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No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

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Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#51

Post by eutropia »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #38
Jimpulse wrote: post #10

Jonathan Haidt, who's been driving a lot of the work against social media for kids, directly refutes these findings in this post https://www.afterbabel.com/p/fundamental-flaws-part-3 .

The If Books Could Kill podcast did a good episode about this topic and Haidt's book in particular: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/episodes/15546366-the-anx... >

What they said on "If Books Could Kill" is an extremely thorough trouncing of Haidt's narrative and the methodologies of the researches he utilized in that book.

The summary is this:

The uptick is adequately explained by changes to mandatory reporting requirements for screening questions of mental health for teenagers from Obamacare and increased access to healthcare for those teenagers.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#52

Post by onelesd »

bpodgursky wrote: post #23

I don't want to sound unscientific, but when a paper is directly in conflict with what is obviously true, it's OK to use common sense.

My own (anecdotal) experience tells me that increased social media use is directly proportional to increased bad feelings. Common sense tells me that increased bad feelings over time leads to bigger, worse bad feelings.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#53

Post by el_memorioso »

pfdietz wrote: post #21
lazyeye wrote: post #12

Memories of tobacco "researchers" claiming the science linking smoking to cancer is inconclusive.

So, where is the equivalent of cancer-in-animals experiments for social media? Also, if putative negative effects from social media exposure were as strong and unambiguous as lung cancer in smokers, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

> Also, if putative negative effects from social media exposure were as strong and unambiguous as lung cancer in smokers, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

This is not necessarily true. Lung cancer was rare before cigarettes. Research had already revealed cigarettes to cause lung cancer in the 1940s and 1950s. Even so, in 1960, only 1/3 of doctors believed that cigarettes caused cancer. This was largely due to the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda. Even as late as 1972, the tobacco industry was putting out propaganda that was having a noticeable effect on teens and young adults. So, even with the "strong and unambiguous" negative effects of cigarettes, it still took 25+ years for most of the US population to accept that cigarettes are bad.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#54

Post by elashri »

randomdata wrote: post #40
cwoolfe wrote: post #24

Ok, now let's see the study that shows it is beneficial to teen mental health. I quit it and my mental health improved. Many others in a controlled study found the same effect. Alcott and colleagues (2020) randomly assigned 2743 adults to either deactivate their Facebook accounts for one month or not. This study also found that deactivation significantly improved subjective well-being and that “80% of the treatment g…

Do teens even use social media? I am under the impression that they are all about what is effectively cable TV. That is what the hip-and-with it services provide, and what the boomer social media platforms are more and more clamouring to become. Social media is for old people still trying to re-live what the internet was like 20 years ago. And, I expect, that is the tree you actually want to bark up. Does parental so…

Teens are using social media that adults usually use it less on average. Instagram and TikTok are the prominent examples. They will use less of "x" and facebook because for them is where old people hang out.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#56

Post by randomdata »

elashri wrote: post #54
randomdata wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do teens even use social media? I am under the impression that they are all about what is effectively cable TV. That is what the hip-and-with it services provide, and what the boomer social media platforms are more and more clamouring to become. Social media is for old people still trying to re-live what the internet was like 20 years ago. And, I expect, that is the tree you actually want to bark up. Does parental so…

Teens are using social media that adults usually use it less on average. Instagram and TikTok are the prominent examples. They will use less of "x" and facebook because for them is where old people hang out.

TikTok is not social media. It is cable TV.

Instagram, being quite old at this point, still has some vestiges of social media to keep the older people who started using it decades ago happy, but it too is moving towards the cable TV model as much as it can.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#57

Post by elicksaur »

Spivak wrote: post #45
spondylosaurus wrote: post #28

Skepticism is warranted here (as is the reminder that lack of evidence isn't definitive evidence against ), but I think the specific takeaway is interesting: social media use does not predict mental health problems in youth Which could indicate any number of things: - Social media use by itself doesn't predict mental health problems because kids without mental health problems also use social media. - Social media use…

Why is skepticism warranted? It's not an extraordinary claim by any stretch. The claim that social media does harm your mental health is the one that needs strong evidence supporting it. This reads like copium, you've set your priors all the way to "it's obviously true you can't convince me otherwise." Which then of course everything refuting it has to be literally air-tight, there's no way you hold that standard for…

> We uncovered significant factual errors, including inaccuracies in effect sizes, sample sizes, and study inclusion/exclusion criteria, which were used to conclude that the impact of social media use on mental health is indistinguishable from zero.

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/fundamental-flaws-part-3

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#58

Post by tssva »

invalidname wrote: post #9

That sounds odd considering pretty clear statistics correlating teen girls suicide rates with the rise of Instagram. Can someone who understands the subject matter more than I do comment on this further?

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I have seen statistics but none that have clearly shown a link which is why the possible link is in dispute.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#59

Post by pfdietz »

el_memorioso wrote: post #53
pfdietz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, where is the equivalent of cancer-in-animals experiments for social media? Also, if putative negative effects from social media exposure were as strong and unambiguous as lung cancer in smokers, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

> Also, if putative negative effects from social media exposure were as strong and unambiguous as lung cancer in smokers, we wouldn't be having this discussion. This is not necessarily true. Lung cancer was rare before cigarettes. Research had already revealed cigarettes to cause lung cancer in the 1940s and 1950s. Even so, in 1960, only 1/3 of doctors believed that cigarettes caused cancer. This was largely due to t…

We would not be having this discussion because the metaanalysis would have been unambiguous.

Re: No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

#60

Post by MisterBastahrd »

onelesd wrote: post #52
bpodgursky wrote: post #23

I don't want to sound unscientific, but when a paper is directly in conflict with what is obviously true, it's OK to use common sense.

My own (anecdotal) experience tells me that increased social media use is directly proportional to increased bad feelings. Common sense tells me that increased bad feelings over time leads to bigger, worse bad feelings.

My experience agrees with you. At the very least, I had no idea how many of the people I grew up with were as stupid, shallow and bigoted as they are until I heard them announce their opinions on social media. I may not have hung out with many of them after high school, but at least I still sort of had some respect for them.
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