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With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

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Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#131

Post by lsc »

aqsalose wrote: post #118
lsc wrote: post #67

Tuesday, this was the theme at my toastmaster's debate club[1] - I got stuck arguing that social media doesn't make you depressed. And... my problem with my argument wasn't that it was untrue, but that it was kinda mean. I don't feel jealous of the lives of almost anyone I went to high school with; quite the opposite. A lot of them post "racist memes with spelling mistakes" - which is sad on many levels; If nothing e…

>I live in a world where most people I spend time interacting with are smarter and wealthier and more successful than I am on several other axes Maybe this is a relatively rare situation. I'd assume for most people, their FB life and "real" life social spheres coincide quite much. (And because I love speculating, maybe you are the odd one out in your FB circles, the cool successful hacker living in SV and who interac…

>the cool successful hacker living in SV and who interacts daily with the super-smart-super-wealthy people,

That sentence makes me laugh, because when I grew up (and I'm not certain if this is "when" or "where," really.) that could only be said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#132

Post by runT1ME »

wutbrodo wrote: post #31
MIKarlsen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as much as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a fairytale-land for adults, and it's bizzare (to me) that anyone wants to participate. It's not even humblebragging anymore. It's "Look what I made, and what I achieved" packed into casual "Oh this thing? Yeah it's just my perfect life"-packages...

Why would anyone browse LinkedIn? This is actually a serious question. I'm pretty good about keeping mine updated, but the only viewers I'm planning on are recruiters, who would be getting the same information regardless.

Because Facebook/Twitter/Instagram is blocked at a lot of work places, while LinkedIn is not...

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#133

Post by ouid »

Teenagers get depressed when they are in love, their love is unrequited, and they are constantly reminded of that fact. Facebook facilitates all of these conditions. Why is love never mentioned in these studies as a primary motivator in teen suicide?

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#134

Post by pretendscholar »

Findeton wrote: post #103
trendia wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should easily see it. Note, I'm not saying there is an effect, but it's not quite so easy to say we should have found it if it exists. First, there is a delay between radiation exposure and cancer risk (up to ten years). Second, if all population centers experience the same increase in radiation exposure, then it is very difficult to use radiation as an independent variable to measure its impact on cancer. For i…

Non-ionizing radiation, like the one from cell towers or your smartphone (or radio signals, or TV, or even from power lines) does not cause cancer. It just can't cause cancer, as it can't even rip off a single electron from an atom (definition of non-ionizing).

Is that the only vector for cell damage or might there be another one? Seriously asking, I don't know a lot about cell biology.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#135

Post by Lxr »

pmoriarty wrote: post #32
davito88 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correlation does not imply causation

What does imply causation?

Randomised intervention - i.e. randomly selecting a group of people to change their behaviour and comparing to the group that doesn’t change, who ideally receives a placebo. The random part is important, any other type of selection (e.g. observing people who choose to change their own behaviour) doesn’t work, in theory at least.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#136

Post by freehunter »

jimhefferon wrote: post #88
bpicolo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are using smartphones as a replacement for face-to-face interaction. That's not just symptomatic.

Yes. I teach at a college. Every day I see scenes like a couple walking across campus, obviously walking together, but each on their phone instead of talking to each other.

And 100 years ago, your comment would read "I see a couple walking across campus, obviously walking together, but each staring silently at the sidewalk instead of talking to each other".

Not every moment needs to be constantly filled with chatter, and if there's nothing to say, there's nothing to say. Sometimes just the act of physically being near each other is enough.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#138

Post by Momquist »

lumberjack wrote: post #62

Too quick to blame, "the screen". Is it really just the existence of social media that caused this, or is it maybe a change of culture that emerged with the spread of the Internet and social media? For example, today a child from a religious community might encounter atheism at 12 or 13 whereas previously they would encounter it when they went off to college. Maybe that child happens to be suffering from depression a…

I find your example is extremely odd and disturbing. Facing other mindsets and cultures at a young age as a reason, or at least contributing, to depression? That's really a stretch.

Are children also at risk when meeting with other kids of different religions? It could shake their own faith too, by the same logic.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#140

Post by lsc »

whatshisface wrote: post #114
lsc wrote: post #67

Tuesday, this was the theme at my toastmaster's debate club[1] - I got stuck arguing that social media doesn't make you depressed. And... my problem with my argument wasn't that it was untrue, but that it was kinda mean. I don't feel jealous of the lives of almost anyone I went to high school with; quite the opposite. A lot of them post "racist memes with spelling mistakes" - which is sad on many levels; If nothing e…

If you really do look down on your old friends and acquaintances like that (so that you see their posts as all about being poorer and less articulate than you), then you're probably the one making posts that depress them . Imagine yourself as if you went to highschool in the society where you now work (so that now, the people you used to know are twice as educated and lots of them are far more wealthy), or perhaps im…

> If you really do look down on your old friends and acquaintances like that (so that you see their posts as all about being poorer and less articulate than you), then you're probably the one making posts that depress them.

Sometimes, yes, and that is the cause of some negative self-reflection on my part, but I think that there's another factor at work... I think that especially the "racist memes with spelling mistakes' crowd just values different things from what I value. For many of them, they see education as a negative attribute except to the extent that it intersects with income, (this attitude is creeping into HN, I think) and even then... you have to understand that unlike most of the people I work with now, I went to a school where scholastic aptitude was something you hid, if you were smart.

>Imagine yourself as if you went to highschool in the society where you now work (so that now, the people you used to know are twice as educated and lots of them are far more wealthy)

I've wondered what this would have been like. I mean, arrogance has always been with me; and I think I am a lot more aware of my own arrogance than other people are? But a big part of that is that for so many of my friends now, I am 'normal' or maybe even below average - just because they went to really exclusive schools then worked at prestigious places. They have a completely different view of what is normal.

What if I always existed in a world where I wasn't "special"? I imagine I'd be a better person, socially. But maybe not? I dunno.

>or perhaps imagine what it would be like to have stayed in your old town while someone else went to SV!

I... did move back to my hometown for a while. It was... not an experience I care to repeat.

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