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Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#441

Post by zamnos »

xwdv wrote: post #417
asdff wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is unique to social media. Try dressing different from the norm in the 1990s before people even had cellphones in class and you'd definitely end up ostracized. It would be even worse because there's no way to find people who might be different like you, unlike today where there are forums and other websites.

I think being able to find others like you is actually what really sends mental health spiraling. Back in the day, if you were a pathetic loser, that’s all you were, and that’s how you had to navigate life. This would force you to take an honest look at yourself and see why you don’t fit in to larger society and maybe if you should try to be different. And eventually you might become a version of yourself a bit more…

That only explains the poor mental health of terrible people with shitty beliefs though. What about people with parents who managed to socialize them well but yet are horribly depressed due to the environment being in shambles? The environment has always been mistreated by those who make more money from that mistreatment, from way before the Internet was a smidge of an idea.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#442

Post by glenngillen »

1827162 wrote: post #326
TechBro8615 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always just delete your account. Granted, that's easier for me to say as an adult than it would be for your average peer-pressured teenager. But that's where parents can help. I think eventually, teens will see social media as "uncool" in the same way as they see smoking cigarettes as "uncool" (in some countries). It takes a lot of social propagandizing to popularize that idea, but we did it with cigarettes a…

I think the pendulum will swing towards that way eventually. It's cyclical. Once the novelty of social media wears away, as it has done already, and the harms start being worse than the benefits. However not being on social media can have real-world consequences in the classroom, the child could be treated as an outcast and mocked or bullied for it. There is a middle ground, which is to use a pseudonym and ensure ano…

My 6yo daughter had to create a login for various online things recently (e.g., code.org to keep track of her progress). I don't exactly when or where they taught her this at school, but she absolutely refused to share any of her personal information in any way. She spent a good 30 minutes trying to make up a handle to use that she liked but didn't include any reference to her name, her initials, anything about her birth month or day (I'd suggesting adding the day of the month she was born as a suffix so she'd remember it given all her initial name preferences seems to be taken already), etc.

I was very impressed that they seem to have this conditioned into them so young, and to a level of importance that exceeded even my own paranoia about doing it properly.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#443

Post by tstrimple »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #400
Paul-Craft wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're making stuff for people who get no input into how that stuff is made, much of which they can't just stop consuming.

Of course people have an input. You can buy it from someone else who makes it a different way, or not at all.

The fact that Nestle still exists should be proof enough for anyone that it literally doesn't matter how horrible a large corporation is. There is no activism route to correcting these companies behavior. Only legislation with teeth will work. That we'll all collectively decide to stop doing business with bad companies is nothing but a libertarian fantasy.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#444

Post by caddemon »

xwdv wrote: post #417
asdff wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is unique to social media. Try dressing different from the norm in the 1990s before people even had cellphones in class and you'd definitely end up ostracized. It would be even worse because there's no way to find people who might be different like you, unlike today where there are forums and other websites.

I think being able to find others like you is actually what really sends mental health spiraling. Back in the day, if you were a pathetic loser, that’s all you were, and that’s how you had to navigate life. This would force you to take an honest look at yourself and see why you don’t fit in to larger society and maybe if you should try to be different. And eventually you might become a version of yourself a bit more…

I think in most cases this isn't true (who cares how niche your hobbies or style are), but when it comes to internet mental health discussion communities there definitely is a double edged sword IMO. Depends on the community and person, but I suspect you're right in the case of e.g. finding others who are depressed, there's a lot of overshoot in the reaction to stigma in some of these groups, to the point it encourages giving into some pretty bad lifestyle loops.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#445

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #379
freejazz wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rayiner is clearly just expressing their own personal distaste for non-passing trans individuals. Is Rayiner checking the genitals of everyone that interacts with children, or is Rayiner just implicitly assuming their sex based upon their gender expression??

Are you seriously comparing non-passing trans people to drag performers?

You do realize in the subcontinent that transpeople interact with kids all the time in the street? I remember meeting them in my family’s neighborhood in Karachi when I was 7 or 8. You might want to ask your dad about this if you don’t believe me.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#446

Post by tap-snap-or-nap »

freework wrote: post #118

If you ask 10 different people why they are depressed, you'll get 10 different answers. This illustrated why I think the scientific method is the wrong way to go about understanding the human mind. Also, if you ask a depressed person why they are depressed, they may not know exactly why they are depressed. I spent my entire high school years depressed. It wasn't until a few years after I graduated college before I re…

You cannot rely on self-reporting as an accurate way to diagnose someone. You need to do single subject studies and doing a sample studies for this is obviously not the right way to go about it. Data collection is very important to understand human behaviour.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#447

Post by jeremyjh »

softwaredoug wrote: post #113

As a parent. It's a hard topic. And not black and white. For the 10+ crowd, the days of kids roaming the streets, finding their friends and playing are gone. I think the causes for this are complicated, and social media (and screens) are just one part of the puzzle. Consider a few things: 1. The percentage of households with kids has gradually declined over time, while the percentage of retirees has gone up. So you j…

A lot of this rings true but is this a theory that explains a sharp bend in 2012?

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#448

Post by woodruffw »

bitcoin_anon wrote: post #357
woodruffw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a personal anecdote: I have family members, mostly younger ones (and I’m in my mid-20s), who are extremely anxious about climate change. They’ve sought mental health services because of their worries. I don’t think that’s particularly unique. I agree that it is absolutely not the only factor, which is the point I was attempting to make with a “weaker” version of Haidt’s argument.

Isn't this a social media problem as well? Climate change is a hot topic on social media. When we are frequently exposed to doom-porn, we tend to develop a bleak outlook.

Read the comment again: that’s the “weaker” argument, one that Haidt fails to make.

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#449

Post by jeremyjh »

woodruffw wrote: post #5

Just to levy a single criticism among several: I find Haidt’s rebuttal of the climate change hypothesis unconvincing: fears around climate change are not “energizing” in the way that prior crises are, in a significant part because public sentiment around climate change is that we’re already doomed in a way that isn’t really possible with social crises. Similarly: I don’t think most teenage girls were voraciously read…

What is special about the year 2012 in regard to these fears?

Re: Why some researchers think I’m wrong about social media and mental illness

#450

Post by caddemon »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #434
freework wrote: post #118

If you ask 10 different people why they are depressed, you'll get 10 different answers. This illustrated why I think the scientific method is the wrong way to go about understanding the human mind. Also, if you ask a depressed person why they are depressed, they may not know exactly why they are depressed. I spent my entire high school years depressed. It wasn't until a few years after I graduated college before I re…

While some psychologists might not be aware of this (like the Reason criticism suggests... though mostly has the overworked angle), it seems to be almost insulting to suggest that researchers at his level are not ?

You'd be surprised how niche this sort of discussion is in neuropsych research. Is it because researchers aren't thinking enough about the big picture or because the NIH is incompetent and the researchers just go along with what they need to get funding? Idk, but either way it's not great. I suspect this problem exists in a lot of sciences but psychiatry in particular seems to have overcorrected for some of its less rigorous history.

That said, I don't think it's correct to say the scientific method can't apply. We absolutely have to be more careful about averaging over many people with different actual disease but the same current shitty label, and we also have to be better about looking at longitudinal signals. But there are ways to do this in a more scientific manner (e.g. involving well-defined testable predictions).

I agree that as part of this transitory period (especially with the sample sizes that most psych studies can feasibly get) there should be more synergy between qualitative human-focused approaches and what the by the book science people are doing. It's unfortunate how far behind research psychiatric practice can lag in some respects, and in other respects the psych researchers seem to not take practitioner observations too seriously these days.

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