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Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

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Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#41

Post by cies »

rob74 wrote: post #32
cies wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C-level execs of SM companies heavily limit access to these services for their own children. They know much better than the general public knows by publicly available research. To them it's a cash cow, and who has the minds of the kids has the future. TikTok ans SnapChat specifically entered the market by attracting attention of ever younger users.

> execs of SM companies heavily limit access to these services for their own children. Well, any responsible parent should do that actually...

Sure. But not every parent is that responsible. The SM companies are very big and rely on ads to fill their pockets.

I really believe we need govt to step in to protect children. For example: make it forbidden to show ads to youngsters. That will take some incentive away.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#42

Post by XorNot »

Tier3r wrote: post #3
aurizon wrote: post #2

Ever read, 'Lord of the flies', written ages ago - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies Now with social media we have all manner of bullying, both from the local peer group as well as any good/bad/perverted person who can type, ' yes, I am a 13 year old girl, just like you' Those who weather this are scarred by it, but those who do not are often crushed by it, badly scarred, even prompted to death. It woul…

Counterpoint: How much of these novels are imaginative paranoia driven by cynical consumers? The closest similar incident - the Tongan castaways (granted they were aged 13 - 19 instead of 6 - 12) had the boys create a more or less exemplary society. They worked in teams, hunted and fish, created instruments to sing songs - no where even close to what happened in the novel.

A thought this has always bothered me: people tell you to read fiction to "learn about the human condition". But, well, it's fiction - people make it up, and (2) whatever insights you imagine might be gleaned are tempered through a very specific lens: that of fiction authors.

It's hardly a representative cross-section of society.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#43

Post by krapp »

deafpolygon wrote: post #15

Short answer: yes. Long answer: yes. It's interesting to see people deny this over and over, as they bask in the cold glow of their phone's screens.

It's interesting to see people who are supposed to be intellectually biased, worldly and skeptical fall for propaganda and moral panic simply because their hatred of the modern web and popular culture blinds them to what should be obvious attempts to manipulate them as a pretext to regulate and control free speech and expression.

Whenever you're presented with a narrative of breathless hyperbole and fear about "the children" you should at least question the motives behind it, especially when the implied response is "the government needs to do something." To me this sounds little different than the satanic panic or child sex cult fears of the 1980s. Did such things exist? Sure. Was there a satanic child molester hiding behind every bush? No. The whole thing was a fear-driven campaign purposely blown out of proportion in order to justify increased authoritarianism by the justice system and to demonize and harass the gay population. And of course the entire thesis of the article is that Section 230 is harmful and social media should be regulated by the government "for the children."

Bad Thing(tm) is corrupting the morals of the youth and driving them to depression and suicide and something must be done. Where have we heard this before?

Are there people so addicted to and emotionally harmed by social media that it drives them to suicide? Probably. Can social media have negative effects on mental health? Sure. Is it leading to a "teen suicide crisis?" No, that's an obviously emotionally-driven phrase intended to frighten and manipulate people. Is the answer to have the government use its monopoly on violence to regulate speech on the web? Absolutely not.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#44

Post by jcbrand »

wodenokoto wrote: post #39

I seem to vaguely remember from literature history in high school that during - I wanna say - the romance, there were some poems and novels that also sparked a suicide epidemic.

Yes, there was a spike in suicides after Goethe published his first novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther).

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/04/22/the-werther-effect...

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#45

Post by cjs_ac »

bko wrote: post #35
jl6 wrote: post #28

Suicide is the extreme tip of the iceberg, and thankfully still rare. But the rest of the iceberg, comprising teens suffering mental health and body image issues - not to the point of suicide, but still serious - is staggering. Teens are self-medicating and sorting themselves into echo chambers that reinforce their negative feelings, entering an illness-to-identity pipeline, where they cannot see any other way of bei…

This may be an unpopular opinion but I believe the constant focus on what we call mental health and body image issues is making the problem worse. I know those words are supposed to alleviate stigma and normalize, but if you're telling kids going through regular adolescent issues that they have mental health or body image issues, you're not helping them. And naval gazing is going to make things worse. Maybe I'm a pro…

When I was a teacher, I noticed this too: the more we talked about mental health, the more cases of anxiety our school counsellors saw. Perhaps some of that was simply awareness. But adolescence is also a time of experimentation with one's identity, and I fear we've allowed 'anxiety' to become an identity we offer to them to try on for size.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#46

Post by harryf »

bko wrote: post #35
jl6 wrote: post #28

Suicide is the extreme tip of the iceberg, and thankfully still rare. But the rest of the iceberg, comprising teens suffering mental health and body image issues - not to the point of suicide, but still serious - is staggering. Teens are self-medicating and sorting themselves into echo chambers that reinforce their negative feelings, entering an illness-to-identity pipeline, where they cannot see any other way of bei…

This may be an unpopular opinion but I believe the constant focus on what we call mental health and body image issues is making the problem worse. I know those words are supposed to alleviate stigma and normalize, but if you're telling kids going through regular adolescent issues that they have mental health or body image issues, you're not helping them. And naval gazing is going to make things worse. Maybe I'm a pro…

To me at 51, looking back at my own experiences, I think the things we tell ourselves work in a similar fashion to software; programming our identity.

The first "programmers" are our parents. Classic negative tropes like a parent saying "you'll never amount to anything" run in a loop in our brains for many years until finally that program expires (typically around mid life). In turn a negative identity will effect you in all areas of life, from how you interact with people to even your physical posture.

Perhaps the lowest level of "programming" you can do to yourself is the mantra - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra - you could see this like assembly language, and humanity has known about this for a very long time.

So yes, giving teenagers labels which they identify with and repeat to their friends has a reinforcing aspect to it. And social media has played a very significant role in providing those labels.

To me an interesting thing about TikTok in particular, compared to Instagram, is I think TikTok users are more concerned with the question "who am I?" vs Instagram which is more about "this is me" (telling the world who you are). That's what's made TikTok more popular as, especially when you're young, trying to figure yourself out is a major pre-occupation.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#47

Post by cultureswitch »

Tier3r wrote: post #3
aurizon wrote: post #2

Ever read, 'Lord of the flies', written ages ago - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies Now with social media we have all manner of bullying, both from the local peer group as well as any good/bad/perverted person who can type, ' yes, I am a 13 year old girl, just like you' Those who weather this are scarred by it, but those who do not are often crushed by it, badly scarred, even prompted to death. It woul…

Counterpoint: How much of these novels are imaginative paranoia driven by cynical consumers? The closest similar incident - the Tongan castaways (granted they were aged 13 - 19 instead of 6 - 12) had the boys create a more or less exemplary society. They worked in teams, hunted and fish, created instruments to sing songs - no where even close to what happened in the novel.

Having been on the receiving end of actual real-life bullying from 90% of my peers (the other 10% being bystanders) through high school because I was younger (among other things), I can tell you that Lord of the Flies is in some ways depicting the kids as less cruel than real kids are.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#48

Post by cultureswitch »

bsenftner wrote: post #37
dancc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read 1984? It's quite useful for discussing the state of the real world.

"Brave New World" is what happened, while we all feared "1984".

The parallels between real life and Brave New World are positively uncanny.

Even the demographic dynamics of the real world suggest that we're on the path to a state-driven reproductive system.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#49

Post by hyperG »

bko wrote: post #35
jl6 wrote: post #28

Suicide is the extreme tip of the iceberg, and thankfully still rare. But the rest of the iceberg, comprising teens suffering mental health and body image issues - not to the point of suicide, but still serious - is staggering. Teens are self-medicating and sorting themselves into echo chambers that reinforce their negative feelings, entering an illness-to-identity pipeline, where they cannot see any other way of bei…

This may be an unpopular opinion but I believe the constant focus on what we call mental health and body image issues is making the problem worse. I know those words are supposed to alleviate stigma and normalize, but if you're telling kids going through regular adolescent issues that they have mental health or body image issues, you're not helping them. And naval gazing is going to make things worse. Maybe I'm a pro…

I think it is a tough balancing act.

I am a product of the 90s also. I was severely depressed all through high school and probably could have been helped in some way.

Instead I got nothing. Just suffered in silence and I didn't even know I was depressed. Any statistics from the 90s on mental health I wouldn't be counted in other than being a mentally healthy, happy, normal kid even though nothing could be further from reality.

Re: Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?

#50

Post by asyx »

jl6 wrote: post #28

Suicide is the extreme tip of the iceberg, and thankfully still rare. But the rest of the iceberg, comprising teens suffering mental health and body image issues - not to the point of suicide, but still serious - is staggering. Teens are self-medicating and sorting themselves into echo chambers that reinforce their negative feelings, entering an illness-to-identity pipeline, where they cannot see any other way of bei…

I think we overshot from „mental illness ignored or undetected in childhood last until adulthood and a lot of suffering could have been prevented if treated in childhood“ to what you describe. The intentions are good but I think nobody could have expected that this turns teenagers into mental illness collectors.
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