This just in: Digital drugs products like Facebook™, Instagram™, Twitter™, Snapchat™ and TikTok™ are destroying the minds of its users (especially teens) mental health.
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Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
321–330 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#322Social 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…
> Teens are aware that they are going to inherit a pretty terrible world, and are powerless to do anything about it. I don't mean to come across as snarky, but there is a lot to unpack in this statement. First, you inherit something that your parents or guardians own, and the world is definitely not owned by them. Second, why feel powerless if they are actually going to inherit something? They can always fix it after…
>First, you inherit something that your parents or guardians own, and the world is definitely not owned by them.
It's a figure of speech.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Also, it's really easy to see how social media is directly affecting kids' mental health. Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, YouTube, Twitch, on these sites are an endless stream of people their who are better looking, smarter, more successful, funnier, more interesting than them. If you have insecurities, these sites will amplify them. And if you admire someone on one of these platforms, that person literally has no idea…
I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles.
The one difference I will point out though, is that with social media it becomes a lot more attainable to become like that. There's complete randoms that became celebrities through social media - and they don't even need to be conventionally attractive like the celebrities of old.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#324This fits too neatly into the "new thing is going to kill/corrupt your children" meme that is very popular through history.
Having said that, advertising based platforms are basically all about making you feel worse about yourself to spur purchases. Who spends more money on advertised products the Zen master at one with themselves or the anxious person looking for the quick fix to make them beautiful, popular, trendy, etc.
Basically human insecurities and addictions are a market externality the same as carbon in the atmosphere. If they aren't internalised to the market then you're basically creating a highly efficient machine to seek them out and abuse them for profit.
We need to build different incentives in from the start than "do anything to get money and I'll take a cut" which obviously leads to bad places once the capitalist machine gets a hold of it.
Like a gun, it's a powerful tool, and you have to be careful where you point it.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#325Earlier 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.
Putting a limit on their screen time helps ensure they use their time intelligently and not just to mess around on TikTok.
Much of what you said can be done outside the screen too, if in alternative forms.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things. My father did that at 23, not 30.
Both for you and the person you are replying to, I would caution that “Europe” isn’t one country like the USA, even just the EU is 27 smaller countries in a trenchcoat — the average may be lower, but bits are higher. University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments (Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough…
The idea that the United States is conceptually a single country is our single greatest flaw. We’d all be so much better off if we just admitted strong consensus is vanishingly unlikely between every state and territory. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. People can disagree and chip in on a military to defend their shared interests, like staying alive, together.
I don’t think the EU and the US are very different. Then again, Texas isn’t exiting. (No disrespect, just pointing out the difference.) But divisions in the EU are very familiar to Americans and understandable for the exact same reason.
Asking a Californian to understand and relate to the issues of a Missourian deeply, and vice versa, is a little unfair to both and we’d all be so much happier if we were simply fine with that. People are different. The idea of the United States has been forcing it in a lot of unwilling minds for a long time, I think, and the consequential bitterness that really has no reason whatsoever to exist is unfortunate.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#327Social 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…
Mmm, what? The things you are listing don't concern "teenagers" in their young teens, at all. They start being a problem for young adults, maybe. The study in question debates young teens, ages 11-13 and 13-15, well before college. In my experience as a parent of young teens, while they're sensitive to climate issues and of course "suffered" [1] during the pandemic, they aren't politicized, don't care about house pri…
With all due respect, please don’t trivialize how the pandemic impacted youth because your family was fine.
Especially because many of their parents (if they’re fortunate enough to have both) probably lost their jobs.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#328Social 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…
I grew up in Germany, so I was told stories of my grandfather, who lived through an entire world war, his home, home town, home country being entirely destroyed, being denied the return to his home since it was annexed and now behind the iron curtain, civilians he knew being murdered, pieces of butter being the best currency available, the nonexistence of any infrastructure such as roads, the very definition of polit…
On the other hand it does feel like all these events feel like situations that need constant inputs of "energy" to be sustainable - war relies on firepower, a repressive regime requires efforts to keep the populace content enough to not revolt (or enough firepower to quash revolution attempts), so given enough time the system would return to a more stable equilibrium.
The situation today feels like we're already in an equilibrium and there's no single obvious problem to solve to make things better.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things. My father did that at 23, not 30.
Both for you and the person you are replying to, I would caution that “Europe” isn’t one country like the USA, even just the EU is 27 smaller countries in a trenchcoat — the average may be lower, but bits are higher. University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments (Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough…
Generally speaking, cost of living is proportional to income; I could move inside my small country to a place twice as big, but if I were to get a job close to where I live it'd slash my wages by a lot to the point where I wouldn't actually be able to live there.
That said, if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#330social media is replacing the traditional ways of communicating ideas (which have been tv, radio, newspapers, and school curriculum & textbooks)...but now the elites cannot really control social media, as much as they want to control social media and as much as they try to control social media...they cannot.....
and control of what goes into young minds is THE most important commodity for elites...shaping young minds is how the elites control the future ("Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it," Proverbs 22 6)
and the elites don't like losing that control...they want to set the future path for youth; they want to create the adults that youth will become....and so the elites are trying to restrict channels of communication into young minds that the elites cannot control...they are doing that by demonizing social media...