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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]

#41

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

derevaunseraun wrote: post #27

This topic is something that's been generating a lot of hot takes recently. Personally I think the way to solve it is teaching people to be more mindful of their own emotions. e.g. if seeing someone's artificial presentation of their life on social media makes someone feel bad, they should be aware of the causal link. The upcoming generation should know how to regulate their own social media diet. There's so much nas…

Telling people "be more mindful of your emotions" is less than useless. Facebook etc. have many thousands of some incredibly intelligent people whose sole job is essentially to "hack" your emotions to keep you scrolling and scrolling.

It's like telling society at large "diet and exercise" to lose weight, but when so many places are incredibly un-walkable, and food scientists produce foods engineered to make you want more. Yes, "diet and exercise" does make sense individually, but obviously that strategy has failed miserably for society at large given we are fatter than ever.

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

#42

Post by gedy »

usrn wrote: post #10

Is it social media? Or is it also the knowledge that they effectively have no future. Rent is going up and mortgage rates are going up faster. A shrinking portion of young adults can now afford housing. The economy is becoming so disfunctional there's almost no reason to bother participating. When children end up in that position their family will turn on them and they have nothing materially or socially.

Well media (both social and traditional) bombarding kids with the message that everything is falling apart certainly won't help foster a generation with a positive, can-do outlook. As a parent I look for ways for kids to "look on the bright side" about life, even if I myself are concerned.

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

#43

Post by abdel_nasser »

treespace8 wrote: post #18

Parent of a teen, one anecdote to add. You see what all your friends are doing all the time. Every gathering or event that you where not a part of you see, sometimes in real time. People hate being excluded, and this greatly amplifies this feeling. I'm certain I missed out on a ton of cool stuff as a kid, but at least I didn't have to see it.

exactly. the equation has changed. people who dont fit in are now even more fucked. everyone is obligated to play this high stakes game that nobody asked for and that wasnt filtered through any kind of intelligent societal deliberation. nobody seems to be worried that kids make the rules in public schools, they bully each other viciously and kids who graduate from the system cant point to the country of portugal on a map. its full blown insanity.

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

#44

Post by tsol »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #37
MonaroVXR wrote: post #21

My family is kinda addicted, so addicted, we ended up not talking anymore because someone wanted a perfect shot off the eifel tower and it wasn't goid enough, even worse when there has to be made pictures of food and whatever.

> pictures of food and whatever I never understood the food photos. Do I just not love food enough? Do people really enjoy seeing photos of their friends’ meals?

I sometimes think it's more for the pleasure of the person posting it than anyone else

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

#45

Post by toolz »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #32

Our descendants will look back on us allowing children access to unadulterated social media the way we look back on smoking.

Strongly disagree, when has society ever decided less access to information is ideal? Our descendants will create better platforms that can allow users to better filter for their emotional needs and they'll likely have better tools to understand their own emotions.

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

#46

Post by twh270 »

ginger2016 wrote: post #23
faddypaddy34 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are taking what he is saying out of context and being very dishonest about it. He is not talking about diversity meaning he doesn't want different races or sexualities involved in the country. He is talking about the extreme fracturing of groups that is driven by social media. I see this in my everyday life. Browsing any forum, almost every view expressed by any person is polarized to some side. However,…

Direct quote ! “ We have this idea diversity is good, and diversity has many good effects, but diversity also makes things come apart for a large secular nation like the United States what are the forces holding us together, what are the things blowing us apart, diversity makes group more creative when you have good norms..”

That is not a direct quote. Your semi-quote "but diversity also makes things come apart for a large secular nation like the United States" is inaccurate and extremely misleading; Haidt clearly ends the sentence at "come apart", and you left off the "And so" starting the next sentence.

The actual quote, starting at 9:20, with as much fidelity as I can muster:

"We have this idea that umm... that diversity is good, and diversity has many good effects. But.. diversity also makes things come apart. And so for a large secular nation like the United States you have to look at what are the forces holding us together, what are the things blowing us apart. Now diversity makes [a] group more creative when you have good norms, when things are well structured. We have to think really carefully about how to get the benefit from America's diversity, but it's hard to do because if you critique it you could get in big trouble. Now in terms of what actually holds a country together, traditionally it's shared gods, shared blood, and shared enemies. That's what nations usually have used. So we have a challenge, and it is a great experiment, and when social media came in -- when everybody was on social media beginning around 2012, 2013 when it gets hyperviralized, umm, the ability to have any shared understanding of what we're doing shatters. Social media allows us to participate in microstories that kind of bubble up and are gone. There is no ability to have a common understanding of what we're doing. Not that we ever were all one nation and all on the same page. But there's a qualitative change when it's like... here's the story of the day, and.. and.. umm.. uhh.. so there's no possibility for shared stories in the age of social media, widely shared stories. Umm... uh... there's huge decline of trust, trust in each other and trust in institutions. And here I'm drawing on recent social science - uh, political science research showing that social media generally leads to a decline of trust. Social media's incredibly powerful for tearing things down. And that can be a good thing in a dictatorship. But it's very bad at building things up. And in an ailing democracy like ours where our institutions need to be improved not ripped apart, it generally has... has made things worse."

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

#47

Post by tsol »

vmception wrote: post #28

I think a lot of us in other generations are part of the same trends I used to laugh at fidget spinners and everything gen z, then I tried formal education again, taking a class for a semester and oh my god the first couple sessions were really difficult! It immediately clicked with me that we - at least I - am not exempt from deteriorated concentration. I’m acclimated to the creative and less-structured demands of g…

I think everyone's concentration is deteriorating, but kids don't have the benefit of having experienced life without social media. From the very beginning they've been immersed in this, making their problems that much worse

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

#48

Post by archhn »

jimbob45 wrote: post #14
usrn wrote: post #10

Is it social media? Or is it also the knowledge that they effectively have no future. Rent is going up and mortgage rates are going up faster. A shrinking portion of young adults can now afford housing. The economy is becoming so disfunctional there's almost no reason to bother participating. When children end up in that position their family will turn on them and they have nothing materially or socially.

Yes, rent is expensive, but it’s more than possible to make your way in today’s world provided you don’t fall behind due to drugs or avoidable diseases. The people for which success is out of reach do not browse HN.

The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is a precarious condition that leads to a lifetime of stress. Most people are living in extreme stress conditions.

I wouldn't call living paycheck to paycheck "making it." Most people aren't making it--by the numbers.

I know the type of person that posts these kinds of incredibly out of touch comments on here. You work at a corporation, or your skills are currently in high demmand. You are surrounded by people making good money. This insulates you, leading you to extrapolate the conditions you are living under over the WHOLE WORLD--today's world!

Let them eat cake?

In today's world it's: let them withdraw from their 401k if they fall on hard times.

It's ridiculous and frankly insulting and dismissive of the plight of many struggling people. It's the old aristocratic mentality: anyone that doesn't succeed is a fuck up. It's a method of projecting the failings of the system onto those it fails, used over and over throughout history.

I suspect with the political instability of this nation, we won't be having these types of arguments much longer. As the system fails, debates will become viciously partisan. There will be no more "if you try hard, you can succeed." Everything will be reduced to, "Submit to the will of the party, and you're good. Don't and you're a traitor deserving of elimination." This is what happens when people retreat behind slogans and refuse to address reality. Things break down, then things get out of control because we have failed to adapt. Then comes the age of horror where the system has to destructively seek a new equilibrium.

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

#49

Post by stirfish »

toolz wrote: post #45
recursivedoubts wrote: post #32

Our descendants will look back on us allowing children access to unadulterated social media the way we look back on smoking.

Strongly disagree, when has society ever decided less access to information is ideal? Our descendants will create better platforms that can allow users to better filter for their emotional needs and they'll likely have better tools to understand their own emotions.

I don't think of social media - especially casual image sharing sites - as being particularly information-rich.

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

#50

Post by Adraghast »

temp8964 wrote: post #31
usrn wrote: post #10

Is it social media? Or is it also the knowledge that they effectively have no future. Rent is going up and mortgage rates are going up faster. A shrinking portion of young adults can now afford housing. The economy is becoming so disfunctional there's almost no reason to bother participating. When children end up in that position their family will turn on them and they have nothing materially or socially.

> Rent is going up and mortgage rates are going up faster. A shrinking portion of young adults can now afford housing. The economy is becoming so disfunctional there's almost no reason to bother participating. When children end up in that position their family will turn on them and they have nothing materially or socially. This sounds exactly like you are reading too much social media.

Swaths of the United States didn't start popping pills and drinking themselves to death over the past couple decades because they got bummed out by social media.
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