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

psycnet.apa.org

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

#61

Post by elashri »

randomdata wrote: post #56
elashri wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have an old mental view about social media that teens would disagree with you. They will do communicate and engage in trends on tiktok. They don't engage in text as much as we did.

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

#62

Post by spondylosaurus »

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…

I think skepticism is warranted since

(1) This study is specifically NOT making the claim "social media is definitely fine and good for kids," so really more like skepticism at anyone trying to draw a conclusion of "...and therefore we should let Instagram off the hook :)"

and

(2) There is a reasonable case to be made that a lot of adults say that social media makes them miserable, and therefore that probably extends to kids too, if not even more so.

Like, for example, stuff about teen suicides that are linked to various happenings on social media: it's true that those happen. It's also true that teen suicide rates are higher now than they were a few decades ago. It's not definitively true that they happen in higher numbers than they would've without social media (e.g., teen bullying just has a new outlet), but it's also fair to suspect that there might possibly maybe be a connection, even an indirect one.

No single study is definitive, including this one!

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

#63

Post by Spivak »

elicksaur wrote: post #57
Spivak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, that's academic discourse for you. Why do you assume this critique is more authoritative than the paper? Would you dismiss the critique if it was the other direction?

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

#64

Post by bpodgursky »

diggan wrote: post #50
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.

Hint: "obviously true" and "common sense" are two very strong signals of "unscientific". If it's "obviously true", then it should be easy to author your own paper that proves whatever is "obviously true". Or maybe reality isn't so easy?

> then it should be easy to author your own paper that proves whatever is "obviously true". Or maybe reality isn't so easy?

Yes, this is my point. It's very easy to publish papers which say anything, if you don't mind that the results are junk or fraudulent. This is why most science is un-replicable, and you should have low confidence in a randomly selected paper, especially if the results conflict with bayesian expectations.

It's actually very hard to perform and publish good science.

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

#65

Post by Spivak »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #62
Spivak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think skepticism is warranted since (1) This study is specifically NOT making the claim "social media is definitely fine and good for kids," so really more like skepticism at anyone trying to draw a conclusion of "...and therefore we should let Instagram off the hook :)" and (2) There is a reasonable case to be made that a lot of adults say that social media makes them miserable, and therefore that probably extends…

This is a very long way of saying "I already believe it's true from anecdotal evidence and so will viscously critique anything that doesn't agree with my position."

This paper can be wrong, but you're clearly not open to even the possibility that it's not.

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

#66

Post by jjulius »

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... >

IMO, there was entirely too much snark in there. It felt like the goal they set out on was to dunk on Haidt, rather to act as impartially as possible.

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

#67

Post by randomdata »

elashri wrote: post #61
randomdata wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have an old mental view about social media that teens would disagree with you. They will do communicate and engage in trends on tiktok. They don't engage in text as much as we did.

Some teenagers trying to become the next TV star is not the same as them using social media. Social media is not defined by text, but it is defined by community. TikTok, and increasingly Instagram (and even, more and more, Facebook), has no real semblance of community. These services would rather show you a beautiful stranger that has no relevance to your life than foster a neighbourhood, just like cable TV always has. Social media is from a bygone area and, let's face it, is mostly dead at this point, only marginally propped up by some old people still trying to live in the past.

I understand how it can be confusing, though. Many services that were built to foster community originally, and given the social media moniker at that time, are transitioning (if not fully transitioned already) into being cable TV providers to try and remain relevant with the slow death of social media, so it can be easy to forget that times are a changing and still think of them as being social media even when they are no longer. Indeed, people tend to be quite susceptible to getting an idea in their head and then holding onto that idea forevermore, not looking again to see if anything has changed.

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

#68

Post by ergonaught »

Anecdata isn't useful, but each of three children in our family experienced "externally observable" and self-reported improvements to their "mental health" each and every time they were banned from devices they used for "social media time", with immediate regressions/worsening once the bans were over.

You could say maybe they needed better friends, and I wouldn't argue that, but that's three very different teenagers with the same overall "response".

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

#69

Post by elmomle »

Plenty has already been written about how young people are caught in a Catch-22: being on social media sucks, but being off of social media has major social penalties. Given that this is already well known, this study seems intentionally, even maliciously, naive.

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

#70

Post by gotoeleven »

oneepic wrote: post #49
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 .

As a layperson who doesn't understand psychology but is interested in science and peace, I felt that Ferguson's article (this HN post) was much less directed at a person (as opposed to the person's work or theories put forward) and more professional, versus the linked blog post -- so I tend to believe the former. Even a simple sentence like, "Ferguson did both of these things and his findings thus do not “undermine”…

Why is this "scathing"? He's literally just positing simple facts, which may or may not be true.

This tendency of people nowadays to focus on tone and other irrelevant characteristics of an argument (as it is made) is dumb.

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