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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]

#531

Post by BeFlatXIII »

erddfre3423 wrote: post #219

Social media is bad. What is even worse is that smartphones allow people to use it anywhere, whenever they feel bored. The impact isn't massive just on mental health, but also on general productivity and people's social lives. It's just way too addicting. I work in tech and constantly feel like moving into a forest without internet connection for these reasons.

It would be highly amusing if we had an economic crash caused by people being too busy on Facebook to bother doing any real productivity for the economy. Let's make third-rate dystopian Sci-Fi a reality.

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

#532

Post by staticautomatic »

radarsat1 wrote: post #514
seydor wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any term taken from the 50% of diversity can fill that blank. i think they are referring to the cancellous but ostensibly tolerant culture

Sorry, still lost. What is "the 50% of diversity"? Are you trying to say "white"? (Not sure that's 50%...) Not judging, literally just trying to understand the semantics here. This is some kind of code that I'm not getting.

“White man” is popular example. “Asian” also works depending on the context.

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

#533

Post by nameless912 »

While this is absolutely true, there's also another elephant in the room: a global pandemic that's destroyed every kid's routine, robbed 2+ years of their childhood from them, and for many put them severely behind in school and extracurricular achievement. Given all the pressure we put on kids these days to excel at everything in order to ensure their futures, it's not surprising that many are feeling more hopeless and jaded than even the generation that came before them.

Frankly, I think all of this jadedness and depression is at least partly a product of the inconceivably high stress of everyday life experienced by millennials and then Gen Z.

Most millennials saw all of this before finishing high school:

- Gulf war

- 9/11

- Wars in Iraq/Afghanistan/etc.

- Hurricane Katrina

- 2007 housing bubble/fuel shortage

- 2008 financial crisis

In short, America's "squeaky clean best country in the world" image falling apart;

Most Gen Z will have seen all of this before finishing high school:

- Sandy Hook shooting, among dozens of others

- The election of Donald Trump (who, love him or hate him, is _extremely_ unpopular and seen as an existential threat by most American teenagers)

- Rapidly increasing ecological destruction (West coast fires, Australian fires, Hurricane Maria, etc. etc.)

- The COVID-19 Pandemic

- The murder of George Floyd and many others besides

- The unbelievable greed of major corporations financializing nearly every aspect of modern life

- (as of a few days ago) the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Casey vs. Planned Parenthood

In short, the basic fabric of society starting to unravel.

This analysis is obviously extremely slanted by my leftist bias and leaves out plenty of other tragedies and trials I could mention, and I'm not going to deny that. But the fact is that the teenagers I know have zero hope left that the future holds anything better for them. They're inheriting a broken world and they know it; their mental health reflects this. People love to wax philosophical about how "kids these days have no trust in authority or institutions" and...well shit, you wonder why.

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

#534

Post by Shadonototra »

chimen wrote: post #465

Ofc it is plummeting. We are letting them install apps that have people behind them with the sole job of making them more addictive. We are handing them drugs, multiple variants if I may say so. I had to fight with my daughter for TikTok and whatnot, she is only allowed with YouTube due to school/tutorials/classes etc and I still find myself pretty often having to snap her out of shorts and other bs with an algorithm…

> I had to fight with my daughter for TikTok and whatnot, she is only allowed with YouTube due to school/tutorials/classes etc

this is very bad, the problem is not tiktok, she finds an escape thanks to tiktok, don't remove that from her

talk to her, talk to her teacher if she doesn't have problems at school with other kids

> Our kids are being milked of their time, attention, imagination, focus and money. The majority of them can't even cross the streets properly any more. They don't even look if the drivers saw them, they all have a phone in hand.

that's an education problem, it is your fault, not theirs or some apps

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

#535

Post by fullstop »

derangedHorse wrote: post #467
conradev wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was 12 when I started using Twitter (shh, don’t tell them https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/29/twitter-is-locking-out-th... ) I was 14 when I had to loan my parents some money, and was acutely aware that I would not be able to afford college. I read the news every day and was smart enough to realize that things were not going so great (according to the news). To say that kids are blissfully unaware of the world they…

I think it would be safe to say the majority of kids (at least in America) don’t share that same experience. Also, I’m not saying that to try and discredit your experience, I’m just acknowledging the counterpoint may not generalize well to the majority of teenagers in America.

I would disagree with this statement. My kids are 13 and 18 and are both acutely aware of what is going on in the world right now. They have friends who know that their parents are struggling and that they likely won't be able to afford to go to college, something that they had previously been told was absolutely necessary.

When I was a kid, I barely knew what was going on in my friend's lives. Today they are all on Discord, etc, and they talk. A lot.

They absolutely know what's going on in the world. It weighs on them.

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

#536

Post by treis »

WithinReason wrote: post #523
dash2 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes a strong claim, based on evidence, that social media and not anything else is the real culprit. Why is it wrong? What evidence supports your alternative proposed causes?

The article points out correlation, which would be also explained by GP's comment

It's not even really correlated. The timing is off. Teen Social Media usage exploded in the early to mid 2000s and all the bad trends started 2010 or later.

Plus, it was a seismic event. We went from little social media in 2000 to ubiquity by 2010. We should have seen one big rise to a new steady state not a continually increasing problem.

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

#538

Post by snikeris »

mschuster91 wrote: post #516
snikeris wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the threats that were met with decisive action were better understood. What decisive actions should be taken in this case?

There are a lot of decisive action ideas to combat climate change (and a host of other issues). Right now out of the top of my head: - impose a maximum limit on size, weight and fuel consumption of cars, ban SUVs and pickup trucks (and no, a tax won't work because the rich will simply buy their "freedom"). Exceptions only upon proof of need (e.g. commercial or farming usage). - ban all inner-country flights of less t…

I don’t think any of these proposals are as strong as the case for banning lead in fuel. However maybe I’m biased by living at a time where it’s already banned.

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

#539

Post by balfirevic »

mschuster91 wrote: post #516
snikeris wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the threats that were met with decisive action were better understood. What decisive actions should be taken in this case?

There are a lot of decisive action ideas to combat climate change (and a host of other issues). Right now out of the top of my head: - impose a maximum limit on size, weight and fuel consumption of cars, ban SUVs and pickup trucks (and no, a tax won't work because the rich will simply buy their "freedom"). Exceptions only upon proof of need (e.g. commercial or farming usage). - ban all inner-country flights of less t…

> and no, a tax won't work because the rich will simply buy their "freedom

If the tax is enough to cover CO2 sequestration, where is the problem?

> entirely ban naval cruise ships unless fueled by renewable fuel

Why not the same exemption for sub 2-hour flights?

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

#540

Post by scythe »

indymike wrote: post #481

Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualification to post this: I have four kids that are either teens or in their early 20s, and one who will be a teen next year. Here is what I see out there: 1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work th…

How do you reconcile (1,2) with the observation that similar health problems are occurring in other countries? Isn't (3) now heavily mediated by social media?
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