Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by nandhinianand » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

tgv wrote: post #167

paxys wrote: post #68

Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment that teenagers have lived through their entire lives. Multiple major recessions, a global pandemic, rising inflation, housing and education getting more expensive by the day, prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation, climate that will be unlivable in a few decades, political extremism becoming the norm, and massive gov…

> Multiple major recessions One. They lived through one major recession, and here it wasn't really major, and is not something they lived through recently. They were younger than 6 when it started. I've lived through two. The 80s weren't a happy time, and there are no signs that that had such an impact on teen mental health. If it did, it would be proof that the impact of a major recession is temporary. > prospect of…

>Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often.

Here's a question for me to understand where you're coming from and you to examine your assumptions. How does "too aware" get defined? Who defines it? I am an 80s kid(though grew up in India) and seen some issues myself, but can't claim I am worse off for knowing what I did. And to be clear, I didn't have internet till the start of the millenium and relied on books, radio and newspapers and I still was more about the state of the world i was to inherit than my parents.

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

#182

Post by Semaphor » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

tgv wrote: post #167

paxys wrote: post #68

Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment that teenagers have lived through their entire lives. Multiple major recessions, a global pandemic, rising inflation, housing and education getting more expensive by the day, prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation, climate that will be unlivable in a few decades, political extremism becoming the norm, and massive gov…

> Multiple major recessions One. They lived through one major recession, and here it wasn't really major, and is not something they lived through recently. They were younger than 6 when it started. I've lived through two. The 80s weren't a happy time, and there are no signs that that had such an impact on teen mental health. If it did, it would be proof that the impact of a major recession is temporary. > prospect of…

> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt.

We have other issues here, though (speaking for the situation in Germany). I’m quite some time out of my teens at 36, but for many years now I’ve been told that all that tax (technically not a tax) I pay for my pension will not result in me getting any meaningful pension.

For people who are currently teenagers it probably sounds like this: "Once you get a job, which won’t afford you a house, you’ll pay a decent chunk of your salary so the people who managed to destroy the environment and don’t care about you have a better end of life. You’ll not see anything of this money ever again."

And that is without including all the messaging during the pandemic that young people (more towards people in their early 20ies, but still) are at fault for nearly everything.

edit: I should mention that I’m still not discounting social media, I couldn’t, as I know next to nothing about it.

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

#183

Post by abyssin » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #142

silisili wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar, but different. I don't let my child use social media at all, and limited to 30 mins screen time total a day. She's excluded in that all her friends use TikTok, and she can't. Maybe it's for the best. My parents used to say 'if all your friends jumped off a bridge...', and I hated it, so I haven't used that one yet. I'm trying to rely on actual merits instead of follower cliches.

I’ll tell you that’s how my parents were about some stuff. Excluding me from stuff my peers were doing because they thought they knew best. They were mostly wrong and I don’t really talk to them today. Better hope you’re right.

On the other hand, my parents didn’t let me watch TV or play video games and I’m thankful for it. I didn’t talk to them for a few years, but today I’ve accepted many of their flaws and can better focus on what they can bring to my life. As a parent myself, I’m not too sure about the best course of action, but I sure believe I want to introduce my kids progressively to activities that require a lot of knowledge about themselves not to be harmful.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #68

Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment that teenagers have lived through their entire lives. Multiple major recessions, a global pandemic, rising inflation, housing and education getting more expensive by the day, prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation, climate that will be unlivable in a few decades, political extremism becoming the norm, and massive gov…

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by agumonkey » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

I don't know how much is true but it seems the web makes too many things too heavy available too early and often.

You see kids discussing existential concepts, business, .. at 13yo. I'm not sure previous generation were focused on these instead of just coasting along for fun. It's nice to make people more mature but too early and too much seems a failure.

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

#186

Post by abdel_nasser » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

DrSiemer wrote: post #145

abdel_nasser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly. the equation has changed. people who dont fit in are now even more fucked. everyone is obligated to play this high stakes game that nobody asked for and that wasnt filtered through any kind of intelligent societal deliberation. nobody seems to be worried that kids make the rules in public schools, they bully each other viciously and kids who graduate from the system cant point to the country of portugal on a…

But most of them become very skilled in navigating the social media landscape, which is what actually matters to them. And the people that don't fit in will usually put more energy in other ways to express themselves and have a much higher chance of becoming Truly Interesting People, if they make it through that pressure cooker. It's tough and I'm glad I'm not a part of it, but it's not the end of all cohesion in soc…

they will be skilled at something although im not sure it will be anything to do with socializing. and saying that outcasts will just be more likely to blossom because of it is just speculation.

at a certain point in history man began to eat plants and adopt a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. there were many people who were made sick by eating plants and very little meat or fat. very, very sick. there are still echos of it in the population today. was it a positive thing for all the skills of the past to be thrown away and a large chunk of people to be sacrificed because they werent compatible with the new way? sometimes a societal shift eliminates an entire class of people. youre wrong because you try to paint it like its zero sum for all classes of people. in reality, if it is zero sum its only because what we lose in sacrifice we gain in progress. can you believe this has been going on for ten thousand years and still it doesnt really have a name?

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

#187

Post by manholio » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:59 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #134

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the possibility that this perspective might be less a reflection of reality and more a reflection of the media environment.

A lot of that list is pure fact: Multiple major recessions —> 2008 was biggest since 1929. Dunno about multiple a global pandemic —> this happened and is still happening rising inflation —> objectively true. Though I suspect the oncoming recession will quash it as in 2008 housing and education getting more expensive by the day —> huge house and education price increases in past decade, far outstripping inflation pros…

I lived my teen years in a collapsing post-communist economy, with hyperinflation (the kind that can add 4 zeros to prices in a span of a few years), massive unemployment and deep real-wage reduction. My mother struggled with a minimum wage that translated to about 80 dollars and two children, well bellow the absolute poverty line, and my father was mostly absent. In my high school and first year at the university, there were frequent days were I had almost nothing to eat at home and most days I had no cash at all, not even to buy a bread roll or pay for some copies of lecture material - so I copied them by hand. Wore the same clothes for years, passed down from my elder brother.

To put it in perspective, the political polarization around me was leading people to violence orders of magnitude larger than the events of January 6, with multiple governments toppled by angry crowds, inter-ethnic violence, workplace harassments of dissenters. Don't even start me on the state of the environment.

Yet, when I look back, my teen memories are not about poverty, hunger or political turbulence. That was just the way things were, we adapted. I had my ragtag crew in which I was accepted. We just didn't care about politics or the environment all that much.

The most vivid good or bad memories that I hold all have to do with social interaction, acceptance or rejection and public humiliation. We certainly didn't exhibit, as a generation, the signs of a mental disease epidemic, the fist time I heard about a suicide in my age cohort was of a fellow student in the later years at one of most competitive universities in the country.

Don't get me wrong, this economic enviroment devastated adults, and we had some of the highest levels of suicide and alcoholism in the world. But it just didn't affect us teens specifically, because we had no earlier reference to how things were supposed to be.

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

#188

Post by trophycase » Thu, May 05, 2022, 6:00 AM UTC

nandhinianand wrote: post #179

paxys wrote: post #68

Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment that teenagers have lived through their entire lives. Multiple major recessions, a global pandemic, rising inflation, housing and education getting more expensive by the day, prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation, climate that will be unlivable in a few decades, political extremism becoming the norm, and massive gov…

Came here to say this... Social media is not the cause.. It's the light that illuminates(and sometimes exaggerates/highlights) the terrible ills of the current modern world problems we live in.

This is such a terrible take. The "ills" of the modern world aren't that bad in terms of actually affecting your day to day. I guarantee unplugging and just going outside would make 99% of teens much much happier.

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

#189

Post by jvvw » Thu, May 05, 2022, 6:00 AM UTC

sibeliuss wrote: post #178

rektide wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed a whole lot. Social media is the new whipping boy, but no one is willing to confront that much of what it shows us is a genuine & real reflection, is just connecting us more accurately to the real state of things. I think there's an incredible resillience especially in youth to not get bogged down in or at least to tangle with & find peace with the sad scary backdrop of the world. When they have elememts of ho…

This is an easy thing to test: 1. Kid seems happy, does stuff 2. Kid gets phone for birthday 3. Kid seems sad, and no longer does anything other than sit in his room scrolling through tiktok It's an extraordinarily depressing situation and anyone who denies this obvious truth is DELUSIONALLY BLIND

Most kids here get phones around 9/10 when they start walking to and from school alone, so before they really start using social media so it isn't a sudden one day they are using it, next day they aren't thing. Also children are changing for other reasons hitting puberty, generally growing older etc, and there is other stuff going on in their lives - cause and effect can be hard to pinpoint. There are also grey areas - is messaging your friends social media? Watching videos on YouTube?

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

#190

Post by fatherzine » Thu, May 05, 2022, 6:04 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #143

silisili wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar, but different. I don't let my child use social media at all, and limited to 30 mins screen time total a day. She's excluded in that all her friends use TikTok, and she can't. Maybe it's for the best. My parents used to say 'if all your friends jumped off a bridge...', and I hated it, so I haven't used that one yet. I'm trying to rely on actual merits instead of follower cliches.

I don't understand such strict screen time limits. As adults everything will be on a screen. Might as well start getting good at it. My kids are I will even let them back on the computer in the evening after dinner if they want to do programming or level editing in Roblox, or make music in garage band, or something else creative.

"As adults everything will be on a screen. Might as well start getting good at it."

With all kindness, this is a bit defeatist. True, chances are they'll spend most of their lives sitting in front of a screen. That's no excuse to skip exercising and neglect physical form. Likewise, they need to develop healthy screen habits, which is stay as far away as humanly possible from screens, or else be devoured by them.