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Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

nytimes.com

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Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#231

Post by lbrito »

zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

Slightly off-topic, but coming from a country where credit card interest rates are around 15% _per month_, I was amused to find people complaining about 22% _per year_ interests in North America.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#232

Post by boondoggle16 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #185
zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

Yep, this is how you get violent revolutions... people look at the average rent and an average paycheck/pension, realize they literally have nothing left to lose, and once they realize who's to blame, things (sometimes literally) explode. Luckily (/s) we have social media to shift blame off of politicians to other groups of people, to fight eachother instead of the ones who profit from all this.

Who does profit from all this? I know that all of the mainstream media corporations (NBC, Comcast, Disney, etc) are all owned by a small number of parent corps, with a small group of trusted leadership that hires each other.

What about other industries? Do leaders and founders of all these influential industries have anything in common? Tech, banking, media, the industries that influence our youth?

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#233

Post by swader999 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #76
JohnFen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No more so than it's isolating them by giving them a curfew, telling them they can't hang out in certain places, not giving them a car, etc. That level of "isolation" seems innocuous at worst to me (even though it may seem like the end of the world to the kids).

Every kid through history was horribly isolated before we got smartphones and social media, I guess. They're already spending the best hours of every weekday for like 3/4 of each year with their peers. More, if they do any other activities that involve other kids. Seems like quite a bit. I'm skeptical that they'll be harmed if they can't catch up on the latest bullying-memes, creep shots of other students, and tips f…

Except this is the first time in more than a couple of generations that kids were locked out of schools for up to two years.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#234

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

wetmore wrote: post #193
zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

I'm with you that these are major issues, and ones that impact my mental health as someone in my 30s, but I sort of doubt these problems are the main contributors to the mental health crises among young people. Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life. Maybe I'm forgetting what it was like to…

> Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life

Social media and phones are what youth had left, after adults systemically wiped out every inch of their development environment.

I'm an early genx; the last generation to grow up free of constant supervision. I went everywhere by myself and learned countless critical self-sufficiency and social skills - skill building that was utterly and thoroughly denied to my own kids.

That is, my kids risked their parents being charged if they were capably on their own. My kids had nowhere to go if they tried to be independent. Were my kids to risk having some ambition, they also risked adult-sized punishments for kid-sized transgressions.

We couldn't have designed a more stunting experience, short of tossing kids in forced-labor gulags.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#235

Post by deevolution »

wetmore wrote: post #193
zackmorris wrote: post #173

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving…

I'm with you that these are major issues, and ones that impact my mental health as someone in my 30s, but I sort of doubt these problems are the main contributors to the mental health crises among young people. Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life. Maybe I'm forgetting what it was like to…

Social media is just the medium for which doom/despair is transmitted. Removing social media might slow down the transmission speed, but folks will eventually arrive to the same conclusions mentioned in OPs comment.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#236

Post by greatwave1 »

citizenkeen wrote: post #165
zachturn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. > IMO parents are reluctant to intervene because they either don't know where to start, or struggle with how much work it is. There are also parents who disagree with this ideology and would find this an invasion of their child's privacy. I'd caution against the thinking "we find this val…

The mantra we use with our kids is "We will try and respect your privacy but we aren't bound by it." As I often tell my son, "It's your room but it's my house." And we make it extra clear that the moment they go online, they have no expectation of privacy. Better they learn that someone's snooping now than be surprised when it's Google/Facebook/NSA.

I think most children find it significantly more invasive for their parents to be snooping through their messages, than to have that information being collected in some government database.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#237

Post by swader999 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #39
swader999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolating them from their peers can be just as mentally devastating. I don't think there is a good solution to this.

It's fair to call out that if one kid doesn't have a phone and everyone else does, it may be hard on them. Phones are a way to be "in" and in the know, if you don't have one then you may be on the outside looking in. A few things. 1. Fuck being on the inside. Work with your kid and their self-esteem and their friends to realize that shit-talking and drama online is shallow, painful and makes you a worse person. 2. Wo…

At around thirteen it's almost impossible to get into calm rational discussions with things as emotionally charged as this.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#239

Post by graboidhunter »

pixl97 wrote: post #164
omginternets wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West. Yeah, no. People still talk to each other. I leave it to you to exercise some adaptability and find suitable workarounds. This is a small problem. I guarantee you that…

>People still talk to each other. At Church on Sunday? No, that has collapsed. At other social civic meetings... um, no not there. Social gathering and civic interaction in the US has become highly commercialized and put into non-public places such as social media.

Got kids? Enroll them in youth sports. You'll meet and talk with other parents at games and practices. It's how I ended up joining an indoor soccer league.

Check out your local recreation center. It's how I joined a local fencing club.

Check out meet ups in your area. It's how I join a language exchange group that meets weekly.

Check out your local library. They often have book clubs, kid and adult events, and more.

There are tons of options that people used before social media which still exist today. It's trivial to find them. The biggest problem is that many people don't want to move out from behind the screen.

Re: Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns

#240

Post by yumraj »

slothtrop wrote: post #222
yumraj wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but giving teenagers zero privacy (to the extent of going through their personal messages) seems wild to me. Why? Teenagers are kids too, or have we forgotten that? They are actually worse than kids in some respect, still immature but with changing body and new hormones. It may seem weird to them at this time, but hopefully they’ll appreciate when they grow older - or even if not, at least one did what they could.

Teenagers also want and value privacy. Or have you forgotten what it's like?

> Or have you forgotten what it's like?

We're simply talking privacy in the digital context. When I was a teenager the world looked different so I had N/A for digital privacy.

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