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

#721

Post by AlexandrB » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

dpkirchner wrote: post #652

anhner wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was a teenager, I responded to shitty product behavior by switching products. But that was an era where you had a half dozen competing desktop messengers as well as third party client options for most of them. We need to make adversarial interoperability possible again so users are not at the mercy of tech companies and their marketing teams.

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

#722

Post by foobarian » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:00 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"…

This is tearing me apart. On one hand I believe if we blocked all the bad stuff like YT, social media, games... they would certainly be bored more easily and get into more "wholesome" activities. On the other hand, I don't know if there are negative side effects of going full authoritarian that would outweigh the benefits. For now we walk the line, limiting social media but allowing some YT and games.

One unintended consequence I noticed already with time-limiting YT, is the kid is carefully planning her YT viewing usage and ends up not branching out to crafting/educational/etc. videos because she doesn't want to run out of time for the fun stuff. So this ends up unintentionally killing the desired content.

My gut feeling is that setting an example by doing (so like what you described) and occasionally recruiting the kid for assisting (but not forcing them to participate too much) is the right way forward. We'll see I guess...

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

#723

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

silverquiet wrote: post #523

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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#724

Post by anotherman » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

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 went through the same thing, but my brother didn’t succeed in taking his life. He had a similar profile as described above, and socials played an outsized role in his alienation.

At the time, I quit everything I had on my hands and reorganized my life to be much more present. Living around for a while, trying to engage and be a part of his life as much as I could: sometimes in innocuous forms (“hey, wanna do that thing you love this week?”), sometimes straight up suggesting therapy.

You know what? No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. I wasn’t able to connect more with him at the time, nor to change his viewpoints. The simple act of getting in touch with him became extremely hard, to an extent none of my friends, or relatives that weren’t part of the nuclear family, were able to comprehend. Ultimately, I just think he had decided things wouldn’t just stop there, or something inside him held him back among us mortals, and that’s about it.

All I’m trying to say is don’t blame yourself for this.

We’re all doing our best and it sounds like you were already being a great brotherly figure. Blaise Pascal once said: “The heart has its reasons which reasons knows nothing of”: the inner workings of one’s mind (God’s, in Pascal’s case) are too difficult to penetrate for our logical reasoning. We’re just out there on this planet trying to figure out how to help our loved ones, and sometimes it’s not up to us.

You’re not at fault, and I hope you’ll soon find peace.

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

#725

Post by giarc » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

genrilz wrote: post #696

giarc wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the majority of the evidence seems to point towards it not causing large well-being problems." I can't see how this is true. Anecdotally, everyone I talk to, and you most comments in this thread (and any other thread) is full of people admitting that they A. use their phone too much B. wish they didn't and C. it makes them feel bad. Again, n of 1, but I've never met someone that openly wants to use their phone more…

I at least skimmed all of the meta-analyses that both of them cited. It seems like social media has both positive and negative effects on people, and these average out to fairly near zero. From this, I can make a hypothesis about why you are seeing what you are seeing: Assuming you are in a society which values hard work, (like the US) then the people around you probably think of social media based screen-time as bei…

"social media has both positive and negative effects on people, and these average out to fairly near zero"

Is that the right way to think about it though? Opiates have many positives (medical pain management) and many negatives (drug misuse and overdoses). Do we simply say "the effects average out so there's not a problem"?

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

#726

Post by pelagicAustral » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

silverquiet wrote: post #523

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…

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…

It was my mother's idea...

Very clearly I have no idea about what goes on in his head, anyone's head for what matters... But when I compare my upbringing with his, I cannot understand how is it that this happen. I had so little, and struggle so much compared to him, and it's him the one giving up on life before even trying? This is thought that hunts me the most.

Feels like giving someone way too much of anything just cripples the process of understanding the struggle as a beautiful part of the process to be something, overcome something, feel something...

All his life has been in front of screens, talking to strangers, bites of information he digests after the digital rendition of a human voice has been transferred from across the internet. There is no beauty in this way of life. No wonder kinds have no feeling for what the world has to offer, unless it's coming from an Instagram influencer.

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

#727

Post by hnuser847 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:09 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 mean, it sounds like your kids are just following the example you set. They're watching you sit in front of a screen as a form of recreation and they're simply doing the same. I think it's also worth noting that your hobbies are solo activities, so even if your kids did want to connect with you in a non-screen hobby, you'd be unavailable anyways. Maybe you could make the first move and invite them to do something outside with you?

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

#728

Post by colloydi » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

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?

I think it's because when we get to know other people IRL what they say is of secondary importance to how we perceive their intentions and motives. These determine how we feel about a person. They're subjective and hard to ascertain on the basis of written text alone.

So as a matter of caution we tend to impute bad motives to people we can't 'feel' clearly which means any textual claims made are subject to unnaturally high levels of scrutiny and demands for evidence/documentation.

Also the internet is forever whilst IRL conversation is throwaway.

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

#729

Post by magic_hamster » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

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. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.

That's not going to fix the echo chambers, divisive conspiracy groups, anti semitic posts and generally all the other terrible uses for online platforms that contribute to the destabilization of our society.

You can't make a social problem go away by telling individuals "if you don't like this problem please avoid it". Similarly, you can't expect to tell people "the effects of methamphetamine are negative for our entire society so please don't partake". For problems that become a state, country or even world problem, something else is needed.

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

#730

Post by 10xDev » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #707

10xDev wrote: post #639

The recent Twitter drama over a use of a word is all you need to see how bad things are. It takes nothing to get a mob of mentally ill people on your case which can have a psychological toll on anyone especially teenagers. And if you try to reason with such people you just get sent down a rabbit hole. We need to have limits on what we allow our brain to process the same way we do for our body with ultra-processed foo…

Is X/Twitter the barometer of how good social media is for us ? Otherwise I find it interesting how people attribute toxic discussions to online media, when the wisdom of our elders were to never talk politics at dinners to avoid having people literally beating each other. We can't be focusing on the absolute worse with the illest use cases, and make it into a societal problem. Looking at our world today, I genuinely…

I only highlighted the tip of the iceberg where the behaviour is not limited to Twitter and wasn't even political. And whether the world is better or not than 3 decades ago is not really the topic here, it is about mental health and how it has become worse over the past decade and whether that can be attributed to social media.