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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

#751

Post by natural219 »

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…

Funny. I just tried to post my yearly attempt to communicate with people on Reddit, which got taken down immediately by the auto-moderator.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1c0nuy6/it_is_impos...

It's infinitely sad that there's no place to just connect with people on the internet anymore. My post got 6 comments and a DM within the first minute, before the post got taken down. These people could have been new friends.

I've been through this cycle so many times I have long given up on trying to post on the internet. Logging on to find people and share thoughts only to be met with this massive wall of context and janitorial standards. I gave up like five years ago.

This is to say that the whole debate between "social media causes anxiety" and our landscape of social media causes anxiety makes this debate way too coarse. Getting on the internet between 2005-2012 felt happy, free, and was just a wellspring of community and connection. Post-2013 it's been a nightmarish hellscape on every platform.

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

#752

Post by pc86 »

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…

How many people in their early/mid 20s, let alone teenagers, understand this?

I'm just a few years from 40 and I can still vividly remember a time not too long ago where this was not at all how I thought.

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

#753

Post by hackinthebochs »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #726
silverquiet wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

I suspect the mind is like the immune system, it needs hardship to develop into the best version of itself. Without external assaults that induce the formation of strengthening mitigations, you're left with a system that is dysfunctional, even self-destructive. In the case of minds, we discover meaning through battling and overcoming hardship. A life devoid of hardship is devoid of the impetus to discover personal meaning, which leads to these kinds of empty existences we're seeing much more of.

The last 20 years has seen an intense effort to rid childhood of any hardship whatsoever, while providing a controlled environment where one's formative experiences are managed to a degree as to remove the possibility of any negative circumstances or emotions. But this just optimizes for the wrong thing. A development without challenges, conflicts, hardship, is a stunted development. This society-wide crisis of meaning is only going to grow as we continue down this path towards a hyper-connected world.

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

#754

Post by sibeliuss »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #575
rchaud wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oldest Gen A person is 14yo, I was plenty nihilistic then too, and that was in the golden age of the 90s.

But there's a key difference: If you're a nihilist 14 year old today, you're surrounded by both people and media that are reinforcing your nihilism instead of countering it. So your "nihilism phase" (if you have one) is much more likely to snowball.

In the 90s the pharmaceutical situation was vastly different than today, too.

To be nihilistic today is not cultural, but a manifestation of the 50 different pills one is taking, which are literally killing the spirit, killing ones health, and trapping one in despair, with no escape. Shame. Shame. Shame.

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

#755

Post by kbrackbill »

pksebben wrote: post #746

I'm all about most of this. I disconnected from facestagramitter a while ago, and it was the best thing I've ever done for myself bar none. Got a change of career out of it and a vast improvement in my personal life. But... > Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama’s second term, as the economy was steadily improving? Yes. Yes it did. The bank bailout was one of the worst things to com…

I'm curious, how did disconnecting lead to a career change?

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

#756

Post by anonfornoreason »

firewolf34 wrote: post #150
brailsafe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points here are worth more emphasis. As a chronically unemployed software dev who's burnt out and crashed at least 3 times, I've spent a hell of a lot of time reflecting, and try my best to communicate these ideas to people who have the opposite problem; lots of work, but no new friends since highschool, and desperately single. People tend to rely far too heavily on the easiest way to convince themselves they're…

> My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness. I like this concept, and I feel like I've experienced this as well, but I'm having trouble picturing an example of what you're describing, practi…

Lots of opportunities for friendship in something like jiu jitsu. It's not for everyone, but it's interesting because it is a physically close sport, you get used to basically hugging everyone for a sport, it's both physically and intellectually hard to learn, and there's a common language around it. Easy to identify people at your skill level and meetup for open mats, share videos of techniques, etc.

There's a million examples of this out there, regardless of what you find interesting. Art, music, sport, working out, adventure, travel, computers, flying, whatever.

I find it baffling people keep talking about disappearing third spaces. There's so much opportunity to do interesting things with interesting people!

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

#757

Post by Karunamon »

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.

Trying to get people fired crosses a line into harassment, as far as I'm concerned. But if we are talking about mere words on the screen, nothing else, then you do have the ability to turn the device off and walk away.

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

#758

Post by mixmastamyk »

Aurornis wrote: post #113
mixmastamyk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t have to be a technical ban. Just make it the law and let companies, schools, parents, and kids take their punishment when found to happen. This should be enough for the risk averse to take open devices away from children and bolster parents. It’s not important to stop every possible access, simply that adults have the authority to say no and be supported by society instead of undermined.

> It doesn’t have to be a technical ban. Just make it the law and let companies, schools, parents, and kids take their punishment when found to happen You’re describing a ban.

, without the ID requirements.

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

#759

Post by tithe »

2devnull wrote: post #695

Usenet didn’t have this problem. It’s not being online and interacting with others that’s the problem. It’s the money. And we’ve known that forever.

I wonder how Usenet would have been different if it had supported profile pictures.

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

#760

Post by KaiserPro »

whstl wrote: post #318
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…

> 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.

> It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

if thats the case, then surely it would be reflected in the studies? (assuming that the studies are reproducible....)

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