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Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

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Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#301

Post by josephg »

epolanski wrote: post #258
raziel2p wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions. There's a…

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?

> What do I care what others do?

I’ve done the same, but it’s not without cost:

- Two hobbies I’m involved with have large local communities on Facebook. I’m not in the loop, and sometimes miss out on events and catchups.

- I’m not on Twitter, and there’s a massive amount of chat about my field (realtime collaborative editing & local first software) that takes place there. I miss out on what’s going on, and I’m reliant on other people to promote my work for me.

Im happier. But it’s you really are cut off from a lot of society - especially in the tech world - if you aren’t on social media.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#302

Post by Ghexor »

nwiswell wrote: post #246
gitaarik wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people think of solving this problem again by constraining the consumer, instead of the producer. What we should do is make rules for social media platforms to disallow them to develop algorithms that make people addicted. You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore. It would sure be an elaborate task and will surely…

> You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore Hardly. Addictiveness does not exist in binary. There are many people who obsessively check their email or refresh news websites. There is no doubt that social media companies choose the algorithms that maximize engagement and so most probably they also maximize addiction, but _any…

I agree with you that a pos/neg divide is clearer and more straight forward to construct.

Reading your comment also evoked in me imaginations of political repression. Anger and fear are really important emotions signifying "this situation is not meeting my needs". Social Media can abuse these for profit probably precicely because they play this important role. In this light, a ban on recommending negative content seems really dangerous. Any content that expresses dissatisfaction with the political status quo is likely to contain some 'negative' (I suggest the term 'challenging') emotions.

So while 'addictiveness' is, like you say, really difficuly to measure - I prefer we try.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#303

Post by taurath »

> I think it is a very good thing that alarms were rung about teen smoking, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and the exposure of children to sex and violence on TV

Excuse me? I remember sitting thru Nancy Reagan’s “good morals” which were mandated to be in kids shoes, abstinence only sex education, DARE, and the ridiculousness of not being able to buy a music album with songs they played on the radio.

Teen pregnancy peaked in the 1950s and has been on a steady downswing since, with a small blip on the 90s.

Kids went through covid for goodness sake. That our society has almost no way to respond to that is probably the biggest cause of teenage mental illness - shit was awful and they’re expected to keep going on as if it wasn’t!

I’m also not even going to bother going into the authors willful downplaying of the arguments and evidence of his detractors, which he kindly and blithely links before avoiding any argument of substance leveled against him.

This is the author of the book “The Coddling of the American Mind”. It’s deeply right wing and deeply wrong in the worst way because there is some insight to be had, but the conclusions of the authors are quite ideologically driven.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#305

Post by c048 »

fungiblecog wrote: post #296

Social media just projects our toxic culture back at us. It a symptom not a cause. Until we address the reasons why our culture is toxic, mental health will continue to be a problem. Blaming social media, or any other easy target, just distracts from asking difficult questions and looking for real answers.

This has little to do with "how toxic our culture is", but more "how social media is engineered to enable toxicity".

We see the problems with large scale social media in every culture, and the issues are the same everywhere.

The question should be raised if humans can actually deal with large scale social media. Perhaps, just like gambling, it should be outright banned or strictly enforced to comply with heavy restrictions

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#306

Post by XorNot »

thinkingemote wrote: post #265
epolanski wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?

Do you live or work with others? Do you have a family or children? Do you interact in meaningful ways with people online? I ask seriously (but no need to reply, this is to aid understanding) as many here on HN do not have all of these so the range of examples may be narrowed for some people. I would however imagine you have some relationships of some kind that you care about. Can you imagine your relationships changi…

How is this not the OP's exact point? If you're not forcing people to change - by banning things with the violence of government - then you're simply making an argument to people and hoping they listen, just as we ever have to.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#307

Post by hackerlight »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #112
hollerith wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity I am skeptical of this push to elevate internet anonymity to a new fundamental principle for organizing society.

I would not feel safe painting a target on my back if I was required to attach my legal name to my comments, especially the ones advocating for queer rights.

Have a government agency do the age verification, then it tells FB your age but no other information. Maybe the agency gives you a unique token that it also gives to FB, and you can use it to make a unique account.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#308

Post by randomdata »

skybrian wrote: post #157
miki123211 wrote: post #95

This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…

Social media != the Internet. It would make it harder to sign up for an account with the large social media services covered by the law. They would need to check ids, or outsource to someone who does. It would be like creating a bank account. You could do plenty of other things. Anything you don't need an account for isn't covered. Depending on how the law is implemented, perhaps many forums wouldn't be covered? I th…

> Social media != the Internet.

Technically true, but social interaction is the great draw of the internet. Even Zawinski's Law noticed that every program expands to include social features or is replaced by those that do.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#309

Post by mike_hearn »

zigman1 wrote: post #224
burningChrome wrote: post #84

I will attempt to at least inject some hope into this discussion. My formative years from ages 15-25 were spent in the 80's and 90's. It was the apex of the mall experience. We saw the mall as a place to get away from our parents, hang out with our buds, run into other classmates and feel some sense of freedom while running amok playing video games in the arcade and chowing down tacos in the food court. Then smartpho…

> Its like an entire generation has re-discovered the mall again and its refreshing to see... Sometimes I feel like I'm in a dream I am really really sorry to go off-topic here, but as an European this is... So strange and slightly hilarious to me. We went to a park. Or local river/lake.

"As a European", no we didn't. Europe is far too big to generalize so casually like that. In many northern parts of Europe it is frequently raining. In the 80s and 90s me and my friends spent our time indoors because when it was either cold, or cold and wet. You might get a month or two in summer when the weather was better - if you were lucky. So we spent our time indoors, doing homework or on computers, or round each other's houses (playing video games with each other).

A mall would have been a useful place to hang out because it's under a roof and there are things to do, but there were very few good malls in that part of the UK and anyway to get to them you'd have to be able to drive. But there's no culture of young driving there. In the USA in some states you can drive at 14! In the UK you can't even start learning until 16 and in most of Europe the minimum driving age is 18.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#310

Post by XorNot »

maxioatic wrote: post #281
thegrim000 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny .. earlier today there was a front page HN post about the federal government mandating safer circular saws. It seemed like the majority of users in the thread were in favor of the federal government mandating technology changes to prevent harm from being done to the population. Now for this issue, there's harm being done to children, and the majority of users in the thread seem to be against government int…

It was about table saws, not circular saws. There’s a big difference between the two. Table saw accidents often result in losing fingers and it’s not that difficult to mess up while using one. There’s a well known, proven, easy solution to table saw accidents called SawStop. It’s basically as obvious to use as a seat belt is if you want to be safe. The only problem is those table saws are very expensive. Social media…

I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media. You can absolutely slip and lose one or several fingers or your entire hand using a table saw.

The more pertinent comparison would be alcohol IMO: none of the people who want "something" done about social media seem to have a problem with the widespread, massive use of alcohol within society and the incredible amounts of continuous and ongoing damage it does.

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