Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#221

Post by fatneckbeard » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

alexb_ wrote: post #45

There is so much instant dismissal of this entire idea that smartphones are harmful in this thread, most of which is just "correlation is not causation". Yes, correlation does not equal causation. But when it makes logical sense why there would be correlation, there is no way to actually measure causation (we can't exactly give kids placebo phones), we keep seeing the same correlation over and over again, why is it b…

HN prob full of people who make their living off smartphones

reminds me of Oil / coil industry people who dont want to talk abt climate change

never easy to come to terms with your life work has to change or stop.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#222

Post by naasking » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

cauch wrote: post #154

lukeasrodgers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From folks making the correlation vs causation argument here, I would like to hear their rebuttal to the points the author already laid out in this article https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill... , especially the section on quasi experiments. Do we just think that because it is probably impossible to conduct pure double-blind RCTs in human populations, it is therefore impossible to reasonably…

My rebuttal would be: it is not impossible to attribute causality, and THIS IS THE PROBLEM. Right now, there are two identically possible situations (well, even more, but you get the jest): A) smartphone -> depression B) depression -> smartphone But the author does not do a good job in explaining why he choose A instead of B, except "it feels logical to me". It feels like a coin toss. (and sure, the author has some a…

> Right now, there are two identically possible situations (well, even more, but you get the jest):

This is misleading. They are not "identically possible", which I assume to mean that you think they are "equally plausible". There is more evidence for smartphones and social media causing issues, because we don't see those declines until after the smartphone is introduced, regardless of age.

Furthermore, other factors causing both depression and social media use would have to be cross-cultural because the issue is global. Other than social media, what factors do you know of are cross-cultural? Guess what, they eliminated most of them in prior articles.

Haidt and co have published multiple articles going over the data and the possibilities, so I recommend reading them all before claiming the situation is so murky.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#223

Post by maxdoop » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

So many comments here are of the belief that "it's not the phones, it's the doom of the real world! Climate change, inflation, recession -- this is all bad for mental health of our kids."

And I just want to ask if any of these people every met any real child.

Imagine you are 14. You hear the climate isn't doing too hot, but then you pull out your phone and see your classmate getting tons of attention for some post he made on social media. Meanwhile, your own post has barely any likes.

Which is going to bother you more? Climate change, or the social media sadness?

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#224

Post by jstarfish » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #150

How much of that is correlation vs causation? I don't see anything in that article mentioning obvious causes for worse mental health: - employment perspectives - even my generation that graduated right in the financial crisis knew we were in for rough, low-pay and crap job years, kids graduating these days have even worse perspectives - the looming climate crisis - everyone paying attention in a school that teaches f…

> employment perspectives - even my generation that graduated right in the financial crisis knew we were in for rough, low-pay and crap job years, kids graduating these days have even worse perspectives

This is such bullshit.

Everybody's first job is shit. My first job paid $5 an hour; In-N-Out is paying over 3x that to start. Truly a Dickensian tale of woe.

Then we had to rack up 5 figures in tuition debt to get a shot at that six-figure income. Companies are now relaxing degree requirements.

Housing is expensive, yes. The idea of having roommates to split the bills is unfathomable though.

If anything, the kids get disillusioned by the prospect of work itself. Why bother when some annoying loudmouth is showing off his mansions and exotic cars he bought with money he earned being annoying on YouTube? Anything short of being a professional influencer is unacceptable.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#225

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

This situation has been well known for years. It isn't news to any of us.

So why aren't we learning more about the problem? Why are we just beating the same dead horse instead of investigating further?

There is no way you could just convince the majority of children (or their parents) to just stop using mobile computers. Is there a more direct approach that could be taken?

Most of the comments here can tell you from experience: a computer is no more or less than a tool. It is what you do with it that matters.

Most of us here are critical of commonly proposed solutions to this problem, because they are so broad that they would disallow the beneficial activities that any motivated person can pursue with this tool.

If my parents had arbitrarily limited the time I was allowed to use a computer, I would not have learned even a tiny percentage of what I did.

If my parents had obsessively watched over my shoulder or limited my DNS access to exclude sites like Reddit, then I would have gotten repeatedly stuck early on, and probably given up on the very exploration that made computing a healthy part of my life.

We aren't talking about real computers, though. This is the brave new world of "smart phones". 30% of that market are Apple's walled-garden pretends-it-isn't-a-computer bricks. An unknown but significant percentage of Android bricks have permanently locked bootloaders. Even if a child is motivated to explore the subtleties of computing, chances are their device won't allow them to.

What if we put more effort into positive change? What if instead of trying to restrict a child's behavior, we did the opposite? What kind of opportunities are missed by the average child-available computing device? What opportunities should be made more approachable to an uneducated explorer? When I think about this problem from this perspective, I am overwhelmed with potential solutions. I would rather start trying those out than keep whining about the same old unsolvable problem domain.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#226

Post by SoftTalker » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

nvrmnd wrote: post #177

adastra22 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids don’t have phones. They are the only ones among their peers who don’t have a phone. I told them they can get one when they write an app and get it listed on the App Store, not before. Most people I tell this to are impressed. The only time I got crucified was the last time I mentioned it on HN. This seems to be a particular bone to pick that HN users have.

My oldest got a phone this year, the real issue is that we need to communicate with her when she goes to a friend's place, soccer practice, and so on. Primarily for safety reasons. I imagine for most people their children will reach an age where they are more autonomous and require a phone for safety well before the kiddos are writing iOS applications.

Of course when I was a teen (or even younger) I went to a friend's place, practice, school, work, etc. without a constant electronic tether back to my parents.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#227

Post by alanchen » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

alexb_ wrote: post #45

There is so much instant dismissal of this entire idea that smartphones are harmful in this thread, most of which is just "correlation is not causation". Yes, correlation does not equal causation. But when it makes logical sense why there would be correlation, there is no way to actually measure causation (we can't exactly give kids placebo phones), we keep seeing the same correlation over and over again, why is it b…

> We must also always consider that there could be “third variables” that cause both of the first two variables to rise. In this case, one plausible confounding third variable is permissive parenting. Perhaps permissive parents (in each country) simultaneously do two things: they give their kids smartphones at very young ages, and they also give them few boundaries and little structure, which then interferes with development and produces struggling young adults.

From the original article. I wonder if this variable is controlled, how much of the correlation will be gone.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#228

Post by nancyhn » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

colinrand wrote: post #171

afavour wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smartphones give children the ability to bully eachother at a scale unlike any other. No, social media does. I think it's important to be specific about that because a smartphone is just a tool, same as a laptop or a desktop computer is (when I was a kid there was plenty of bullying that went on via AIM!) Having access to e.g. Wikipedia is of enormous benefit to young people. Having the means to easily call your pa…

Having a teenager, I've seen the bullying and caustic behavior without social media. One classic example is for a group of friends to be on a iMessage thread together, and suddenly nobody posts to it anymore because they've created another thread and left you off.

That seems close enough to classify as social media, for all intents and purposes.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#229

Post by cpsempek » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #4

The causation could easily run the other way. In particular kids that have worse mental health use phones as a coping mechanism. What kind of kid can resist the lure of a phone until she 18? Only one with very strong mental fortitude.

It's a fair point. But what explains the uptick in depression and mental health issues starting around 2012, disproportionately impacting pre-teen girls and not contained to any geo. The author's entire point is that social media is the only explanation that that has been proposed. Moreover, it's not a far-fetched explanation. He very aware that correlation does not provide causation, and that it could be the other way around. However, no one (according to him) has offered up a theory which explains the data like the social media theory does.

Re: Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

#230

Post by naasking » Mon, May 15, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

owlbynight wrote: post #20

I'm not sure how you would control for this. I was born in 1981, not long after the Vietnam war ended, and my Dad was a veteran with PTSD who never went to a therapist. My home life sucked and I came out of it with pretty severe depression. I became addicted to computers as a means of escape, and thankfully -- luckily -- it turned into a lucrative career. However, even though my home life sucked, society as a whole f…

> Is it possible these kids now just have a front row seat to witness their generation being systematically torn down in front of them before they even have a chance to get a footing? My parents sucked. Their whole world sucks.

These trends are global. Not every country has seen declining quality of life, higher rent and debt, etc. Haidt and co. cover a lot of data across multiple articles. They note some positive uses of social media too, like what you describe re: finding good communities and positive messaging. It's the rest of it that's the problem.