Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

afterbabel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

981–990 of 1001 posts

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

#981

Post by luzojeda »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #834
luzojeda wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's a post in substack. Not an Instagram reel or tiktok video.

The downvotes are interesting to me. Apparently Hacker News readers think Hacker News isn't social media. The ratio of user generated commentary to content on this site is 1000:1. Is Substack social media? I don't know. We can't measure (don't know) what percentage of Jon Haidt's audience came from people who heard about his books or saw him on TV appearances. He should have a dashboard showing what audience comes fr…

Hacker News isn't social media

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

#982

Post by luzojeda »

anonfornoreason wrote: post #756
firewolf34 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 milli…

Paid classes of X never have been or ever will be third places. Because you have to pay a determinate amount to participate. One of the requisites for a place to be a _third_ place is you aren't obligated to spend money (or not a significant amount of it) to stay an amount of time where you can chat and make friends casually. That doesn't mean you can't make friends here but when we talk about third places we mean something else.

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

#983

Post by altpaddle »

lurker616 wrote: post #346
bigfudge wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook already knows how old its users are with a great degree of accuracy. The block does not have to be perfect to be effective at a societal level. Some curious kids may circumvent it. But it would prevent the massive network effect whereby all teen social life is online on platforms that monetize them. Some very large fines for social media companies found providing services to minors would make it impossible t…

Even if Facebook implements these controls, what guarantee do we have that another social app won't come along without these controls? Do we regulate TikTok, Youtube, Snapchat, GroupMe or whatever the latest flavor of the month is as well? There are probably thousands of startups that would jump at the chance to monetize teenagers even if FB were to step aside.

There really aren't that many platforms that 'everyone' uses. So yes you regulate them. Just like we regulate the thousands of bars in the country from allowing minors in

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

#984

Post by makeitdouble »

B56c wrote: post #873
makeitdouble wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a fine question to ask, if the rest of the rethoric wasn't so biased and lacking imagination. Haidt isn't looking into what actually happened during these periods, he's just throwing his hands in the airs preaching "I can’t see a causal path linking X with Y outside of social media". A lot of things have been happening all around the globe that were also fundamentally different from the past, including se…

I like how you had to replace part of Haidt's statement with meaningless variables X and Y because it actually does a great job showing the absurdity of Odgers' suggested causes in the context all the data. Once again: "I just can’t see a causal path by which America’s school shootings, lockdown drills, poverty, or racism caused girls in Australia to suddenly start self-harming or dying by suicide at the same time as…

> Do you really think Haidt is lazily missing a causal link here?

To be honest, no.

It's not lazy, the platform he's writing this has the tagline 'Using moral psychology to explain why so much is going wrong', so morality is at the center, and at the start of his essay he goes "I think it is a very good thing that alarms were rung about teen smoking, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and the exposure of children to sex and violence on TV.", putting smoking, teen pregnancy and actual homicidal behavior at the same level as fictional sex and violence.

I think he's not even playing dumb, and purposefully chooses arguments he has no incentive to properly research, or straight omits the other probable causes he has knowledge of.

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

#985

Post by pas »

tossandthrow wrote: post #334
whstl wrote: post #318

Earlier 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.

> Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have. The parent commenter propose that you can not escape the negative consequences of social media, even if you fully restrain yourself, as you have the second order effects from your friends using it. The parent commenter says that this is not an individual problem and cannot be solved on an individual level. It is a…

Where you put your time/attention/money matters a lot though. For you and your friends/family. And even more for those small(er) alternative services/products/markets/communities.

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

#986

Post by hi41 »

Aurornis wrote: post #121
spxneo wrote: post #82

When we was teenagers we had unrestricted broadband access to the internet but what was missing was the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. WaReZ, KaZaA, Ogrish, CD-Keys, drugs, weapon making tutorials, Mail-order-drugs. This was the wild west days of the internet. You could literally put up anything you could sell anything and everything. Classmates were downloading roms, porn…

> the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. Anecdotally, Instagram ranks much lower than Reddit for causing problems among the young kids I’ve worked with. Reddit is an absolutely cesspool of misinformation, fake stories, propaganda, and rampant doomerism. Scrolling Instagram can’t hold a candle to the militant doomerism that seethes from sites like Reddit. I think it’s an uncomf…

Yes, I felt the same too. You said what has been in my mind but I was unable to articulate it. Sometimes I would be shown random post from extremely distasteful subreddits which I never subscribed to (awefuleverything I think). Sometimes I would get messages from random fake accounts with nude pictures of women asking me I am indeed. I haven’t used Reddit in a while. I used to be addicted to it. At its beginning Reddit represented freedom promised by the internet. Maybe because if that people don’t dis Reddit but focus on Instagram.

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

#987

Post by int_19h »

gwervc wrote: post #703
amplex1337 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Out of curiosity, which hobby is it?

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

#988

Post by m463 »

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…

I remember Larry Niven's science fiction talked about wireheads, who lived with "drouds" wired into their brains' pleasure centers.

But after deleting addicting games/apps for my own good I now realize that reality is not only very complex, but also just as simple as niven's idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)

also: https://news.ycombinator.com :)

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

#989

Post by joshxyz »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #491
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…

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…

your bro is an npc

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

#990

Post by raziel2p »

karaterobot wrote: post #660
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'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. I suspect that a lot of the anxiety about how difficult it would be to quit is the mind's w…

I wrote the comment as someone who doesn't use social media. I still, for example, miss out on important life updates from my friends because media has taught us that it's easier to post a story than to manually select all 10-50 people who might be interested and send it individually.

Your good friends and friendships will survive that, no doubt, but you do lose out on opportunities to make additional or deeper connections.

Post reply on HN