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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

#941

Post by xnx »

raziel2p wrote: post #245
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 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…

First paragraph is at least (or even more) applicable to cable news and talk radio. The amount of brainrot in the geriatric electorate due to the 8+ hours of daily screentime(/screamtime) they get from "news" hosts has been a disaster for us democracy.

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

#942

Post by maxioatic »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #313
maxioatic wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was about table saws, not circular saws. There’s a big difference between the two. Table saw accidents often result in losing fingers and it’s not that difficult to mess up while using one. There’s a well known, proven, easy solution to table saw accidents called SawStop. It’s basically as obvious to use as a seat belt is if you want to be safe. The only problem is those table saws are very expensive. Social media…

So, if there's not an easy solution, we should de-emphasize the problem?

That’s not what I meant. It’s hard to compare these two problems because one is effectively solved (table saw) and one is not (social media).

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

#943

Post by noduerme »

lucumo wrote: post #600
noduerme wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone is obsessed or drugged to the point that you can't have a rational conversation and they're too angry or volatile to approach with any criticism, then it's not really your fault for coming at them the wrong way. Sometimes caring about someone means showing them that what they think they want is garbage that's hurting them. That will probably hurt their feelings, and they might lash out at you for it, but…

> obsessed I don't know. What one person calls an obsession can easily be called a hobby by someone else. Personally, I like my little obsessions. I like them a lot better than judgemental people in my life. If someone were to start a "rational conversation" with me where they made me feel like I had to justify my "garbage obsession", well, I wouldn't want to talk to them anymore.

I'm not saying such conversations are pleasant or make you like someone, when it's your own life or addictions or obsessions that are being criticized. But I've been on the receiving end of it and I'm willing to listen and consider someone else's perspective and whether it's true and whether I might need to look at reforming my behavior if people are telling me these things. I can deal with harshness if I believe they are the kind of person who isn't doing it to puff themselves up or make themselves feel better, but is simply giving me a cold analysis.

I feel like when your reaction is to detach from that and rely on emotional arguments to say it's emotionally impossible for you to handle the person criticizing you, that's when you've crossed a Rubicon after which nothing anyone says will change your self destructive behavior.

I'm saying this as someone whose two sisters both died from drug abuse in their 20s. Some people tried to reach them with empathy and others with criticism, but it's the point where someone says "I can't listen to this and I won't be subjected to this" that they become a victim in their own head of other people's harshness rather than being able to look objectively at their own state in a way that might let them change course.

In other words, content is more important than style. If you turn off because of style, that's an excuse to avoid thinking about the content. The people I know who survived are the ones who didn't use the style or delivery of the criticism directed at them as an excuse to avoid thinking about and self-reflecting on the content of what was being said.

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

#944

Post by Anotheroneagain »

zarathustreal wrote: post #769
Anotheroneagain wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is full of people who disagree with you, Don't you think it's worrisome that we can't agree on anything? And that includes things that are supposed to have objective answers. Why can't we find the truth? We now have instant global communication available almost 24/7, shouldn't it bring the period of unprecedented unity?

The notion of truth is an illusion, this has been a philosophical debate since the beginning of time. The fact is, every person occupies unique physical space and thus has unique life experiences and a unique perspective of each “event”. It’s the standard multi-sided coin phenomenon. Ask two people standing on opposite sides what is on the face and they’ll give you two different answers and both be right and both be…

I know that you are posing as a teacher, who is sharing knowledge beyond what we would be capable of coming up with ourselves, but this is actually a very primitive thought to us. It's still a very simple thought to understand that the other side of the coin is still there when we're not seeing it, and that the other person is also right. Beyond your comprehension, we can even piece together the objective reality to a profound degree. At least those of us who could avoid the harm that you're doing to us.

Call a more advanced species to take a look, as our intelligence is clearly beyond your comprehension, and you are essentially torturing us here.

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

#945

Post by naasking »

WalterBright wrote: post #78

I find sadly amusing the argument that kids need their phones in school in case of emergency. If the kid has an emergency, the teacher can call the parents. If the parents are having an emergency, the can call the school.

> If the parents are having an emergency, the can call the school.

Let's be real, the last thing a frantic parent in the middle of an emergency wants to deal with is a couple of school bureaucrats while attempting to get in touch with their kid. There are good reasons why everyone adopted cell phone: to increase efficiency of communication.

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

#946

Post by Loic »

ghxst wrote: post #448
Loic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I explain to our kids that it is normal for them to have difficulties with stopping playing or looking at a stream from a social media platform. My explanation is that they are fighting against a team of PhDs optimizing everything to make them addicted. Luckily they all do a lot of sport and have this way disconnected time everyday.

Just want to say I love how simple yet effective this explanation is. Can I ask what age range your kids are in and do they understand this perspective enough that they are aware of it and take steps to avoid it?

They are 11, 15 and 17.

Thanks to the screen time stats from their mobile, they can reflect on the time wasted per week. This works great for the oldest ones, but not for our youngest.

My impression is that getting older is enough for them to start reflecting as we are as adults also struggling. Screentime hygiene is for us a tooic we try to address like mouth hygiene, think about it every day, but do not make a big fuss about it.

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

#947

Post by boomlinde »

imgabe wrote: post #931
boomlinde wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the hazard is just me skulking about and punching you in the back of your head every time you let your guard down, you could strengthen yourself and make yourself immune by never going outside and always keeping your door locked and barring up your windows. How is that inherently preferable to the addressing the harm itself? By what principle do you conclude that we should prefer one over the other whenever possib…

Or we could have the government require that everyone wear a loudspeaker that constantly announces their presence so that nobody can sneak up on anyone. Citizens are required to purchase their own loudspeaker and anyone caught not wearing one will be fined or jailed. Is that what you prefer? On the other hand, if everyone around you was a black belt in jiu jitsu and you knew that there was a good chance that they’d b…

> Or we could have the government require that everyone wear a loudspeaker that constantly announces their presence so that nobody can sneak up on anyone. Citizens are required to purchase their own loudspeaker and anyone caught not wearing one will be fined or jailed.

A much worse solution than e.g. jailing me. It's not everyone who is the problem, neither in my scenario nor in the case of a handful of gigantic social networks exploiting insecurities and addictive tendencies in children.

> On the other hand, if everyone around you was a black belt in jiu jitsu and you knew that there was a good chance that they’d break your arm if you tried to sneak up and punch them, you probably wouldn’t want to do that, would you?

Is that a better solution than jailing me?

Seems we've ended up with three different potential solutions and your principle already isn't holding any water IMO. To bring us back to the problem at hand I can think of an analogous set of three solutions:

1. Make everyone announce their age when they use a social media website so that they know not to exploit children, which is kind of like making everyone wear a loudspeaker. 2. "Harden" the children, which is like teaching everyone jiu jitsu 3. Remove the profit incentive to exploitation of children or otherwise by banning ad funded social networks. This is like jailing the culprit.

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

#948

Post by damsalor »

thefz wrote: post #185
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…

> And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: 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. 100% my reply to any critic of teenage social media, but the parents' stance is always "but then my kid is going to FOMO and feel left out".

The cure to fomo is not participation

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

#949

Post by damsalor »

fire_lake wrote: post #861
gwervc wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You certainly can just throw things out there On 4chan sure, on Reddit absolutely hecking no. On the main subs in French wrongthink comments get deleted super fast, and on one English-speaking about a hobby it's an immediate ban.

Part of this is ok if the sub has specific purpose and bringing all sorts of identity politics (from any perspective) is a distraction from the topic at hand. Similar to how blocking spam is not a free speech issue. The problem is when there are no avenues for controversial discussion left, which would be the case if the tech megacorps controlled every platform (as they nearly do)

Nah. Corps just want money. It’s the politically connected prudes that ruin it for everyone
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