I consider social media to be like a weapon; it is you who should decide what and how to do with it. However, nowadays, social intelligence is reaching a new low level among parents themselves. The person who should guide them in the right way is actually on the wrong path. I have seen my niece and nephew, and it's not their fault. When I visit them and interact with them; I never see them asking for a phone or laptop. However, my brother and sister-in-law are always busy, either with work, household chores, or on their phones, which creates a gap between child and parent. Consequently, I feel they find other ways to fill their time, eventually becoming addicted. Simply put, if we give them time, correct resources, and guidance, I don't think they will use it more than intended.
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
#972Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 spen…
I rarely ever watch videos on my PC so that's definitely not a concern. I do make videos from time to time though :shrug:
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#973Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying things that were obvious scientific facts 5 years ago are now controversial and can now get you fired from your job -- and people are more gung-ho than ever to seek out anyone who says something "wrong" and try to ruin their life over it. That's why I don't speak my opinions to anyone other than people I'm close with.
What are these obvious scientific facts? Being honest I've only ever heard people complain about not being able to say "obvious scientific facts" in reference to specific beliefs about transgender or gay people.
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Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#974Earlier 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…
> The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility I think the actual biggest problem with "Redditization" is not hostility, but instead the fact that there is really no dialogue. There's no back and forth discussion, at least not with the same actual individual. You post a comment and ( maybe but usually not ) get a reply, then if you reply to that reply, the next reply in thread wi…
For me, this seems to be the best possible explanation on the effects of `Redditization`. Here you're actually losing the step-by-step conversation with the timestamp coded texts, replies are usually like just broadcasting their thought process (instead of an having an actual coherent reply format) or just spitting something so that the gratification of having something written there.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#975Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit is not hostile as long as you only parrot back ideas that the hive mind agrees on. And the reward system is mis-aligned. I'd call it a Twitterification, because the karma points are awarded to succinct, snarky/funny conversation-ending quips. Nobody has time or attention span to debate an issue, and even if you did you risk being shut out of the group for wrongthink.
I would say the same thing is true for hackernews, and any other public square platform. For hn, it's even more interesting because the "wrongthink shutout" is packaged in intellectualism. But you see it more pronounced on the edges. Good examples are posts that discuss climate breakdown.
I see a lot more civil and rational disagreement here. The liberal politics are more popular, but there's a healthy conservative voice too. I don't see anything wrong with using intellectual methods to be persuasive, I mean, what are the alternatives?
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#976Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 spen…
I rarely ever watch videos on my PC so that's definitely not a concern. I do make videos from time to time though :shrug:
Sure, YouTube was just an example. The broad point being that your kids likely aren't going to be classifying your computer time as educational/professional/leisure. They just know it's time spent on a computer.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#977Earlier quoted context omitted.
what pregnancy & violence has to do with mental disease? sure some correlation but it's not the staple in many cases... depression & suicide among kids/teens ARE increasing over time. now if that's ONLY because social media is another mild take, too https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/
I was responding to the second paragraph in the original article, in which the author gives opinions on the success of other initiatives based around moral panics. If you wanna know what’s going on with kids and mental illness and suicide, ask almost any social worker and they will straight up tell you how kids don’t have any hope and often have extremely minimal support. My generation is depressed and anxious for co…
so?
sex education is still being developed by pedagogy workers... you can't skim old practices as what's now & how important that is!
heck, we even have teens using vapes... i mean, who knows the benefits of some substances from the tobacco plant but if you truly think you need some of them, at least eat it, not smoke (& maybe this discernment escapes teens maturity and maybe they can't buy pure nicotine or whatever that easily)
alarmism may or not causes scientists to study something... curiosity isn't always driven by popular interests and the author just cited that as an example and don't correlate those with the main topic, which in case of violent media, i think they should [0] [1] & [2]
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704015/ [1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-2-151.pdf [2] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2020.29205....
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#978Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on where you live and maybe for how long. For me for example, I live in the city in an apartment. I go out in the morning to buy bread. It is 50% likely I will meet someone from my neighborhood and chat for a minute or just say hi. If I really want to chat a little, I will go to one of the other small shops next to me and buy a beer/coffee and talk with the owner or whoever is outside the store. Because I wor…
you live somewhere in europe i assume?
Haha I was thinking the exact same thing. No way is this a city where I come from
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#979Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 opinion. This is something it's taken me a while to come to terms with. I used to want to fully engage with everybody and everything. It was anathema to me to just "br…
I'm curious. You say what to say. What's the incentive to do this? Educate people or...?
> What's the incentive to do this?
That is no doubt one of life's mysteries, ultimately, but people writing down their thoughts seems to be a common practice amongst humans. One theory is that it helps the brain process information, but who knows? No matter the exact mechanism, though, the incentive is the same as why anyone writes something they are thinking about down.
> Educate people
Forum-going is a solitary activity. There are no people other than you. Just you and your thoughts, along with some software to prompt you with some ideas to think about (which is the value-add over a traditional journal).
And that is the problem with the 'Redditization' of the world being discussed. That solitary activity, which is fine when done in solitude – whatever floats your boat, is leaking out into the real world where other people are there to feel it and that has consequences. An increasing number of people are failing to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, thereby treating people in the real world as if they are software. But people are not software, so you find these social issues emerging.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#980Earlier 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…
Conversation is muted because the vast majority of the things I want to add to the conversation are in the top 5 upvoted comments.
Which is funny as the top five comments all fell into the exact trap that the original comment was about – confusing people with software.
Which, to be fair, isn't surprising. If so many people weren't confusing people with software the original comment would have not been posted in the first place. We are here because that confusion has become so commonplace.