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

#671

Post by BadHumans » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:12 PM UTC

amplex1337 wrote: post #651

BadHumans wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think you are missing my point and maybe you are assuming anonymity but there is point where it isn't as simple as ignoring hateful comments because these people try to push into your life. There are countless examples of people being doxxed and being harassed at work because of something they said online.

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

#672

Post by LeifCarrotson » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:12 PM UTC

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's hard enough convincing exploitable human nature to be thoughtful and empathetic and kind and generous and diligent in the absence of social media. It's like teaching kids to want to eat green vegetables.

Natural selection results in people and animals who are impulsive, selfish, greedy, and lazy, it's only by great effort that people can overcome this and be better animals. We naturally trend towards these base instincts like a child trends towards eating the bread and fruit on their dinner plate, ignoring their vegetables. Even children know that actions have consequences, and can demonstrate some self-control.

But social media is like a highly addictive candy bar. Completely unregulated, laden with high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and artificial flavors, and (for the sake of analogy) addictive drugs engineered with the only goal being maximum profit.

Human nature can only withstand so much! There's no reason to expect our brains to be strong enough to resist the machinations of millions of brilliant engineers with sophisticated technology trying to overcome our self control.

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

#673

Post by tootie » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:15 PM 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…

I have to say, I still just don't believe him. I think Nature's criticism is accurate. He's cherry-picking data that shows the rise in depression started in 1999 and only somewhat accelerated around 2010-11. And I think there is another obvious culprit and it's the rise of authoritarianism and particularly right-wing media. Something that has been a major trend since about 1999.

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

#674

Post by ed_elliott_asc » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

hatenberg wrote: post #593

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…

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

We didn’t have any problems outlawing guns in the UK and various other non-American places.

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

#675

Post by qrobit » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

amplex1337 wrote: post #646

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…

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…

Aren't most of the replies critic or posted by people disagreeing with you though? Especially on HN, where most users would promote discussion with a reply rather than «Agreed» or «lmao»

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

#676

Post by 2devnull » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #655

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?

>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.

I’d say a lot of that is genetic and or cultural. At the very least there are many of us who do not possess that instinct. We have much lower karma scores but we don’t care.

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

#677

Post by dotnet00 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:16 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…

To me this reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed and something about the way you're asking her is off.

I saw a couple of years of similar reactions from my sisters after they went through some difficult times without any of us knowing (since they were studying abroad and this was before easy internet calling). They'd get mad when asked seemingly innocuous questions, which turned out to be because the way the questions were phrased came off as insulting or dismissive of their problems in some way. We didn't even know about these problems since they never told us, but that didn't really matter for them.

It took years of slowly rebuilding trust for them to open up again.

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

#678

Post by ziddoap » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #608

ryandrake wrote: post #39

If parents really want to set a good example, they ought to also quit their smartphones and Social Media--or at least hide it better. Kids are really good at identifying hypocrisy. When they see their parents glued to their phones and scrolling Instagram all day, after being told "Oh, don't do that, it's not good for you" they know their parents are full of shit. And, the trouble is: Most of these adults are addicted…

My kids watch a lot of YouTube/TikTok and playing computer games... Yet I don't. I sit in front of my PC all day for work and after work (after dinner) I also spend a ton of time in front of my PC doing things like learning how to make circuit boards, learning new programming languages, OpenSCAD (CAD) design work, and more. I tell them they spend too much time watching videos and playing games and should "branch out"…

>I sit in front of my PC all day for work and after work (after dinner) I also spend a ton of time in front of my PC doing things like [...]

If they see you watching a YouTube video about circuitry or whatever, are they registering "that's an educational video about circuits" or are they just seeing the YouTube logo and thinking "Wow, $parent watches a lot of YouTube"?

Any kid is just going to register that you spend 10 (or whatever) hours a day on the computer, they aren't going to be categorizing your use into educational or not.

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

#679

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

amplex1337 wrote: post #646

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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#680

Post by doublerabbit » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

orzig wrote: post #605

dimgl wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just do it? Get off your smartphone. It's like the people who willingly pay $15/mo for World of Warcraft and wonder why the game doesn't get any better, play for one hour and then watch Asmongold for 8 hours (I love Asmon btw). Stop doing the things that hurt you.

Look, I basically agree with the goal and am trying myself but: Try watching the Little League World Series on YouTube twice weekly for 4 years and you will have 1% of an understanding of why this is hard.

Its addiction and FOMO, you form connections. Even if you never talk to folk, you have an instant connection if the topic is to arise in face.

However if you previously and stopped watching and the conversation comes up you don't have have the up to date information to connect in to the conversation.

So because your part of the community by whatever feed you feel part of the community. The fear of not being part, subconsciously is what drives you to keep up the habit.

Same goes for all, communities, fandoms, cults; toxic or not.