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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

#601

Post by Izkata »

wholinator2 wrote: post #521
lm28469 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i find this to be, unfortunately, the current western stance on responsibility towards anyone: irresponsibility. The complete destruction of religions, then traditions and now families/education (lack of education, lack of authority, &c.) probably had something to do with it. You can't replace god/families/education with an iphone 15 and expect society to continue on the same path. And I'm saying that as a complete…

I'm confused. I've seen how the breath of Christianity in society has reduced, that's definitely true. But it seemed to me like my generations parents just weren't that interested in church and so we didn't grow up with it. I don't think "destroyed" is a term that could describe at least American Christianity (where i see these arguments the most). Likewise, modern families wait to have children longer. This is becau…

> But it seemed to me like my generations parents just weren't that interested in church and so we didn't grow up with it. I don't think "destroyed" is a term that could describe at least American Christianity (where i see these arguments the most).

Millennial with Boomer parents here: There were a few things leading up to this, but in our family the tipping point was when our parents found out our religious education classes were telling me to stop asking questions. One of my parents' primary goals in life was for us to do better academically than they did, and they saw that as religion working against it.

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

#602

Post by afavour »

Funes- wrote: post #590

Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing because "past a certain point" you can't do shit about it, and God forbid they try to develop themselves into a worthwhile adult without using any of those time-sinking, m…

I’m curious, are you a parent?

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

#603

Post by MaxHoppersGhost »

camgunz wrote: post #361

I have two big points here: governments should ban social media, and to save its reputation, the tech industry must pull the plug on those services before that happens. Social media is the new smoking, and Meta, ByteDance, and X are the new Philip Morris. Their products are services that feed you addictive content in an addictive way, such that you spend hours and hours using the service, during which they show you a…

Oil has done infinitely more good for the world (via lifting the entire world’s standard of living) than social media has ever done.

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

#604

Post by AlexandrB »

rchaud wrote: post #570
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…

> 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 isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you. I would expect this to some extent when conversing with strangers IRL too. If it was a chat between friends, a rant here or there is OK because your friends know the real you and understand where you'r…

On the contrary, I think people know better than to be needlessly confrontational in real life. If someone says something crazy to me IRL I'm much more willing to let them finish and ask them a few question in the interest of making small talk than I am to ask for sources.

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

#605

Post by orzig »

dimgl wrote: post #503
WheatMillington wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh as a parent I know I need to be doing this, but I'm so bad at it.

Just do it? Get off your smartphone. It's like the people who willingly pay $15/mo for World of Warcraft and wonder why the game doesn't get any better, play for one hour and then watch Asmongold for 8 hours (I love Asmon btw). Stop doing the things that hurt you.

Look, I basically agree with the goal and am trying myself but: Try watching the Little League World Series on YouTube twice weekly for 4 years and you will have 1% of an understanding of why this is hard.

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

#606

Post by avensec »

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?

There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Threads aren't conducive to conversations that build psychological safety and trust. A natural conversation of curiosity/questions, in 1:1 or small group settings, doesn't exist. This leads to talking *at* each other instead of with each other. The reduction in empathy follows.

Thanks for asking the question and spawning the conversation threads!

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

#607

Post by giarc »

edg5000 wrote: post #220
burningChrome wrote: post #84

I will attempt to at least inject some hope into this discussion. My formative years from ages 15-25 were spent in the 80's and 90's. It was the apex of the mall experience. We saw the mall as a place to get away from our parents, hang out with our buds, run into other classmates and feel some sense of freedom while running amok playing video games in the arcade and chowing down tacos in the food court. Then smartpho…

Interesting point you bring up. With e-commerce, I am surprised that malls can work at all. There is a brand new, massive and beautifully designed mall in The Netherlands called Westfield Mall of the Netherlands. I went there once to quickly grab something and I got hopelessly lost, even while my phone navigation actually was able to display and navigate the layout of the mall, due to the sheer size I underestimated…

Malls provide a few benefits and attract some key shoppers in my opinion. Many malls near me open at 5am to "walkers". Basically seniors looking for a place to walk indoors. They often populate the food court once it starts to open. When I'm in a mall, many shoppers are older adults (remember, they didn't grow up with same day shipping and one click checkout). Lastly, as a parent with kids, there's huge benefit to holding up a pair of pants to my 3 year to see if they will fit. A 3T size from X clothing company is very different from a 3T from Y clothing company. We pretty much buy 100% of our kids clothes from a mall. These are just 3 examples of heavy mall users, I'm sure there are many more.

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

#608

Post by riskable »

ryandrake wrote: post #39

If parents really want to set a good example, they ought to also quit their smartphones and Social Media--or at least hide it better. Kids are really good at identifying hypocrisy. When they see their parents glued to their phones and scrolling Instagram all day, after being told "Oh, don't do that, it's not good for you" they know their parents are full of shit. And, the trouble is: Most of these adults are addicted…

My kids watch a lot of YouTube/TikTok and playing computer games... Yet I don't. I sit in front of my PC all day for work and after work (after dinner) I also spend a ton of time in front of my PC doing things like learning how to make circuit boards, learning new programming languages, OpenSCAD (CAD) design work, and more.

I tell them they spend too much time watching videos and playing games and should "branch out" into new hobbies. Do they do this? No.

That is to say, I don't think hypocrisy has anything to do with it.

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

#609

Post by lupusreal »

Funes- wrote: post #590

Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing because "past a certain point" you can't do shit about it, and God forbid they try to develop themselves into a worthwhile adult without using any of those time-sinking, m…

Even if parents tried to be fully responsible for keeping their kids off social media, it wouldn't actually be possible for them. What you are proposing is akin to a world in which it is wholly the responsibility of parents to stop their kids from smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor, but whenever the parents weren't around kids could walk into a store and buy them legally. Do you expect 24/7 unceasing parental surveillance? Get real.

And as for technological means of surveillance and content control, parents here on HN struggle to make that work. The average parent with average tech skills stands virtually no chance of making it work. Kids have been known to do things like get old phones from somebody in school and use it on the neighbor's wifi. Trying to control their devices and access to the internet is basically impossible.

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