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Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#371

Post by denton-scratch »

lsy wrote: post #185

I think it's somewhat important to ask why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys, and Haidt does not seem to really reflect on that. Social media in and of itself is really just an accelerant for the particular set of social expectations we stack on girls and women around appearance and how that relates to self-worth. Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by fi…

> why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys

I agree that's an interesting question. I think it's that girls are (conditioned to be?) more sociable than boys. After a divorce, many more men find themselves friendless than women, because the mens' social networks were really their wives.

The stereotype that women gossip isn't wrong; women chatting about nonsense is simply maintaining social networks. Men maintain social connnections through team sports and work. I don't happen to believe it's "conditioned" - I think women are different from men, and behave differently. On the whole. (And for "women", read "girls and women")

So if women communicate verbally more than men, it's not surprising that women make greater use of social media.

The body-image thing obviously isn't about verbal communication, and I think it's a distinct phenomenon. I see a lot of young women in the street, with lots of exposed skin despite the wintery conditions; and with orange make-up applied with a trowel (they're always staring down at their fondle-slab). I don't know why young women want to look tacky, like a porn actress.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#372

Post by tempestn »

bcrl wrote: post #239
Adraghast wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but what’s the alternative though? Just going full Amish on them until they’re 18? 25? Look at all the Baby Boomers and older Gen X’ers that got on the Internet in the past ten years and instantly had their brains rotted despite decades of life experience. Should there be some kind of emotional intelligence test everyone has to pass to earn their internet license? This is why I think that taking steps to keep…

Being a GenXer, my friends and I have regular contact outside of social media because we already had those habits ingrained in us before the current crop of social media platforms ever existed. I can't imagine being a teenager today having to deal with everyone in high school being on the same social media platforms and dealing with the pressure to fit in. We had cliques for good reason.

Yeah, you've got to look at percentages here. Some boomers get sucked into the pit of social media, but far more teenagers do. More life experience (and brain development in the case of young people) won't always help, but it often will.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#373

Post by notjulianjaynes »

I think it's worth considering that we've already had a generation or two that have grown up with social media being pretty much ubiquitous. I'm in my early 30s (male) and was on myspace by age 14. Has social media contributed negatively to my mental health over the years? Probably. It's not something I think anyone views without a modicum of anxiety, but I have no frame of reference to compare the alternative to.

I wonder though, assuming this isn't new just because it's not something that was previously not measured: If there's been a more recent and drastic decline in mental health due to it in young girls due to social media, is it the general concept that's the problem, or the current implementation?

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#374

Post by qorrect »

friendlyHornet wrote: post #333
mcbuilder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at 9th grade it's a free for all? Looking back the high school years would have been the worst for my own self esteem, angst, etc. Glad none of it was recorded. :)

Yup, I was the WORST when I was in 9th grade. I really don't envy my parents for having to deal with that version of me, and I did so much stuff I regret. My self-esteem back then was hair-thin; I use to obsess about EVERYTHING, from what I say, to how I talk, to how I smell, to how I walk, to the music I listen to, etc

Thanks for obsessing about your smell though, I just stood in a room full of smelly people.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#375

Post by IncRnd »

Xylakant wrote: post #317
IncRnd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even chatgpt knows. (prompt:) what does it mean to parent? To parent means to raise and nurture a child from infancy to adulthood, providing them with love, care, guidance, and support as they grow and develop. Parenting involves a wide range of responsibilities and activities, including providing for a child's physical needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care, as well as their emotional and psychological needs…

ChatGPT has no idea what parenting means. It parrots what other people have written about parenting.

That's a good point.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#376

Post by hax0ron3 »

tristor wrote: post #366
hax0ron3 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media absolutely is information. For example, I can tell you from experience that it is very hard to really learn about another country if you are not living there unless you go read what the people of that country are saying on social media. What journalists write about the country is usually a very narrow view in comparison to all the information that becomes available to you if you read what people who live…

I'd argue it's hard to learn about another country without personally visiting it. To wit, I've made it a point to take my family to other countries, for us to learn other languages, and to get to experience different lifestyles around the world. There are a lot of things that my wife and I do to try to help my stepdaughter interact with information in healthy ways, but that's also easier said than done. To a large d…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I would guess that maybe the peer group is the core of the problem. Probably even most, though of course far from all, teenagers realize that issues they might have with people on social media whom they do not know in real life can be resolved by simply not interacting with them. Maybe social media just makes it easy for the peer group to be present in a person's life almost 18 hours a day instead of as in the past, just a few hours a day usually.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#377

Post by testTED »

rootusrootus wrote: post #35
testTED wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I feel similarly to seeing parenting advice from people who clearly aren't parents.

Getting back to why we're all here: at least "make" them jailbreak or root the device to get around some of these apparently arbitrary limits!

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#378

Post by polishdude20 »

idopmstuff wrote: post #321
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had my 12 year old daughter read the article and after she argued a while I said: Ok, write up your rejoinder and I will post it and see what others think. For context we severely restrict access to social media in our house, but of course they find ways around this as expected (I don't pi-hole because I want them to learn to be hackers) ----------------------------------- *Why I think it’s reasonable for me to hav…

Just wanted to chime in and say that my wife is due to give birth to our first child imminently, and if at 12 he can reason and communicate in this fashion, I will consider myself to have totally crushed it as a parent. Keep up the good work.

Yeah I was definitely not even half as articulate when I was 12.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#379

Post by nvarsj »

I kind of feel like social media is this generation's moral panic and we need to be careful how we react as parents.

Setting overly strict rules is out of touch and old fashioned and the worst possible approach here. That's like what my parents' generation did - banning video games and DnD and rock music (I had my NiN CDs and DnD books confiscated from me and thrown in the trash in order to "save me"). It's a great way to break all trust with your kids and is lazy parenting.

We need to be realistic - denying a teenage girl a phone and/or social media is akin to making them a social pariah. They will ignore your ridiculous rules and figure out ways to do things without you ever knowing.

I feel the best approach is to aim for a strong relationship with your teenage child. Communication and trust are paramount. As a parent, you want to be in the loop on what's going on in their lives - so you can provide support and guidance, and be emotional support as they navigate this part of their lives. If your child is coming to you with their problems, then you have succeeded.

This isn't new, it's just become more important. The influence of social media in a vacuum is very strong.

Re: Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

#380

Post by catiopatio »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #288
ravenstine wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reflecting on that question means saying things that many people would find offensive. It's a lost cause to suggest that corporations implicitly understand something innate about female psychology and are taking advantage of it, and that's exactly why social media wins; the current politics you mentioned are a protective layer against taking meaningful action against the machine. If society was as concerned about the…

You think it would be dubious for a society to value men and women equally?

Men and women are not identical; inescapably, the mean value contributed by each will material differ in at least some contexts.

If a society equally values the contributions of men and women in all contexts, then, by definition, it must be using an inequitable metric to ascribe value to their contributions.

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