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Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

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Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#41

Post by austin-cheney »

munchler wrote: post #27

> Anxiety is the second leading cause of disability and mortality worldwide. I think this comes from WHO, but isn't consistent with other information from WHO, so it's pretty debatable. I believe the source is this[0], which says "Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in all countries and communities, affecting people of all ages and income levels. They represent the second bigg…

No, its very reliable after consideration for how anxiety works from a physiological perspective and what does to a person's health and how modifies their decisions and behaviors. When all these factors are taken into account anxiety alone may account for most other more directly measured mortality conditions.

The other side of that coin is that anxiety is also most prominently the result of social conditioning as opposed to diagnosed illness. This results in anti-anxiety medications that are vastly over-prescribed for individuals that receive less than ideal benefits.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#42

Post by mjburgess »

jancsika wrote: post #31
mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

> This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. You're speculation here could be a counterargument to Jonathan Haidt's meta studies on the effects of social media on teenage girls, if you can supplement your speculation with a better explanation for the increase in major depressive episodes in the time range he cites than the corr…

Granting to you for the moment that the issue is with technology -- if instagram is removed, what is it replaced with? Presumably youtube? Or more passive kinds of tech?

Is the issue social media, or mass media? Who knows.

If we don't grant that, then the rise of instagram correlates heavily with everything i've mentioned. I'd suppose if you look at the physical places of social interaction for teenagers, where they'd have to move around and meet people -- these have all disappeared, and extremely, with the rise of instagram.

Removing the gramme hardly brings them back. Maybe, maybe not.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#43

Post by midtake »

mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not talking about a degradation of a high trust society here.

With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in activities that would promote their success. We are talking about the same symptoms as addiction manifesting in kids because they are exposed to too much social media.

Your litmus test for generational effect is also flawed. Let's assume an inverse test as a mental exercise, where we introduce social media to a young population previously unexposed. Kids who are able to reject the pull of social media will replace the ones who cannot, the numbers will shuffle. After such a test is concluded, you will tell yourself you're right because on a macro-economic scale everything looks the same, but to an individual prone to social media overuse, his or her life will be different (likely worse).

That said, the issues you bring up are more important, and no one seems willing to tackle them. Perhaps a middle ground here is that the problems you listed are masking the problem of social media overuse, but that social media overuse is still a problem. It is not an innocent messenger.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#44

Post by ohrus »

I skimmed the important parts of the paper. This is akin to finding that cigarettes reduce stress. Any smoker/former smoker will tell you this is true (in the immediate sense).

Does that give any weight to the stance that smoking is good for you and society at large? No.

We are right to panic about social media.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#46

Post by nineplay »

mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

> lack of time for parenting

> helicopter parenting

There is a contradiction here which commonly underlies 'problems in modern parenting' discussions and creates a "dammed if you do, damned if you don't" situation. It is always possible to criticize any parent for being uninvolved or too involved.

I've often wondered why 'soccer mom' became a negative term as though 'supporting your child in healthy outdoor recreational activities' was considered a bad thing. I know it implied a log of other behaviors, but still was anchored in the idea that there is a microscopic line between an involved parent and an over-involved parent.

Then we still assured that two working parents brings neglect - despite the pride many Gen Xers take in being a 'latch key kid' and being sent out until the street lights went dark.

There's no winning, which is perhaps the point.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#47

Post by jl6 »

Social media use can be fine for people who are well-grounded grass-touchers in their everyday life, but this grounding comes with maturity and typically isn’t found in younger people, for whom abstract online spaces can be powerfully dissociating and are very unlikely to be healthy.

We are starting to understand the impact of ultra-processed food. When will we clue up to ultra-mediated social interaction?

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#48

Post by austin-cheney »

mjburgess wrote: post #36
austin-cheney wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be proven. Simply measure a population of typical social media users for relative measures of neuroticism. Then have an experiment population of healthy military leaders and police officers that have low social media use. The assumption is that the second population would score dramatically lower in neuroticism than the population average. That establishes a of divergent populations baseline. The change thei…

It's hard to control for mere provision of social media access. Eg., if you're supposed to be out in the field all day, when are you mean to access social media? Social media is, in that case, a replacement activity. The question, which is i think unanswered, is whether and what its replacing in the lives of children. It may turn out to be: not much. That when taken away, children don't suddenly get more time, attent…

Actually, there is historical precedent for that: Gen X.

The defining feature of Generation X is the latch-key kid population. Children arriving home to empty houses for hours after school without any kind of social interaction whether in person or online. This would be before the internet, so there was no online social activity. This behavior may have applied to as many as 30-35 million US households where for the first time in US history both parents were expected to work full time outside the house. These children had to learn to entertain themselves, do their own chores, and possibly prepare their own meals. Imagine an entire massive population learning to become largely fully self-sufficient, from an emotional development perspective, as children. They had no substitute solution or alternative activity.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#49

Post by AlexandrB »

mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

I think it's pretty simple:

1. Ads are mind cancer.

2. The better a platform is at delivering ads, the worse it is for your mental well-being.

Point (2) is not just because of the ads themselves, but also all the incentives created by ad-monetized platforms. So much slop, misinformation, clickbait, and ragebait is caused by people fighting for attention to get that sweet, sweet ad revenue.

There's a reason "peak TV" happened after TV shows were freed from the need to bend their structure around several ad breaks. This stuff is not just a "monetization strategy", it infects the surrounding (non-ad) media and fundamentally changes it for the worse.

Edit: One last point - ad delivery requires taking control away from the viewer/user. A platform that's good at delivering ads is necessarily one that makes it hard to block/skip/remove the ads because most users would if they could. This same mentality of control then informs the rest of the design. So you have endless A/B tests you can't opt out of and "I'll enable it later" dialog boxes instead of allowing the user to control their experience.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#50

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

midtake wrote: post #43
mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not talking about a degradation of a high trust society here. With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in…

I'm well older than 30 and couldn't disagree with GP more. I think social media has been an absolute disaster not just for young people, but for society at large.

And, importantly, I don't think it needs to be this way, but is designed to be this way to increase engagement. I remember when I first got on Facebook in the mid 00s and I loved it, and I was able to meaningfully connect with old friends. I also remember when the enshittification began, at least for me, when there was a distinct change in the feed algorithm that made it much more like twitter, designed for right hand thumb scrolling exercises and little actual positive interactions with friends.

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