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Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's two major drivers here - scarcity of attention (1) and social distance (2). 1) Your attention on social media is monetized by others, which means there is always something tugging on it like so many street peddlers, in addition to all the 'organic' content made by other users. When there's a shortness of attention, you're always going to be more snippy and inclined to the short pithy retort, instead o…
I think you're on to very good points. One kind of obvious suggestion on how to fix it: We have to grow a culture of more deliberate attention. Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media. But this is not an easy solution. Every social media space is saturated with good content as well as bad. It might become easier if we grow s…
> Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media.
You can't leave everything up to individual decision making or the results are collectively irrational. Notably, dieting and alcoholism are major problems we haven't had much success in addressing on a cultural level. Smoking is probably a better guide given how much rates have dropped in the last century.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#803If 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…
Ugh as a parent I know I need to be doing this, but I'm so bad at it.
I'm going to address you because you sound like a parent as well and I want to seriously discuss the alternatives.
For three hours in the evening 5 days a week plus ~12 hours on weekends at least half of watching kids is almost as engaging as staring at a wall. Keeping them fed, entertained, alive, and healthy can be fun and engaging like rolling around or story time or singing songs, or if she wants help learning about a toy. But the rest of the time I'm just around while she plays semi-independently to make sure nothing dangerous happens and give her validation when she shows me something she did.
Are we just supposed to sit there and stare at the wall for 20 hours a week? When you try to go phone-free what do you... do?
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#804This is a post in a debate between Jonathan Haidt and Candice Odgers. If you look at the meta-analysis cited by both, Haidt cites one which does seem to show a high effect size correlational link between screen time and depression. Odgers cites 4 meta analyses, one of which is actually a meta-meta analysis, which all claim that the effect size on depression and other measures of well-being are small. I'm not quite su…
It's frustrating. Odgers' initial review [0] is clearly inadequate, for all the reasons Haidt outlines in this post: she basically says Haidt has no evidence (simply untrue) and asserts without evidence that youth mental health trends are due to socio-economic problems in the US, when Haidt has long made it clear that the problem is international. Her response either suggests that she's an overly-motivated and sloppy reader/thinker, or outright deliberately dishonest.
On the other hand, Haidt's response is also inadequate, simply because he doesn't really tackle the evidence Odgers cites.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#805The charts in this article are deceptive and cause me to not trust the author. Look at long term teen suicide rates and you will see that suicide rates were quite high around 1990, and then rates dropped until about 2005, and are now on the rise again but have not yet reached 1990 levels (I think). So, the author of this piece wants to make it look like suicides and self harm are on the rise because of social media ,…
They also don't compare with other countries. Social media use isn't unique to America; if it's responsible for teen suicide rates, we'd expect to see similar rises across the globe, but that's not the case.
Obviously, you did not read this article.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#806Earlier 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…
> 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 isn't deemed 100% perfect by those list…
I think the point is that this person has spent so much time experiencing this phenomenon on the internet, that the effects are bleeding into reality.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#807I'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…
Providing rationales for your beliefs is hard work, but it's worth it. I'm not saying you deserve to be bullied, but I have no trouble saying what I think online, and supporting my positions with evidence—admittedly, behind a pseudonym, but that is necessary when one targets violent men for critique, which is 90% of why I bother going online in the first place.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#808The solution is unironically just to do what China does. Create restrictions on how long kids can use the web and what they can use. It won't be perfect but it will be the biggest influence towards better habits and cultural norms.
better habits and cultural norms is not the business of the state to enforce
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#809Earlier 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…
> The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.
The amount of dumb, educated people that blindly accepted everything that was fed to them during the fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.
"Just two weeks to flatten the curve!"
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#810The solution is unironically just to do what China does. Create restrictions on how long kids can use the web and what they can use. It won't be perfect but it will be the biggest influence towards better habits and cultural norms.
Ah but you see the problem with West is that it fears and mistrusts any type of government interference but okay with covert surveillance (because im not a terrorist). The truth is Asian merit based dictatorship has transformed farm lands to economic giants within a generation, stable, peaceful society. Singapore wouldn't be where it is without government intervention. South Korea would've never been able to create S…
fwiw i'm not ok with either overt government interference or covert warrantless surveillance