power belief? Is it just a byproduct of the Information Age?

It’s not just kids doing dangerous things, then growing up to have functionally healthy lives, we’re now seeing enormous levels of reported meaninglessness, even in higher age brackets.

Dating has become a crap shoot for many, especially after college.

For guys, if you’re not above average in looks, job, or life situation, you don’t attract average women. You essentially attract nothing. The apps are more zero-sum, and don’t follow a bell curve. You need to go to bars, or join a community of sorts (which have also been in decline outside of metro areas)

For women who want to start a family relatively young (mid 20’s let’s say), many of the men available are still living at home (housing affordability), without a stable career (expensive degrees that don’t produce jobs), or honestly haven’t grown up.

There are pieces for sure that resemble past generations, but layered on top is a multi-generational ailment that is culminating into a very dangerous societal discontent.

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

#657

Post by nojvek »

In 2023, I would glue my self to the phone after reading book to our kid. But then our 5 year old would want to see what I am doing on my phone.

One day I was reading a reddit thread while she wanted to tell me something that happened in school. Someone told her her school lunch stinks because it is vegetarian and I brushed it aside.

That moment was a wake up call. I was addicted to a stupid reddit thread ignoring a real issue.

Now I don't use the phone around sleep time. We read books, talk about the day, get bored and tell imaginative stories but no phones.

The nice effect of that is I sleep earlier and have much better quality of sleep. Less baggy eyes.

Not using phone before sleep has increased quality of life significantly. I have longer attention spans during the day as well.

Infinite scroll is the new sugar addiction.

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

#658

Post by wwweston »

Funes- wrote: post #616
lupusreal wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if parents tried to be fully responsible for keeping their kids off social media, it wouldn't actually be possible for them. What you are proposing is akin to a world in which it is wholly the responsibility of parents to stop their kids from smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor, but whenever the parents weren't around kids could walk into a store and buy them legally. Do you expect 24/7 unceasing parental sur…

>What you are proposing I did not propose any of the straw-man nonsense that you wrote after this. Nothing in my previous comment implies such a thing. Come on, now .

Come on yourself.

> Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing

It’s entirely reasonable to read this as implying that a key issue is parental management of access to social media.

And it might even be reasonable to assume you don’t actually care about this topic at levels beyond the self-gratification that comes from assuming a posture of easy contempt, given that’s the majority of what you’re offering by weight.

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

#659

Post by [deleted] »

Funes- wrote: post #590

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, m…

[deleted]

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

#660

Post by karaterobot »

raziel2p wrote: post #245
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…

> 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.

I suspect that a lot of the anxiety about how difficult it would be to quit is the mind's way of rationalizing a psychological addiction, like saying you can't stop smoking because things are just so crazy right now.

I quit social networks in 2008, it wasn't hard at the time and it's not been hard to stay away. Yes, there are consequences of being the one guy in the friend group who doesn't use whatever app everyone else is using, but to call those consequences meaningful is an overstatement. A minor annoyance, easy for everyone to adapt to.

You're right that other people are still influenced by social networks. Speaking from the outside, I wouldn't even use the word 'subtle' to describe its effects. But, I don't know that that really matters. You surround yourself with people you like, despite their flaws. You hope the good things about them grow, and that they work through their flaws. That's just having friends.

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