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Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

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Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#511

Post by wonderwonder »

whstl wrote: post #318
raziel2p wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions. There's a…

> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers. Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have. It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

Florida has banned social media for under 14's starting Jan, 2025. Generally I am against government overreach and sometimes they make very odd decisions like campaigning to ban lab engineered meat in the state but on this I very much agree. Just remove social media as an option for those that are very young.

Its easy to say, that's the parents responsibility and that is a correct statement but most families require 2 working parents these days, most of whom are not tech savvy enough to understand how to limit social media or access to questionable sites.

Social media is an addictive, mind altering poison by design. Through the pervasiveness of echo chambers and intentionally addictive features such as endless scrolling and recommendations it seeks to do nothing except turn its users into revenue by keeping them online and seeing / clicking ads.

I lost my sister to it as she became so wrapped in the political side of it that any belief besides hers and those she followed meant you were a borderline nazi.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#512

Post by _heimdall »

bart_spoon wrote: post #153
_heimdall wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this be a federal ban, a state-level ban managed by education boards, or something else? And how is it enforced exactly? Are parents held responsible, or are state education funds impacted somehow based on smartphone use? Would we need a federal mandate to require flip phone / feature phone support? The last time I tried to find a feature phone it wasn't easy, many depend on 2G/3G networks which are losing supp…

State bans are already occurring. Indiana just banned phones from schools a week or two ago.

Well I can't really complain about that at least. States have a lot more leeway and are explicitly given the power to manage their public schools.

A quick look at Indiana's law and the news articles are interesting. The law requires schools to implements rules that ban phone use during class, but the actual rules and implementations are left for schools to decide. The articles I found make that sound like the law is toothless and passes the hard work off to school systems, but in my opinion that's a great law as it let's every school do what works best for them without prescribing a single solution for everyone.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#513

Post by Tade0 »

rsanheim wrote: post #254
firewolf34 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness. I like this concept, and I feel like I've experienced this as well, but I'm having trouble picturing an example of what you're describing, practi…

This the much discussed “third place” that has all but disappeared in much of western life. See _Bowling Alone_ for a very early (pre social media) analysis of this idea. A third place could be a coffee shop, a bar, a church, a softball league, a book store, or even just a nice park. By and large people don’t go to these places nearly as much anymore, except to consume and leave. And if they do go there they are on t…

> This the much discussed “third place” that has all but disappeared in much of western life.

American life if anything really.

Southern Europeans especially are an extreme example of how it is to essentially live outside.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#514

Post by dimgl »

egberts1 wrote: post #412

Video games are a cause of teenage violence. Well, Iam going to say that what kids see in real life is the cause of their formative views, like stomping on lying victim's head. Nothing virtual.

> Video games are a cause of teenage violence.

Literally no one believes this. I grew up playing Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#515

Post by kombookcha »

worldsayshi wrote: post #495
randomdata wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She doesn't share her actual thoughts That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that i…

This is touching on something very important but I feel there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of mystery around this for me. Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?

I think there's two major drivers here - scarcity of attention (1) and social distance (2).

1) Your attention on social media is monetized by others, which means there is always something tugging on it like so many street peddlers, in addition to all the 'organic' content made by other users. When there's a shortness of attention, you're always going to be more snippy and inclined to the short pithy retort, instead of long conversational openings and explorations of topics. Those require a lot of social trust-building and responding to feedback when you do them IRL, which is difficult on social media because...

2) Other people on social media just feel less real than those you encounter in real life, because you can't feel that bad feeling in your gut as strongly when you upset them, or the good feeling when you make them laugh. That same social distancing means you have a much easier time either idealizing them in that parasocial influencer-guru follower style, or feeling comfortable with being very harsh and combative with them. AKA the toxic gamer lobby phenomena, where people say the most heinous things you've ever heard to eachother, all the while being mostly fairly ordinary kids and adults IRL.

Both of these are kind of inherently tied up in the way we are ordering more and more of our (para)social life, so it seems very difficult to escape.

To paraphrase a point somebody made about content generated by machines purely to tug on your attention - everything feels increasingly meaningless because you have a finite amount of attention, and more and more of the 'social' interactions that your brain deals with in a day ARE meaningless and intended solely to mine your attention and keep you scrolling on ads.

I don't know how to fix that.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#517

Post by Moru »

skilled wrote: post #478
heresie-dabord wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your frustration and -- perhaps -- a feeling of having no agency in the situation. But at the same time I find this sentence fascinating and scary: > It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either. Inverting the order of your explanations (to examine the weighting), we have: estimated low return for investment/effort avoi…

I understand what you're saying, but that's not how life works. If a person has no anchor and they deliberately avoid establishing that anchor in their lives, then how do you expect them to stay stable when going gets tough? I have to respect her as a person first and foremost, and I cannot enforce my own thoughts/ideas because I think that is what's best for her. She needs to find it for herself, and then establish…

There are so many psycological problems that we don't know anything about yet. Not everyone are normal. Or better, we don't really know normality yet. Some people have very big problems physically meeting people and after a full day of work, this might be an impossible task. Internet might seem like a shield that allows building up strength for the next day. The old thing about "Just get out there and meet people" isn't the solution for everyone, just don't give up on them. There is a way to coexist with us all, just have to find your way of doing it.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#518

Post by raxxorraxor »

worldsayshi wrote: post #495
randomdata wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She doesn't share her actual thoughts That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that i…

This is touching on something very important but I feel there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of mystery around this for me. Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?

I believe the affinity of social media users to cast judgement is a huge factor as well, worse on those that actually do reflect a lot. Although it is perceived vastly more strongly that it is often meant since individual voices overlap. Still it furthers the assumption that many are very judgmental.

With that a strongly regulated social media place can be just as hostile as the most vulgar forum you can find. By experience, it can often be even worse.

Nit picking is a form of communication as well, perhaps often chosen because users want to share something difficult to do on the medium. That said, nit picking often doesn't carry hostility. Especially on tech platforms it is just meant as a contribution. Maybe there are carry over effects and miscommunication.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#519

Post by throwaway2037 »

steeve wrote: post #341
throwaway2037 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you making the argument that restricting cigarette sales by age does not work?

Quite the opposite

Thank you to clarify. I agree with your point. The reduction in underage people smoking in rich countries has plumetted in the last 30 years. Much of that is due to stricter enforcement of retail and advertising rules.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#520

Post by _heimdall »

coldtea wrote: post #450
raziel2p wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit reductionist to say it's devoid of purpose and meaning. Have you asked her what she feels her purpose/meaning is? You can disagree with it (I would as well), but I wouldn't assume she doesn't find any purpose/meaning in it. If she gets angry about it, then probably there is something deeper going on. Or, you're just asking the wrong way (if you come in assuming there's no meaning/purpose to her lif…

> I think it's a bit reductionist to say it's devoid of purpose and meaning Probably he is old-fashioned and means the coventional old-style purpose and meaning, that old-timey thing that we'd call "actual purpose" nowadays. Some backward people don't understand that "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" or "getting tons of destructive cosmetic surgeries" or "Amway" can also be a torally fine purpose in life.

> Some backward people don't understand that "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" or "getting tons of destructive cosmetic surgeries" or "Amway" can also be a torally fine purpose in life.

I really can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment or not, so just to be clear none of these examples are examples of purpose. How one spends their time isn't purpose, it's just a description of their day.

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