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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

#661

Post by HughParry »

quest88 wrote: post #625
VA0 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that's part of it but not all of it. Even here on HN, with no ads, you can find hostility in the comments.

people are a bit happier here to have an argument and then get on with their lives though

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

#662

Post by taikahessu »

delichon wrote: post #528
pelagicAustral wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother is essentially the male version of this, just swap the cosmetics for video game DLCs. He's early 20's, no job, no interest in work, no interest in getting out of the house, no interest on anything... talking to him is the most frustrating experience ever, nothing comes out of him, no emotion... I talked so many times, tried to get an idea of what might drive him: travelling, learning, walking around in the…

This described my brother too. He killed himself four years ago, after about thirty years of just that kind of depression. And I was my little brother's keeper damn it, so it's my failure. Ever since I keep reliving it and wondering what I could have done. All I come up with are fantasy scenarios in which I somehow make us both wildly successful. But even that's a stretch given his outlook. I fantasize about some kin…

I found solace knowing (reading about) that blaming yourself is a part of the process. Thanks for sharing. Now, time for me to go outside. It's spring.

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

#663

Post by falcor84 »

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…

It sounds like you want to live in a digital version of a monastery. It's a nice ideal and can work for some, but the vast majority of us do need to live in the full world, with all its flaws, and even if we don't like it, we need to interact with it in order to improve it.

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

#664

Post by everdrive »

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…

>Lack of impulse control, no critical thinking, laziness

I agree with you, but I believe these qualities are a bit more fixed that people are willing to admit. I'm not suggesting that we can't do better than we're currently doing. Instead that the impulse control & maturity required to handle smart phones and social media responsibly escapes most of the general population in a way that other technologies have not previously.

In other words, you can rightly yell at folks that they need more impulse control, intelligence, etc. But you'll be yelling into the void. Most people lack the mental tools to deal with these things successfully, and will keep coming up short.

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

#665

Post by cynicalpeace »

verisimi wrote: post #506
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…

People are broken. Perhaps they always were. Perhaps this latest, is the cost of prioritising work over family - it is now common to have both parents working, with child care outsourced to professionals, that may do everything right, but will not love the child. Love is underrated, intangible. I suspect there are very few whole individuals out there at all. Once the child grows, why would it look to family to help?…

This is the conservative movement I think many would get behind. A refocusing back on the family, not tech, work, or business.

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

#666

Post by dylan604 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #647
dylan604 wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not at all what I said, and you know it. If you want to be trite and contribute nothing positive to the conversation, I would suggest you are in the wrong place

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

#667

Post by Anotheroneagain »

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…

This argument that social media is destroying the youth is the same old tale as old as time. Everything has been destroying the youth and rotting their brains since before anyone on this page was born.

It's less than a cemtury old. Any older quote appears to be fake. It began with the boomers, who grew up on iron poisoned food, and it's been getting worse from the increasing lack of lead and other heavy metals. Similar events happened when an effective method of producing iron was discovered (people killed each other, and burnt almost the enrire civilization) and in late rome, when lead mining declined. High lead consumption was followed by eras of prosperity. You people really need to pull your heads out of your assess, and accept that the effects are too severe to be caused by some social bullshit trend, and the cause has to be biological (even if you disagree with me what the cause is)

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

#668

Post by qzx_pierri »

hiatus wrote: post #626
qzx_pierri wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't 'downvote' someone in real life. In real life, you can say what you want, and people have to hear. However, on reddit (and many sites copying its pernicious site design), if your comment goes against the hivemind and gets hit with -5 immediately, your comment gets collapsed (and basically unseen). Imagine being out in public at a party and you say something slightly 'spicy' and someone walks up to you a…

> I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life People have lost jobs, college admissions, and more based on their posts online. I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life.

>I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life

Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. Remove your real life attachments from the internet and you're untouchable.

Just because people willingly 'dox' themselves doesn't make the internet anything more than a collection of webpages sitting on a blade server somewhere.

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

#669

Post by thomashop »

janpot wrote: post #389
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…

> But these are communications platforms. They are mostly advertisement platforms coupled to recommendation engines. The "communication platform" is just side business at this point. And it's being used to wave around as "free speech" when anyone dares to question the detrimental effect of the big mass mind control machine it actually is.

Any corporately run platform needs to be financed. In this case it seems the advertising model works best. Many platforms have tried subscription options but people prefer to not pay and become the product.
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