Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

suchscience.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 109 posts

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#41

Post by Izkata »

skissane wrote: post #28
kypro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Religious studies fails to make kids more religious You can definitely make kids believe in religion. There's a reason entire societies in the past held the same religious views.

Religious education in schools often fails because the kids can tell the adults teaching it don’t really believe in it themselves. If the person who wants you to believe it doesn’t actually do so, why should you? And then when they do really believe in it, more often than not rather than “I’ve thought deeply about all the doubts and I can give thoughtful responses to them”, their attitude is more “asking tough questi…

> their attitude is more “asking tough questions is a sin”

I don't think they went that far with me, but I did get frustration and telling me to stop asking questions. Pretty sure not being able to answer anything I came up with had me thinking it can't be true.

And this was specifically in a religious education class we did once a week at a church separate from school.

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#42

Post by gloryjulio »

maxerickson wrote: post #17
harry8 wrote: post #4

Religious studies fails to make kids more religious. Abstinence programs taught in schools fail to increase celibacy. Health programs fail to dent mcdonalds market share. Arithmetic fails to stop people taking on unnecessary and punitive debt. The point being pushing things (good, bad or ugly) in schools often doesn't work out as hoped. Schooling is not a solved problem but it is a very crude tool used badly and ofte…

The analysis they reanalyzed did see useful results from the interventions. In the new analysis, they found that if the separated by age, the older children got less benefit. What are the odds that repetition of a basic curriculum by a lightly trained teacher has less impact over time?

My personal experience is completely opposite. When I was young I would naturally focus and block out noise even though my environment was chaotic and I got good grade without trying. But as I grew older, since high school the natural ability was lost and my performance and grades suffered.

When I start working the mindfulness and meditations practices helped me tremendously and I would felt like I can go back to my focus and productive mode easily and regained my performance.

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#43

Post by ekms »

asaddhamani wrote: post #37
Buttons840 wrote: post #26

> The aim of these programs is to equip youth with skills to prevent mental disorders and enhance overall well-being. The way I learned mindfulness meditation, you should not expect it to accomplish anything specific. I listened to a course and found the ideas new and helpful, it was so life changing that I went further and studied some Buddhist philosophy, but further studied brought some anxiety and so I stopped. M…

I find the Waking Up app the closest to this. Others like headspace feel heavily commercialised, with an aim of improving “productivity”. If anyone is looking for guided meditation, I suggest checking out waking up.

I dont think the original series of guided meditations from the headspace founder was aimed at productivity. From what I remember, it's a pretty typical breath- and bodyscan-centered vipassana style. I can't comment on any of the subsequent instructors or lessons though, haven't tried them

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#44

Post by skissane »

Izkata wrote: post #41
skissane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious education in schools often fails because the kids can tell the adults teaching it don’t really believe in it themselves. If the person who wants you to believe it doesn’t actually do so, why should you? And then when they do really believe in it, more often than not rather than “I’ve thought deeply about all the doubts and I can give thoughtful responses to them”, their attitude is more “asking tough questi…

> their attitude is more “asking tough questions is a sin” I don't think they went that far with me, but I did get frustration and telling me to stop asking questions. Pretty sure not being able to answer anything I came up with had me thinking it can't be true. And this was specifically in a religious education class we did once a week at a church separate from school.

> I don't think they went that far with me, but I did get frustration and telling me to stop asking questions. Pretty sure not being able to answer anything I came up with had me thinking it can't be true.

If I could go back in a time machine and talk to a younger version of myself, I think I could give far more intelligent answers to my questions than anyone I asked could.

Back in the Middle Ages, many of the smartest people in society ended up working for the Church. That doesn't guarantee they were right, but they were far from simpletons. Someone like Thomas Aquinas, whether he's ultimately right or wrong, he's a much more nuanced thinker than shallow dismissals of mediaeval scholasticism would suggest. And one can make similar remarks about Jewish scholars such as Rambam/Maimonides and Ralbag/Gersonides, or the great Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina/Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd/Averroes and Mulla Sadra. But nowadays, religion struggles to attract people of the same intellectual calibre. Which isn't to say none of them exist, but they are hidden away in remote higher education institutions, and there is a big disconnect between them and your average K-12 religious education teacher. Of course, in the Middle Ages, your village priest/rabbi/imam was unlikely to be anywhere near the level of that era's intellectual giants, but they arguably had less of a disconnect with them too.

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#45

Post by toasterlovin »

skissane wrote: post #28
kypro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Religious studies fails to make kids more religious You can definitely make kids believe in religion. There's a reason entire societies in the past held the same religious views.

Religious education in schools often fails because the kids can tell the adults teaching it don’t really believe in it themselves. If the person who wants you to believe it doesn’t actually do so, why should you? And then when they do really believe in it, more often than not rather than “I’ve thought deeply about all the doubts and I can give thoughtful responses to them”, their attitude is more “asking tough questi…

> the average Catholic school is more likely to turn your child into an atheist than into a convinced Catholic

Most serious Catholics I know agree with this, btw.

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#46

Post by sublinear »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #27

As someone who grew up in the 90s, so many things seem to have changed to just cause a ton of anxiety that we didn't have when I was growing up. A typical day for me as a teenager would be to wake up, have breakfast (or maybe not), walk to school, strictly pen and paper work only, hang out with my friends at lunch. We might play Gameboy after school, the same game for weeks on end. If I wanted something to do I had t…

All this overstimulation is driven by marketing. Nothing really changed except the rate of consumption of information.

Staying focused is more important than ever. Not enough people know how or care to fight all these nasty attempts to move their locus of control outside themselves. Once you know what you want out of life it's much easier to keep things in control.

As the old Simpson's episode said: "just don't look".

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#47

Post by gosub100 »

kypro wrote: post #16
harry8 wrote: post #4

Religious studies fails to make kids more religious. Abstinence programs taught in schools fail to increase celibacy. Health programs fail to dent mcdonalds market share. Arithmetic fails to stop people taking on unnecessary and punitive debt. The point being pushing things (good, bad or ugly) in schools often doesn't work out as hoped. Schooling is not a solved problem but it is a very crude tool used badly and ofte…

> Religious studies fails to make kids more religious You can definitely make kids believe in religion. There's a reason entire societies in the past held the same religious views.

[flagged]

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#48

Post by mtalantikite »

Buttons840 wrote: post #26

> The aim of these programs is to equip youth with skills to prevent mental disorders and enhance overall well-being. The way I learned mindfulness meditation, you should not expect it to accomplish anything specific. I listened to a course and found the ideas new and helpful, it was so life changing that I went further and studied some Buddhist philosophy, but further studied brought some anxiety and so I stopped. M…

I had a similar thing happen in my meditation practice early on, and gave it up for many years after because of the anxiety. I eventually got back to it and found a lot of insight from Thich Nhay Hanh’s translation of the Heart Sutra. My teacher likes to point out that encountering the extreme anxiety or dread is actually a good sign, that it’s a natural reaction of your ego or sense of self trying to protect itself. But it’s probably best to be working with a teacher when you’re at that point, just to avoid needless confusion and to move past that anxiety or fear.

You also definitely want to accomplish something specific in your practice, namely to move past suffering. The first step of any formal meditation session is to bring up your motivation for sitting in the first place.

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#49

Post by charlie0 »

harry8 wrote: post #4

Religious studies fails to make kids more religious. Abstinence programs taught in schools fail to increase celibacy. Health programs fail to dent mcdonalds market share. Arithmetic fails to stop people taking on unnecessary and punitive debt. The point being pushing things (good, bad or ugly) in schools often doesn't work out as hoped. Schooling is not a solved problem but it is a very crude tool used badly and ofte…

Wonder what this all says about free will.

Re: Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds

#50

Post by gosub100 »

beretguy wrote: post #2

> students have learned mindfulness techniques like breath awareness, thought observation, and emotional monitoring as part of their regular curriculum Children are full of energy - they need to be let loose and run around. It’s like trying to teach peaceful and quite a 6 months old dog - you can’t. You need to let them burn all that energy.

And the emotional systems of the brain are some of the last to develop. It's good to teach youth that there are these things called emotions (for the most inept) and they do matter. But don't expect too much from it.
Post reply on HN