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Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

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Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#111

Post by crate_barre »

germinalphrase wrote: post #22

My entirely anecdotal impression as a high school teacher is that media (in general, often but not always “social” media) is doing an exceptional job of sucking up teenagers’ every waking moment that is not actively demanded to be focused on something else. It’s pleasure without joy. Ennui without boredom. Their social skills (and social interest) appear markedly reduced even compared to even five years ago. So many…

How do you differentiate what you are saying versus what people have always said about reading comic books all day, or playing video games all day, watching tv, listening to certain music, spending all your time on the internet, etc?

Life is boring as fuck. It really is. It takes a lot to keep a human captivated.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#112

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

WalterSear wrote: post #102
javajosh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: how do the "weird ones" do? The outsiders, contrarians, the ones who don't quite fit in and who might even take pleasure in not caring about social media?

They all found each other online :(

Finding the weird people like me online was really good for me!

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#113

Post by bigDinosaur »

XorNot wrote: post #81
germinalphrase wrote: post #22

My entirely anecdotal impression as a high school teacher is that media (in general, often but not always “social” media) is doing an exceptional job of sucking up teenagers’ every waking moment that is not actively demanded to be focused on something else. It’s pleasure without joy. Ennui without boredom. Their social skills (and social interest) appear markedly reduced even compared to even five years ago. So many…

Insert Socrates quote here. What adults think they understand about current trends in teenage culture were laughably wrong when I was a teenager, and there's no reason to think the trend has changed.

I'd normally agree, but in this case I think a lot of us in the older generations are realising we're also being affected. I certainly am, it's not just the teenagers.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#114

Post by CamperBob2 »

XorNot wrote: post #81
germinalphrase wrote: post #22

My entirely anecdotal impression as a high school teacher is that media (in general, often but not always “social” media) is doing an exceptional job of sucking up teenagers’ every waking moment that is not actively demanded to be focused on something else. It’s pleasure without joy. Ennui without boredom. Their social skills (and social interest) appear markedly reduced even compared to even five years ago. So many…

Insert Socrates quote here. What adults think they understand about current trends in teenage culture were laughably wrong when I was a teenager, and there's no reason to think the trend has changed.

Usually I'd agree, and happily ignore this new moral panic the way I've ignored all the others that, as predicted, eventually fizzled out into irrelevance.

It's possible that this time it's different. We mark the adoption of movable type as a watershed in Western civilization, in the sense that it changed how people relate to their churches and their governments as well as how they experienced science, art, and culture. The Internet is a far bigger deal than movable type was. Anyone who says they know exactly what its effects will be on teenagers or on any other demographic or institution is blowing smoke.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#115

Post by remarkEon »

javajosh wrote: post #100
remarkEon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Strongly disagree, when has society ever decided less access to information is ideal? The trick social media companies use is convincing people that all they're doing is giving people access to "information". They are not; they're just creating addiction machines. It should be self evident that wikipedia or a minimalist blog with a comment box is in an entirely different solar system from facebook's algorithm that k…

First, nice Neal Stephenson reference, second, you're right to challenge the notion that banning social media is equivalent to banning information. It's about time-scale. I figure my kids can and should read anything they want in book form. But they cannot and should not see anything they want from the internet. The time-scale of the internet is too short, the quality of information (particularly commentary) is very…

Beautifully put. Time-scale is what we're kind of dancing around when we talk about information consumption. When I was in high school, it was easy to sit, alone, with my calculus text book and devour everything free of distractions. I can't imagine what it's like to try to learn something like that in today's environment, where your time is a zero-sum game of attention manipulation. Now, I'm not saying we should all become luddites or something, and make our kids start from scratch with technology ... but ... there is at least some wisdom in that perspective. I do wonder if my (and by the looks of it some others' here) recent hostility to technology is because I'm a millennial, so my experiences with it straddle the analog-to-digital transformation and I can actually remember how things used to be.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#116

Post by bigDinosaur »

jamesssssss833 wrote: post #17
majormajor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link discusses it being international, not just American. I'm also curious how "coddling" would describe social media.

In my mind they intellectually coddle users by providing an echo chamber where they can spout their ideas to a group chosen specifically of people who will agree with them.

Is that different compared to teenage social groups of the past?

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#117

Post by multiplegeorges »

misc213 wrote: post #110

We could start by trying to take the magic out of how social media sites decide what to display. Content delivery algorithms can be very effective at imparting a lasting impact on users that carries away from the platform. If content delivery algorithms were open sourced it could add a healthy check to the ecosystem.

How? Implicit in this request is the expectation that the platforms would accept changes and merge them into production. I don't see why they would.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#118

Post by paulpauper »

dpweb wrote: post #84

What bothers me most and even on HN, where you usaully get intelligent discourse, the alarmist pessimism. Everything is falling apart! Just another form of self-indulgence. There must be something compelling about pretending the apocolypse is tomorrow. Yes, there are problems in our social, political, ecomonic systems. They need to be recognized and addressed. Democracy makes that process slow and difficult. But the…

optimistic posts can do well here too. it depends on what catches peoples attention and gets voted to the front page.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#119

Post by ginger2016 »

ginger2016 wrote: post #5

Haidt wants to censor the speech he doesn’t like; he is pining for the old order. His main talking point is Diversity and Equity is bad. He even suggests diversity is bad. Watch this video from mid point. https://youtu.be/RKRuvKtFvqo

I tried listening to more of his arguments after people thought I am misinterpreting his comments on diversity. What about this podcast?, In this he is wishing America was more like Scandinavia. No issue?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/jonathan-haidt-why-i-change...

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#120

Post by s1artibartfast »

FFRefresh wrote: post #93
twayt wrote: post #60

Is it really social media itself that's the major contributing factor? Or is it really that people are using social media as a distribution channel to propagate negative, defeatist beliefs en mass in response to the natural challenges teens face when growing up? I think it is the latter. One has but to open TikTok to quickly come across a video instilling negative beliefs about the opposite sex with tons of commenter…

I have a somewhat similar question. Don't get me wrong, I don't think moving more of teen social life onto the internet and less in the physical world is going to lead to happiness, so I agree on principle. But this obsession with social media in particular as the cause of all ills seems overblown. I am a huge fan of Jonathan Haidt, and think he's done a great job in explaining some of the cultural shifts going on, a…

I think there are powerful second order or related effects here. There is both what screens and social media replace, and what they enable.

This is the most risk adverse, most monitored, and most policed generation of Americans.

I think this results in less freedom to experiment, explore, grow, and find happiness.

In about 25 years we have gone from teens behavior being largely untraceable, to them being reachable by cellphones, to the majority of their behavior and communication being recorded and available for later scrutiny.

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