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Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

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Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#351

Post by conradev »

bambax wrote: post #319
paxys wrote: post #68

Social 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…

I was 12 when I started using Twitter (shh, don’t tell them https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/29/twitter-is-locking-out-th...)

I was 14 when I had to loan my parents some money, and was acutely aware that I would not be able to afford college.

I read the news every day and was smart enough to realize that things were not going so great (according to the news).

To say that kids are blissfully unaware of the world they are born into is just wrong. Social media makes it even more apparent.

This awareness helped me make the right decisions for myself (deciding to not go to college, for example), but I am fortunately mostly optimistic. The weight of the world crushed some of my peers.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#352

Post by Zenst »

bambax wrote: post #319
paxys wrote: post #68

Social 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…

recessions - see parents with less disposable income so teenages get less things global pandemic - saw a couple of years of curfew at a time when teenages thrive outside and conditioned them towards a more online life and exposed and engaging more with the news of the day rising inflation - again multiple impacts, less pocketmoney is depressing at any age housing - quality of home, shareing bed space with siblings are never helpful for anybody education getting more expensive by the day - fear of the future as teens, exams and beyond start to become more and more in focus and the prospects of life are also taking hold, can be a bummer, more so with the cultural changes of 2 years pandemic.

But many factors and to pin them upon a singular aspect is hard, also geographic and more so financial backgrounds play a factor that needs to be eliminated to see a more common root cause.

But hey, social media since Elon brought twitter a seen a resurgance in news about it, so more and more social media focus aspects will pop up and been a lot of ongoing debate and concerns on rollover for a while now as is.

As an anicdote how things have changed, a friend in his mid 40's was at some event and found some marbels so was playing a game with another friend for nostagia and some teens came up asking why you throwing stones about - as they had never seen marbles, let alone played it. Yet for decades and decades prior, everybody would instantly recognise marbles. Times change, not saying people who grow up playing marbles less prone to mental health. You find everybody has some aspect and there own coping ways.

Perhaps it may well be a case that we are looking into things like mental health more in a more detailed way and then looking at patterns of our times. After all, earthquakes have increased but equally the sensors in play to measure them have also increased so you have to balance out the more you see and compare to seeing less with less in the past very varefully as easy to see patterns that may not be there and come to conclusions.

After all, TikTok has been around less than any teenager era, let alone generatioins to get a clear picture.

But then, isn't social media for many mental health issues across generations, with it's echo chamber avenues and bombardment of all you care or dislike, it can be a dangerous rabbit hole for an angry or angst mind of any age.

But your approach to block it, safest and smartest way, like keys to the house - you need to have trust built before you let them loose and until then, block. Worse case they will educate themselves in how to get around the block.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#353

Post by refurb »

watwut wrote: post #223
kabouseng wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you were born in 1900. When you're 14, World War I begins and ends when you're 18 with 22 million dead. Soon after a global pandemic, the Spanish Flu, appears, killing 50 million people. And you're alive and 20 years old. When you're 29 you survive the global economic crisis that started with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, causing inflation, unemployment and famine. When you're 33 years old the…

Massive issue here is that I did not seen anyone say "grand-grandparents had it easy". Especially not, I have not seen anyone in places affected with above say that. What I have seen is American 20-40 years old saying boomers had it easier. Boomers were not affected by any of the above, they were born after WWII. If you was born in 1900, you would be 122 years old now.

1950's - Korean war (either boomer or their parents), Berlin wall

1960's - Vietnam War draft, terrorist bombings in the US, race riots, Cuba missile crisis, ramping up the cold war

1970's - Oil embargo, massive (stag)-flation, "general malaise"

1980's - Recession, airline hijackings, multiple mid-East wars

1990's - Gulf war, another recession, leading up to massive tech bubble and crash

If you want to be stressed and disillusioned, there has never been a lack of options.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#354

Post by tuyiown »

bambax wrote: post #319
paxys wrote: post #68

Social 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…

> Mmm, what? The things you are listing don't concern "teenagers" in their young teens, at all.

Except from the very privileged, I'm pretty sure they are at least exposed to adults discussing those subjects, or at least from medias. If the volume of concerning subject is large, they will internalize it and build up some anxiety, and that will impact mental health.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#355

Post by pcj-github »

It is so obvious to any parent with a child in this age group the harm that phones and social media have done. My daughter, now 15, is on anxiety meds and scars up and down her arm from cutting. I'm an MD that crossed over to tech, but my earlier profession (vascular surgery) largely involved taking care of the wreckage that the tobacco industry wrought upon society. The parallels here are obvious and striking. The spell under which society was either ignorant or in denial (via advertising) about the harms of smoking in 1950 is very similar to what we have today.

1. More research needs to be done to solidify the data on what is pretty obviously happening, but we can't wait on the data to take action (it will be important for the lawsuits though).

2. We need regulation that forces these apps to only be able to execute for something like 2 hours in a 24-hour period before being sandboxed and shut off. They aren't mission-critical, nobody "needs" instagram more than this other than Meta. These kids need a break, and to breathe.

3. We need a large educational investment, quickly, to get people to understand the harmful combination of social media, device usage, and puberty. The comments in this thread make this readily apparent... The number of "but, but, but" and "whatabout" comments is pretty astounding here.

4. Social media companies must be litigated for knowingly and willingly doing this. Class-action lawsuits, in the many billions of dollars. The behavior of these companies will not change otherwise.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#356

Post by MonaroVXR »

nivenkos wrote: post #295
ben_w wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I am European, I've lived and worked in 3 different EU countries. But Americans really don't appreciate how lucky they are. An American CS college grad can earn more than almost all senior/staff engineers anywhere in the EU e.g. ~$150k.

I figured this out too.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#357

Post by MonaroVXR »

29083011397778 wrote: post #249
MonaroVXR wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I think it looks like going back to when your online and offline identities were totally separate. Even this backfired at me when I was dating. Everything is completely separate and I get misjudged entirely. But maybe I'm talking to the wrong people, but a lot of people are kinda the same in that regard.

My current girlfriend was kind enough to take a chance on me, despite having only a single photo on a rarely-used Facebook account. While it worked out, her next guesses were "I'm being catfished" and "Dude's definitely a serial killer". I fully get how having a smaller online footprint makes tracking down a date harder.

> "...despite having only a single photo on a rarely-used Facebook account. While it worked out, her next guesses were "I'm being catfished" and "Dude's definitely a serial killer"

Well, I had that too with a girl, no clue if I'm being catfished. But the worst part (I think) is that I'm being very sarcastic on social media, mostly car stuff and I.T. and nothing else.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#359

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

twayt wrote: post #60

Is it really social media itself that's the major contributing factor? Or is it really that people are using social media as a distribution channel to propagate negative, defeatist beliefs en mass in response to the natural challenges teens face when growing up? I think it is the latter. One has but to open TikTok to quickly come across a video instilling negative beliefs about the opposite sex with tons of commenter…

I think you're completely right, and I think social media is still the contributing factor. Not the concept of social media in itself. But the way current implementations work, they are incentivised to be addictive, to increase the amount of ads viewed, and to provide more data to be sold for a profit(see Campbell's Law for the relevant sociology work here. If all you're maximizing is "engagement", you'll have lots of it, at the cost of everything else). Therefore, the things you describe are emergent effects of a platform whose custodians have incentives fundamentally misaligned with the well-being of the platform's users.

Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]

#360

Post by csomar »

Conspiracy theory time: Social media is being blamed for a mental disorder epidemic in order to justify cracking down on the free flow of information.

On a more serious note:

> The patterns are nearly identical in the UK and Canada, and the trends are similar though not identical in Australia and New Zealand. We do not yet see signs of similar epidemics in continental Europe or in East Asia, although I have not yet found good data from those regions.

East Asia population are aggressive consumers of social media. If they are not getting depressed from it, then the Anglosaxon (which seems to be suffering from this crisis) should look elsewhere.

> The “eyewitness testimony” confirms the academic findings: social media is a culprit

Cool science.

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