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Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

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Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#71

Post by tayo42 »

jatins wrote: post #58
joenot443 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster This was me for much of high school, but with Team Fortress 2 or Dota instead of social media. Comic books, video games, television, skateboarding, fidget spinning - the list of things kids would rather do than homework is endless. I think a kid spending 4h+ on one activity is unhealthy either way, and it really comes back to the pa…

The question is whether social media is closer to candy or cocaine. You are right that kids will chose anything other than homework but how do you explain adults spending 8 hours a day on short form platforms? Don't think TV had this kind of a hold on people. Some gamers did tend to develop obsessive tendencies over gaming but now that seems much more widespread with social media

> Don't think TV had this kind of a hold on people.

Tvs in the bedroom, living rooms, kitchens, they're centerpieces of rooms. Sports on all day on weekends. They got put into cars. I get together with older family and they'll put the TV on and we sit around it.

They only thing with TV is it wasn't convenient enough to be in our pockets all day.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#72

Post by LoganDark »

midtake wrote: post #43
mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not talking about a degradation of a high trust society here. With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in…

Social media is not the problem here. It is a problem, but it's not the cause for what you're describing.

I got my career (programming) from social media and online social interaction in general. Sure, I did the bare minimum on homework for efficiency, because I disliked the extra steps and writing that teachers wanted of me (I probably have dysgraphia and can't write well), and preferred just to get the answer. It was never explained that they weren't scoring or teaching the answer, and that they were instead measuring the method. (That was a failure of the school system. Big problem in general. I digress.)

Social media allowed me to meet others like me I otherwise never would've met. Allowed me to learn things from others like me I otherwise may never have learned. Allowed me to find the people that I could get along with rather than trying to make do only with the people physically close to me.

Sure, TikTok and whatever didn't exist back then. They're terrible, even if they manage to deliver some goods. I don't have a TikTok account, don't have a Facebook account, etc.

I do have a Discord account. I did have a Cohost account, before they shut down. I have Reddit and Hacker News. Those are where I feel I spend most of my non-work, non-hobby time. I use Discord almost entirely for private communications. I used Cohost almost entirely for making connections on Discord. I use Reddit to offer advice to and receive advice from others. I use Hacker News for some sample of current events and to offer my thoughts and discussion on them.

I do have some bad habits. I scroll Twitter every once in a while, though I do find many memes and other posts to share with friends and relate over.

And social media has done some bad for me. I won't elaborate on this but I had a few very major traumas through social media when I was 12-14, and some lesser ones more recently.

But it's been a major driver of good in my life for a long time; fulfillment and connection I never could have had otherwise; and of course hard lessons I would've eventually needed anyway.

There's an argument to be made that I just wasn't the type of young person that social media is particularly harmful to, but it's done me some major harms, some exactly the type of harm that's used to protest against it, and yet none of the harm was social media's fault. All of it was interpersonal interaction. All social media did was reduce the friction to that interpersonal interaction.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#73

Post by direwolf20 »

midtake wrote: post #43
mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not talking about a degradation of a high trust society here. With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in…

We're talking about five very biased and not completely sane people deciding what the whole country sees every minute of every day, too.

If Larry Ellison owned every TV channel, I would not have a TV. (Rupert Murdoch does, so I don't)

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#74

Post by direwolf20 »

LoganDark wrote: post #72
midtake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not talking about a degradation of a high trust society here. With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in…

Social media is not the problem here. It is a problem, but it's not the cause for what you're describing. I got my career (programming) from social media and online social interaction in general. Sure, I did the bare minimum on homework for efficiency, because I disliked the extra steps and writing that teachers wanted of me (I probably have dysgraphia and can't write well), and preferred just to get the answer. It w…

I think you're conflating social networks with social media

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#76

Post by braincat31415 »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #55
midtake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not talking about a degradation of a high trust society here. With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get back on social media faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in…

I think that on the whole, you're right in that these issues, where social media can provide support to young people, are not often addressed, but I also think that the larger framing that seems to pop up in these threads, where we assume social media is a negative influence that might sometimes facilitate a positive interaction, is backwards, and not really supported by evidence. Far more research, especially resear…

I think most of what you said is incorrect. You need to chat about this with high school teachers. From my personal experience and that of my friends who have teen kids right now -- Talking to kids about these issues is useless; they will say anything to keep the opium coming. They might be aware that spending a lot of time on social media and cell phones might result in slipping grades and homework not done, but they will spend hours on both, regardless of consequences. A lot of emotional anguish will come from social media, and kids on social media are generally a lot more nasty to each other than in person. There are so many tears because of what he/she said on discord... especially girls, being more emotional, cannot mitigate anything at all. These things suck them in like a drug, and parents' action is often the only way out. A blocked social media and kids' cell phones on my desk until homework and chores are done was the most important factor that helped to turn their grades around, and I know a lot of other parents who gravitated towards the same thing.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#77

Post by baby »

mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

There is closed or moderated social media, and there is open and unmoderated social media. Twitter is the latter and it’s… really bad.

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#78

Post by direwolf20 »

baby wrote: post #77
mjburgess wrote: post #19

I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are only shooting the messenger. This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction. I t…

There is closed or moderated social media, and there is open and unmoderated social media. Twitter is the latter and it’s… really bad.

Twitter is heavily moderated, in bad ways. Can you say "cisgender" yet?

Re: Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety

#80

Post by LoganDark »

direwolf20 wrote: post #74
LoganDark wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is not the problem here. It is a problem, but it's not the cause for what you're describing. I got my career (programming) from social media and online social interaction in general. Sure, I did the bare minimum on homework for efficiency, because I disliked the extra steps and writing that teachers wanted of me (I probably have dysgraphia and can't write well), and preferred just to get the answer. It w…

I think you're conflating social networks with social media

Maybe? When I see people talking about social media, they say stuff like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. It's not hard to extend that to say, Tumblr, which Cohost borrowed a lot from, for example. Though I will admit, I've never really heard of a Discord or Reddit "influencer"...
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