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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

#241

Except from 2010 - 2015 many teens did feel a crushing sense of economic dread as they dealt with the realities of student loans, an out of reach housing market, devalued college degrees, the gig economy, promises of no retirement, etc. The article just skims over it with a quick this is why economics couldn’t have been the reason.

> the realities of student loans, an out of reach housing market, devalued college degrees, the gig economy, promises of no retirement, etc. Have you ever met a teenager? Almost literally zero percent of them think (or need to think) about this stuff, with the possible exception of some of the very oldest teenagers (ie, people in their first or second year of college who are starting to think about the details of the…

You must have known a mindless set of teenagers. When I was a teenager people actively talked about their resentment that arts and humanities were not going to get them a well paying job and society was biased in favor of people like me who found math and science easy. And this would have been tenth grade, if not earlier.

Edit: for historical context, this was nearly two decades ago and nobody had either a mobile phone or a Facebook account

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

#242
post #172
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't actually know the effects of long term exposure to so much radiation. Don't you mean so little radiation? The sun puts out far more radiation than a phone, and now people are getting less sun, and thus less radiation.

Yes, that's the most overused argument. But the artificial radiation is on top of the natural one. I'm counting not only cell towers and Wifi, but power lines and transformers, and the infra and ultrasound all around us. It's probably just a blip, though, and it's probably the always-connected aspect that has way more profound effects. I can only say that a few days in the countryside without electricity was one of t…

Cel phone tower repair guys should be jumping in droves.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my son (17 y.o.) it is online games and phone use in general. He has - I hope - mild depression, which - I believe - is caused by his online habits. His mom and I thought taking his PC away from him would fix it. But then he falls into school-sleep cycle, that looks like full-blown depression. Yes, his grades are affected and in not a good way. What works for now is to participate in his life with him. As of now…

My parents went through the same thing with me. Turns out I just really, really like computers and I get really, really anxious around new people. That time of your life when everything is awkward and you're full of hormones certainly doesn't help. He's 17 which is the "I think I'm an adult" area. Every 2 years he'll be looking back and thinking, "wow, I was really young". Tread cautiously, treat him like an adult an…

Pretty much 100% agree with this.

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

#244
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teenagers I do know personally talk about being worried about jobs, housing, debt and general economical problems. I never start those discussions, they do.

That sounds like a branch of the problem being discussed here. If you’re 16 and worried about housing options, something is wrong imo.

Well, yea. The housing market is super fucked up, that’s what’s wrong.

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

#245

They did a study using Facebook. But I'm more curious about Instagram. "Look at all these rich beautiful people with millions of followers sailing around the world on their yachts." Ten minutes on Instagram is enough to fill any sane person with existential dread and bring about severe depression.

This is ridiculous. Depressed and filled with existential dread over seeing pictures of rich people on yachts, really? Do you feel that way every time you pass by a large house or see an expensive car on the road too?

> This is ridiculous.

It's not. It's just your daily anti-facebook/social media propaganda. Every day there is something about the "evils of social media".

It's the new gangsta rap or violent video games. The news media spreads fear in order to sell ads.

It wasn't too long ago when the news media hyped up violent videos to sell ads. Violent video games were blamed for everything from school shootings to depression to anti-social behavior and everything in between. It wasn't too long ago that gangsta rap had to have parental advisory notices.

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

#246

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

It's not just the nerdy kids, though. It's all kids. Smartphones are teen culture now. It all takes place online.

It's kinda hard to imagine a society where all meaningful interaction takes place online that's not massively depressing.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

This seems like a very wrong-headed assumption. We don't understand the etiology of cancer generally, and radio frequency radiation may have physiological effects which produce conditions favorable to cancer. Microwaves aren't ionizing, but it's easy to demonstrate that an oven will damage tissue. Tissue damage results in a cascade of physiological processes, including inflammation and scarring which may precipitate…

An oven will damage tissue by thermal heating. Since the energies involved in cell phones, WiFi, etc. induce negligible heating, we need another plausible pathway of interaction with the tissue. If we don't have one, then it's like saying that african butterflies could cause cancer at the North Pole by an yet unidentified phenomenon of spooky action at a distance. Impossible to disprove but irrelevant.

Edit: To make matters worse, there is even a profesional disease among people with RF exposure: eye cataract, due to thermal heating of a poorly irrigated and termoregulated corneal tissue. These are guys working in close proximity to megawatt transmitters. It is not correlated to cancers.

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

#248

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

> And nihilism isn't a bad thing.

You aren't taking nihilism seriously enough.

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

#249
They took the results of a survey administered 6 years apart and applied their pet theory to interpret the differences.

The survey is done every 2 years by the CDC, so their findings have a prima facie lack if rigorous credibiltlity by ignoring the 2 administrations in 2011 and 2013.

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

#250

Before I even started reading, I knew it was going to be an attack at the phone. A few centuries ago, they'd attack books. Look back at videos from the 1950s and people didn't talk to each other on the train back then either, their noses were in books, magazines and newspapers. By the 80s, the nerdy kids had headphones and cassette players. By the 90s, people had discmans. The trouble with articles like this is they…

Nihilism is the scourge of our age. It takes courage to create meaning and love life.
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