Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#661

Post by omnicognate » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

navjack27 wrote: post #597

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…

How the heck is your daughter not on the mode of YouTube where it doesn't switch to whatever is recommended next and how come she isn't taught not to watch shorts? I don't have kids and I don't want kids but like is it really hard to completely enforce some sort of a online media literacy?

To enforce restrictions is indeed very hard. I know because I do it, using a whitelisting proxy. It's possible (even uncircumventably for mobile devices, using a managed device and an always-on wireguard vpn) but it is far from trivial to do and I am in a vanishingly tiny minority in doing it.

To enforce literacy is of course easy. Talk to them, teach them.

To enforce that a child actually follows your advice not to watch thing X when they have the physical ability to watch thing X, including when you aren't looking? Basically impossible. Kids aren't computers. They don't necessarily do what you tell them to do.

I mean, I have massive difficulty getting myself not to waste my life on the internet, this very comment being evidence of the fact.

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

#662

Post by baby » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

bdefore wrote: post #530

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…

While the risks you bring up are valid, many of them are not new but amplifications of preexisting ones. In the past, children have largely managed to navigate these on their journey to adulthood. An unsolved problem with social media: it's an amplification of parking lot scuttlebutt. It will entice you to see catastrophe and share it with others. Perhaps despite your position on this, you are being affected more tha…

Imo problems have always been here, and social medias are bringing these problems to light, and people are stupid so they blame the social medias.

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

#663

Post by exit » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

Longhanks wrote: post #298

paxys wrote: post #68

Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment that teenagers have lived through their entire lives. Multiple major recessions, a global pandemic, rising inflation, housing and education getting more expensive by the day, prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation, climate that will be unlivable in a few decades, political extremism becoming the norm, and massive gov…

I grew up in Germany, so I was told stories of my grandfather, who lived through an entire world war, his home, home town, home country being entirely destroyed, being denied the return to his home since it was annexed and now behind the iron curtain, civilians he knew being murdered, pieces of butter being the best currency available, the nonexistence of any infrastructure such as roads, the very definition of polit…

> Yet, he and many others lived.

mere survival shouldn't impress anyone

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

#664

Post by digitallyfree » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #545

bdefore wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the risks you bring up are valid, many of them are not new but amplifications of preexisting ones. In the past, children have largely managed to navigate these on their journey to adulthood. An unsolved problem with social media: it's an amplification of parking lot scuttlebutt. It will entice you to see catastrophe and share it with others. Perhaps despite your position on this, you are being affected more tha…

Another amplification is that many many parents haven't even solved this problem for themselves. How are they going to help their kids navigate social media use when they're pissing about on Instagram, and retweeting outrage garbage, etc.

It's funny how I see parents complain about their children's social media use/phone addictions when I see them doing the exact same thing they're talking about before my eyes. Like you're literally playing on your phone right now and you tell me you don't like your kids doing that all the time - come on.

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

#665

Post by randomdata » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

ejb999 wrote: post #598

monsieurgaufre wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A $550,000 improvement in lifetime earnings in exchange for $31K in debt, seems like one of the best investments you can make. Not when you're not even sure of being able to pay back those $31K+interests afterwards.

>>Not when you're not even sure of being able to pay back those $31K+interests afterwards. If you went to college for 4 years, and didn't improve you situation enough to afford a few hundred dollars a month in debt, then you chose poorly.

At the same time, if college is able to improve your situation, you have already chosen poorly. Given that the typical college grad is well into their 20s, often older and almost never younger, that is incredibly late in life to be just starting to think about improving one's situation. Smart money has it figured out long before that time. The time value of money does not favour those who delay.

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

#666

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #618

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a parent I just feel powerless to stop it. A battle just to get modest parental controls on my teen's phone. Serious mental health issues that blow up into full blown crisis explosion when we try to put our foot down about doing homework or some other task. And they're nearing the age at which it starts to be downright creepy to have controls on their personal devices, but they need it more than ever. And in s…

My son is still young, so enforcing boundaries is much easier (easier as in successful, the emotional disregulation is still there of course). It’s not easy. Do your best. Try to actively support broadening their experiences with (hopefully) the outcome that they expand their interests. I think the needed thing here is not necessarily teetotaling, but finding something better to do than consuming media all the time.

Well, yes, this is the fundamental problem and why so many of us are really screwed in the post-COVID era: because something better to do was really hard to find, and one of the survival mechanisms for parents was to just let screentime run rampant.

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

#667

Post by ryan93 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

monsieurgaufre wrote: post #510

ejb999 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>a mountain of debt right after graduation Average debt upon graduation is approx. $31K, less than the cost of a mid-grade car. I would not call that 'a mountain', and unlike a car which will rapidly depreciate in a very short amount of time, getting a decent college degree will pay dividends throughout your life in increased earnings power. According to govt estimates, the average lifetime earnings difference betwe…

> A $550,000 improvement in lifetime earnings in exchange for $31K in debt, seems like one of the best investments you can make. Not when you're not even sure of being able to pay back those $31K+interests afterwards.

Thats like 200-250 a month. Unless you get a minimum wage job you are fine.

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

#668

Post by trompetenaccoun » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #529

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…

I’ll counter that with the caveat that my kids are grade 5 and younger. We’re very involved in school and other activities - my wife is a PTO president and long time member, I coach youth sports and other community type programs. The kids we have seen mostly don’t engage with social media directly. But the ones who transition from cute 5-6 year olds to problematic 10-12 year olds have a key common factor. Tablets. Yo…

Some call this "problematic" behavior of kids starting around age 10-12 puberty. I've not seen any peer-reviewed studies linking it to tablet use but of course it's possible that tablet use is a contributing factor in causing puberty in teenagers.

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

#669

Post by Aunche » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

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…

> Kids are targeted. Sexual predators, gangs, fringe and mainstream ideologues looking to recruit followers, sports agents and talent scouts all have one thing in common: they want to exploit kids or sell them something.

This was the same for a long time. The main difference now is that they are also very targeted by ads on social media.

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

#670

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #497

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…

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 author mentions in his testimony, that the correlation between social media use and mental illness may be around r=0.10. This means in general terms that it it explains about 10% of of the impact. This leaves a lot of room for additional factors, and factors with much greater impact.