Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by throwaway15908 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:26 AM UTC

mercy_dude wrote: post #203

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…

Largely agree with your analysis but you are missing one key aspect - disintegration of family and community/social support structure such as church or local youth clubs etc. Whether what you are saying as part of your analysis is the cause of this disintegration or effect I don’t know. As a society if anything we can do to better mental health, it is strengthening family and social circle and community support syste…

Degrading social care systems and social mobility is actually to blame for this. This is what OP is missing in his/her rant.

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

#422

Post by pmichaud » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

unicornfinder wrote: post #418

hilbert42 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't hav…

Indeed but I think again information does have a role to play here. Back then everyone around you was going through the same shit and you learned to deal with it. Now you have social media giving a constant reminder that you're not good enough and that you need to achieve more. Conversely I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness" that I've noticed is a bit more prevalent in the younger generations, a…

Any complex system will have a bunch of feedback loops, so it’s likely both a symptom and a cause.

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

#423

Post by nonrandomstring » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #63

germinalphrase wrote: post #22

My entirely anecdotal impression as a high school teacher is that media (in general, often but not always “social” media) is doing an exceptional job of sucking up teenagers’ every waking moment that is not actively demanded to be focused on something else. It’s pleasure without joy. Ennui without boredom. Their social skills (and social interest) appear markedly reduced even compared to even five years ago. So many…

I'm curious: how do the "weird ones" do? The outsiders, contrarians, the ones who don't quite fit in and who might even take pleasure in not caring about social media?

> I'm curious: how do the "weird ones" do? The outsiders, contrarians, the ones who don't quite fit in and who might even take pleasure in not caring about social media?

Anecdotally, really really well! based on Haidt's watershed of 2009 I'm seeing what's in the pipeline at bachelors and masters level education 10-12 years on. Most of my L6 and L7 are young adults aged around 20-25. They've either had about a decade of exposure to smartphones and social media, or for some reason they have opted out.

There is a very significant difference in their abilities and attitudes. I can almost see it in their eyes in the first tutorial.

Motivation is higher.

Punctuality and commitment are massively better (they turn up to tutorials and don't email me at the last minute with an excuse)

Concentration and listening is better, They are not constantly twitching and looking to their phone.

Emotional range of affect (ability for seriousness and good humour) is higher.

Positive interpersonal skills are better. This isn't an introvert-extrovert thing, it's about focus, openness, body language, eye contact, thoughtfulness of speech, vocabulary. It's just a different experience to meet people who are phone-free.

Even ability to use technology is improved. Counterintuitive maybe. But they seem better at searching, referencing and organising information.

I pretty much breathe a sigh of joy when I see a student has a dumb phone or tells me they "don't do smartphone and social media". I know there's going to be more to work with, and the outcomes are going to be interesting.

The irony is of course, that these "weird ones" would have been us geeks 30 years ago. The same group you'd expect to have a more intense relation to authentic knowledge, curiosity and better academic outcomes.

Things have flipped so that technology overuse is now normative, and the "geeky" thing to do is be moderate, circumspect and sceptical.

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

#424

Post by caslon » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:32 AM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #414

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…

I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't hav…

Teenagers back then had more to look forward to. You work for some local company for three decades, then you retire, picking up a house somewhere in the process and are able to put your kids in college. Family members die, but who cares? Sure, it'll traumatize you, but it doesn't ruin your future. Not like that hasn't been happening consistently over the past few years with a pandemic.

Nowadays, what's anyone got to look forward to? Earlier today my favorite record label announced they were getting purchased by a bigger label, and a few months ago, my favorite way to purchase music got bought by a massive conglomerate that supports concentration camps in China. I am going to die without having seen upward economic mobility (in many ways being significantly poorer than my working-class parent). I avoided going to university since I didn't reasonably have a way to afford it, and was denied advancement in classes despite having test scores that indicated I could have performed well above where I was when I was in schooling.

If that's enough to bother me, a person who doesn't use any of these social platforms, what do you think it would do to a child of schooling age? They have nothing to look forward to. Their futures suck. Things kind of just suck. We have surrendered all control of society to a handful of parasitic corporations. People may not be dying of polio, but there's no longer hope to balance out the suffering. There's nothing to look forward to. You're going to die in the same spot as who came before you, if not worse.

I think we blame the social media too much and don't blame the fact that society is just miserable these days for any person not born into wealth.

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

#425

Post by rco8786 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:34 AM UTC

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…

You’re describing basically any period of time since the turn of the century. Maybe before too. You’re also describing problems that adults worry about, not teenagers.

It’s a fallacy to think that we’re living in “extraordinary” times relative to the past.

Wars, pandemics, economic cycles, political instability, etc are not new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination.

For teenagers in the 60s it was perfectly plausible that their entire school, neighborhood, town, city could be engulfed in a mushroom cloud at any moment, for example.

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

#426

Post by peoplefromibiza » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #408

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about kids who didn’t have a yard where they could play? > Those whose parents lost their jobs? If you acknowledge that, you should also acknowledge that heir only window to the outside World was a screen where some a*hole from Dubai whose only purpose was selling themselves and the things they were dressing to their "followers" for money, was saying all day that "we're gonna be fine" and then we didn't, "we a…

'Compare that to my father born in 1941' I am sorry but the idea that 'bad old days had great mental health is a meme. Do we have any evidence? Was anyone even counting who is depressed and who isn't? What about other mental issues and traumas? They didnt exactly have loads of psycologists avaliable.

> 'bad old days had great mental health

An who said that actually?

Did you not read what I wrote or are you trying to troll?

Anyway, I'll rephrase it, so that it may become clearer to you: my father didn't survive all his traumas because he's stronger than current generations, but because he was not constantly surrounded by misleading messages of rapid success and luxurious lifestyle, something that you should absolutely try to obtain or you're a loser, he was too busy trying to get out the horrors of a war and start his life.

In a way being detached from what's happening in the rest of the World, except the usual news reporting and the usual political propaganda, sheltered him from the fear of failure.

My father started being a bit depressed when he retired, because he felt he had no purpose anymore.

Kids today feel they have no purpose too soon in their lives.

> Do we have any evidence? Was anyone even counting who is depressed and who isn't?

Yeah, we do have them.

Just look for them.

I was volunteering with Red Cross when Rwandan genocide happened, I helped kids with parts of the skull cut out with a machete, they were not depressed, they were scared and traumatized, but not depressed. They were actually happy to be alive and have other kids to play with in a new country, with the perspective of a new life.

Same happened after the first war in Yugoslavia.

> What about other mental issues and traumas?

trauma doesn't automatically lead to depression.

Kids of today are not traumatized, they are pressured into success by the world surrounding them, which is almost entirely social networks.

> They didnt exactly have loads of psycologists avaliable.

In my country psychologic support is free and universal since after the WW2.

And even before then, but you know, Mussolini was in power, so it didn't really matter.

Basaglia, the great reformer of our psychiatric system, was born in 1924.

Psychology was born in 19th century, Jung was already practicing in 1900, if only there weren't two World wars in 30 years...

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

#427

Post by unicornfinder » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

nicoco wrote: post #221

jay_kyburz wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand such strict screen time limits. As adults everything will be on a screen. Might as well start getting good at it. My kids are I will even let them back on the computer in the evening after dinner if they want to do programming or level editing in Roblox, or make music in garage band, or something else creative.

I agree with you on something: too many discussions mention 'screen time' as if anything done on a screen was perfectly equivalent. I really feel that playing a videogame/coding/doomscrolling/watching ads/reading/... are all very different activities with different consequences.

Indeed. As someone in their 20s one of my regrets, genuinely, is that when I was younger I didn't just spend more time playing video games rather than doomscrolling...

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

#428

Post by engineeringwoke » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

spaniard89277 wrote: post #406

maeln wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk but in France, when I was still a teenager, it was not that uncommon to talk/joke about the fact that we will never be able to retire. In high school, most of my classmate already started to have a political conscience and where thinking about this kind of stuff. Same with the environment. We already had social media at the time (mostly facebook) and yes, I won't deny that there was already something anxious abou…

This is also the case for Spain. Since I was a teenager (also in my 30s) it was a pretty common theme. Not only pensions, but pretty much everything is a scheme where yougnsters are doomed no matter what. I remember my history teacher telling us about it and people saying they knew, and they also knew that they couldn't change it unless boomers were on board, which they weren't at the time, and definitely still in th…

Lived in Europe for four years and come back to my resident American hellhole and now the gray-haired extremists stacked our highest court so they can ban abortion after they legalized it when they were young and in control of society... slowly but surely turning towards fascism as a last ditch attempt to create the world that they dreamed of in their childhood while talking about "love and peace"... funnily enough just like the old Russians currently throwing a tantrum because their precious dream the USSR died.

Scholz and co. are too self-centered to accept a hit to their economy in exchange for de-clawing the next Hitler. Rutte and co. are too greedy to allow for a deeper union. Macron has a business-friendly "mandate" despite only being elected for not being Le Pen. We are all tired of the largesse of the old and the few.

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

#429

Post by coldtea » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

alimov wrote: post #233

moonchrome wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think teenagers are thinking about pensions... If they are they are probably already having mental issues because that's not something someone pre 20s should be concerned about. People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.

I don’t know if you were offended by that comment, but just because you may not have considered your future in your teens (don’t know if you did or didn’t, but that doesn’t matter) doesn’t mean that all others also did not. For example in my teens I was very much concerned with what I’d do when i was older and whether or not I’d be able to buy a house or afford to go to college.. these are not strictly adult concerns…

>But you are doing just the same thing by dismissing peoples perspectives and opinions as irrelevant…

Nope, he is not doing the same.

He basically says "people shouldn't project their own (older age) concerns as universal".

He doesn't say there are no universal social issues.

So dismissing "peoples perspectives and opinions as irrelevant" is perfectly fine, if they are irrelevant to the group they're projected to.

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

#430

Post by blablabla123 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

dcsommer wrote: post #15

causality0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think it looks like going back to when your online and offline identities were totally separate. Inhabiting the internet under your real name is living in two different worlds with two different rulesets and pretending the same identity is well-suited to both. 100% of your online identity was under your control in my day. You were exactly who you chose to be. Not anymore. Now if you're ugly, fat, gay, a…

Are there any studies showing using 4chan, tumblr, or reddit has better mental health outcomes than non-anonymous social networks? I'm skeptical from my own experience.

That's true, also considering how many people believe or pretend to believe in conspiracy theories as absurd as reptile people and looking at violent protests that have been happening in the last years. So at least the negative effects have become most apparent in adults actually