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]

#681

Post by fleddr » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

dtjb wrote: post #596

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…

This sounds like how a bunch of old dudes on HN see the "teenager world," with very adult interpretations. I also have teenagers and have worked in schools. I think there are two truths that this comment overlooks; 1) today's youth, generally speaking, are pretty impressive and resourceful, and 2) being a teenager has always sucked. Just because their experience is different doesn't mean it's worse. Every generation…

Fully wrong, which you would have known had you bothered to read it. Additional data does NOT account for the increase in mental health issues.

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

#682

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#683

Post by glitcher » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #677

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 can you confidently say social media is not the source of the problem when the author of the PDF has researched it for as long as it exists and makes strong evidence-based claims? With his key point being the change being sudden and dramatic, which exactly aligns with the rise of social media in the timeline. He's one of the leading authorities on the matter, and your take is...nah, not true.

I wouldn't say OP's take is not true, but simply based on anecdotal evidence from a very small sample size. However, I still disagree with that take personally.

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

#684

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:56 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…

[deleted]

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

#685

Post by ratww » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

theclansman wrote: post #633

roland35 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was certainly a lot lower stakes and fun in the 90s and early 2000s. We had fun taking over the mic and singing karaoke in Yahoo chatrooms, watching albino black sheep, and playing flash games on kongregator. Even early Facebook was just making funny groups and posting in each other's walls. None of those activities really had me envying anyone else. I remember the first thing that made me feel worthless…

Yeah same, the internet of early 2000s was a super cozy place for me, I remember everyone at first was like "wow it's so amazing how you can be someone else online," now the internet is just a giant window to your life. I remember my mom telling me to never share any info about me online, now everyone has their entire lives uploaded, full name, face picture, phone number, it's all there. Funny thing is it didn't actu…

That's also how I remember it. It changed when Facebook became popular around me. Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter (my group of friends had it way before Facebook) were all about "nicknames" and random pics as avatars.

But a strange thing happened with people I knew was that after FB's "Real Name Policy". Anyone who kept using a pseudonym was viewed as outdated at best, sometimes a downright weirdo. Only people part of Twitter/Tumbler niche communities kept using fake names.

I also remember around the 2010s a "friend of a friend" bragging about reporting someone using a nickname to Facebook and having Facebook accept the report and force the person to change.

Interestingly, some teens that I know are sort of going back to that. They don't have Facebook, if they have Instagram, it is just random pictures of objects, more like Tumblr was, no interest in being influencers.

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

#686

Post by randomsearch » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:59 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…

> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat,

On HN that's likely to be a popular opinion, given how many members here probably work in social media corporations.

I have lots of experience looking after relatives' kids in the UK and your points don't apply at all to them.

It's anecdata vs anecdata, but yours doesn't refute the article, and given your opinion may well suit HN biases well (we don't want to think of our work as causing mental illness) then I think the top voted comment needs a stronger counter argument than "my kids are like this".

It's not certain, but it looks pretty damn likely that social media has caused a dramatic increase in mental health problems amongst kids.

Maybe teachers could contribute something here with their experience? Parents see such a tiny sample size but teachers see 1000s of kids over a few years.

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

#687

Post by spicy_tendies » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

I really think the real cause in anxiety and depression are more related to climate change, corporate greed, work culture, inflation, the pandemic, and war. Social media just informs teens the reality of these issues and it's depressing as fuck.

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

#688

Post by lalopalota » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #515

IRC has been around for decades as have bulletin boards. IRC is real-time versus slower bulletin boards but are graphical. What is it with social media that is so different? I've used per-Internet BBS, IRC, bulletin boards and I feel the difference in social media. The closest I can come is chat rooms in games where there is a mix of anonymity, comradeship, contempt, bullying but all by people there to game. Social m…

The difference between social media and IRC / IM / fourms is the pervasiveness into all aspects of our lives. The older style communities were focused around specific topics / activites and what was done there didn't spread outside that specific community. Now anything we do is broadcast (& recorded) to anyone and everyone who might take an interest, now or in the future.

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

#689

Post by mirrorlake » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

Frequent phone notifications, social media aside, must have some negative impact on quality of life.

In the worst cases, I've worked with people who had notifications go off every 2-3 minutes. I can't help but assume this destroys their ability to focus and turns every mental task into a herculean effort as they must backtrack so frequently.

Every context switch makes them forget what we spoke about, or what we were working on. Notifications turn their phones into literal torture devices.

Disable as many notifications as humanly possible, and make it the highest priority to reduce how many times per day your phone interrupts you.

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

#690

Post by carlgreene » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #679

carlgreene wrote: post #649

Teens are being told the world is terrible by pessimists when there truly hasn’t been a better time to be alive. How do you expect them to feel? This is amplified on social media and shown with "proof" from all corners of the world. We've evolved from a place where hearing about bad news from the tribe was an advantage. It allowed us to adjust our life to take into account risks _seen_ by other folks in the tribe. On…

Boomers wrecked the world and young people know they need to fix it. Sorry it can't just all be sunshine and roses like you prefer, but women in this country are about to lose a fundamental human right, so maybe "looking on the bright side" is not the appropriate disposition for these times.

Sure it is. It mostly always is. Of course we have more work to do for women, POCs, whatever the other oppressed groups are out there, but ignoring and brushing off the progress made in the last century is sad. We've made great strides and will continue to.