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No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

psycnet.apa.org

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Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#131

Post by mike_hearn »

jjulius wrote: post #80
gotoeleven wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So mental illness rose steeply in girls and not so much in boys since 2012, and more in liberals than conservatives, since 2012 and this is adequately explained by increased reporting requirements?

I'd also ask a similar question about the stark increase in suicide rates, not just mental health.

There is no stark increase. It only looks like an increase because the charts Haidt uses are cropped at a low point. Look at longer term data:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/187478/death-rate-from-s...

The number of suicides now is little different for men to 1990, and is significantly lower than it was in the 1970s.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#132

Post by westurner »

westurner wrote: post #41
joemazerino wrote: post #37

The APA has lost it's credibility some time ago with it's political stances. It doesn't take a researcher to see a correlation between phone time and youth issues.

It takes a professional to determine whether harassing them about their electronics is the actual cause of the behaviors in question.

From "New Mexico: Psychologists to dress up as wizards when providing expert testimony" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40085678 :

> Clean Language

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#133

Post by insane_dreamer »

pembrook wrote: post #112
insane_dreamer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, anecdotal, but as a father of teenage children, there is 0% doubt in my mind that large amounts of social media consumption is detrimental to their development, wellbeing, and academic performance

Nothing says scientific method like "0% doubt in my mind the hypothesis is true."

Looks like you missed the word “anecdotal“ at the start of the sentence.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#134

Post by lamontcg »

oneepic wrote: post #49
Jimpulse wrote: post #10

Jonathan Haidt, who's been driving a lot of the work against social media for kids, directly refutes these findings in this post https://www.afterbabel.com/p/fundamental-flaws-part-3 .

As a layperson who doesn't understand psychology but is interested in science and peace, I felt that Ferguson's article (this HN post) was much less directed at a person (as opposed to the person's work or theories put forward) and more professional, versus the linked blog post -- so I tend to believe the former. Even a simple sentence like, "Ferguson did both of these things and his findings thus do not “undermine”…

> so I tend to believe the former.

That's an extremely poor way to determine truth.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#135

Post by lamontcg »

ergonaught wrote: post #129
ghusto wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every parent already knows this. I wonder why they're trying to disprove it so badly?

Because almost everything "everyone knows" is actually false. As in my own anecdote, our kids probably need better friends. It may not be their social media time that causes problems, but their friend groups coupled with their current state of neurological/psychological development. ex: I don't have enough information to reliably conclude that "social media" causes their problems. If they had better friends, "social…

> Because almost everything "everyone knows" is actually false.

So, jump off a 10-story building with no means of breaking your fall and see how it goes for you.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#136

Post by kpmcc »

I think a useful framing might be to compare social media to drugs. Many people do various sorts of drugs. Some people can do some drugs and not have their lives destroyed by said drugs. Other people have their lives upended by some drugs, sometimes the same ones that other people do without such serious consequences. We recognize that not all drugs are equivalent and recognize that they need to be taken seriously, limited, or prohibited outright.

Many people, and clearly many teenagers are able to use social media and not be all that harmed. For some, that's clearly not the case.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#137

Post by myrmidon »

pfdietz wrote: post #21
lazyeye wrote: post #12

Memories of tobacco "researchers" claiming the science linking smoking to cancer is inconclusive.

So, where is the equivalent of cancer-in-animals experiments for social media? Also, if putative negative effects from social media exposure were as strong and unambiguous as lung cancer in smokers, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I would argue that negative effects from social media must be expected to be much harder to detect, because they would/could only manifest in changed behavior (possibly long-term!), and given how pervasive social media has become there is not even a good baseline for studies.

Picture e.g. social media exposure having a long-term negative effect on ability to focus, motivation to learn/work/self-improve and general satisfaction/self-image/outlook-- these are all somewhat plausible, and could be extremely difficult to isolate in studies.

Regarding smoking in particular: Imagine there being absolutely zero cancer/physical health effects, everything else being exactly equal. Would that make it okay to you? Because to me, it absolutely would NOT-- a society that allows under-age persons to become strongly addicted to something, handing corporations a convenient metaphorical straw to suck money out of them for the rest of their lives-- that is a society that has failed their offspring, to me. And social media (give its addictiveness and value extraction via ads etc.), is basically in exactly that situation already.

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