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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]

#471

Post by bsenftner »

Shared404 wrote: post #211
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.

Eh, as a 20 year old I've been told my whole life that I'll be paying for social security but never see the money. Same for most of my peers.

I'm 57 and I've been told that my entire life too. Born in Dec. of '64, I'm technically a boomer but have only seen the economic dregs and I identify 100% as a GenX. My political birth was the Sex Pistols.

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

#472

Post by ben_w »

yunohn wrote: post #419
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, cost of living is proportional to income; I could move inside my small country to a place twice as big, but if I were to get a job close to where I live it'd slash my wages by a lot to the point where I wouldn't actually be able to live there. That said, if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country.

> if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country. “The solution to these problems is to exploit systemic economic inequalities by leveraging remote work for income arbitrage” I don’t understand why HN keeps repeating this “solution”.

In addition to what @nivenkos says, it lowers geographic demand for goods/services in the place you moved from, so costs in the old place go up slower (or even down) because you moved, while also increasing demand (and in turn potentially increasing overall economic output) for geographic goods/services in the new place. It’s a levelling effect in both cases.

Of course, remote working also seems to often cause pay cuts to match local cost of living, and also opens the possibility of being outsourced to extremely low income nations (same effect to a larger degree, especially as it might not be the same person doing the work).

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

#473

Post by taylorius »

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…

"Teens are aware that they are going to inherit a pretty terrible world, and are powerless to do anything about it."

Terrible compared to what? Rebuilding after a world war? Subsistence farming? How did those previous generations manage to maintain their mental health? The difference is that these days people spend their time looking at lies on social media, then measure the world's shortcomings in comparison to those lies.

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

#474

Post by killjoywashere »

In medicine we have a saying: on a scale of 10, death is an 8. It’s not clear to me that suicide is the worst case scenario. For example we have a really good family friend whose daughter has attempted suicide multiple times and has been in an inpatient psychiatric facility for over a year. She’s 13. Her first attempt was at age 11. The state of California is out of beds for this sort of thing so she’s several hundred miles away in another state. Do you think the SWEs, PMs, or executives at FaceBook, Instagram, Snap, or TikTok do volunteer work at these facilities? Do you even think they know where such facilities are?

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

#475

Post by mmarq »

antisinguIarity wrote: post #442
mmarq wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about kids who didn’t have a yard where they could play? Those whose parents lost their jobs? Those that have been evicted because their parents could not pay ever increasing rents? Besides, living in an economy that moves from recession to recession has an impact on the mental health of their parents, especially in economies with little or non-existent safety nets (see UK and US), and I’d be very surprised if t…

I don't disagree at all with you pointing out the plight of families and children less privileged than OP (where I am, there is now a steady stream of truly awful stories about what happened to young children during lockdown when the monitoring and intervention of society as a whole, and social services in particular, is suddenly and completely removed). >economies with little or non-existent safety nets (see UK and…

> However, as a resident of the UK, I have to ask - how does it have a non-existent safety net?

Jobseeker’s Allowance is one forth of the average rent in London and I’m not sure you are entitled to it if you have any savings.

If you lose your private insurance you’d have to rely on the NHS, which is not as bad as what happens in the US, but it’s not in the same league of the French, German or even the Italian healthcare systems.

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

#476

Post by GuB-42 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #301
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…

I can subscribe to the last sentence more than the rest. French are generally very interested in politics from youngish age, for better or worse (the amount of outright communism supporters there among young anywhere I spoke to is disheartening, especially for somebody like me who went through proper communism and saw first hand how it always fucks up individuals and nations for generations, and consistently fails to…

> French are generally very interested in politics from youngish age, for better or worse (the amount of outright communism supporters there among young anywhere I spoke to is disheartening

I think it is normal and even desirable for young people to be interested in extremist politics. Communism but also anarchy, dictatorships, etc... Modern day "free market" democracies are really a "least bad" system, there are many things wrong with them, things that communism or why not a ruling king can address. In practice, most people discover soon enough that it doesn't work, but to go to that conclusion, you have to at least consider it, and it is better to do that when you are still young and not involved in actual politics.

Also, being able to consider other systems is a sign of a well functioning free country. If any idea other than "democracy is the best" is being suppressed, then it is not really a democracy.

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

#477

Post by bsenftner »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #323
idrios wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's really easy to see how social media is directly affecting kids' mental health. Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, YouTube, Twitch, on these sites are an endless stream of people their who are better looking, smarter, more successful, funnier, more interesting than them. If you have insecurities, these sites will amplify them. And if you admire someone on one of these platforms, that person literally has no idea…

I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles. The one difference I will point out though, is that with social media it becomes a lot more attainable to become like that. There's complete randoms that became celebrities through social media - and they don't even need to be conventionally attrac…

> I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles.

You're overlooking the demographic targeting, and how that seeks to place content before the user's eyes that generates the "most engagement". That mechanism right there makes social media SIGNIFICANTLY different.

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

#478

Post by BlargMcLarg »

mschuster91 wrote: post #400
nivenkos wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things. My father did that at 23, not 30.

> But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. We don't have to pay ludicrous amounts for healthcare though, and rents are also way way WAY lower here than in the US - even London, Berlin and Munich are nowhere near US levels.

What are you comparing with? I'd really like to see some comparisons in Numbeo or similar. Rent takes similar portions of the budget in several of these cities for professionals, even compared to several American metropolises.

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

#479

Post by cycomanic »

moonchrome wrote: post #196
Semaphor wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. We have other issues here, though (speaking for the situation in Germany). I’m quite some time out of my teens at 36, but for many years now I’ve been told that all that tax (technically not a tax) I pay for my pension will not result in me getting any meaningful pension. For people who are currently teenagers it p…

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.

> 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.

I was actually just talking with a teacher friend about this very thing (he lives in Germany btw). He was essentially expressing his surprise that the high-school students (well Gymnasium technically), were at the age of ~17-19 already planning their whole live in terms of career, money etc.. That is definitely very different to how it was back when I was a teenager, where one essentially started studying what one was interested in, with career paths being somewhat secondary.

So in short, anecdotal evidence is that yes teenagers are already thinking about their pensions now.

> People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.

While this is correct, we should also not project our memory of what it was to be a teenager > 10 years ago, onto todays teenagers.

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

#480

Post by nxmnxm99 »

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…

Americans really live in their own big bubble don't they - how can there be such ignorance of the rest of the planet.

Terrible world? Are you kidding me? Try being born literally anywhere else at literally any other time in the world. The rest of the world isn't fucking Sweden.

Count your blessings. There are literally billions who would give up their first born for the "terrible world" you just described. Kids in the congo aren't having meltdowns pretending they have tourettes like spoiled American kids of the self-esteem experiment.

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