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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

#701

Post by mm263 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #677
skilled wrote: post #337

I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…

To me this reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed and something about the way you're asking her is off. I saw a couple of years of similar reactions from my sisters after they went through some difficult times without any of us knowing (since they were studying abroad and this was before easy internet calling). They'd get mad when asked seemingly innocuous questions, which turned out to be…

> To me thos reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed

With social media, it’s hard to gauge what’s the chicken and what’s the egg in this issue. Is she on social media because she is depressed and the brain is looking for quick dopamine? Or is being in social media making her more depressed?

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

#702

Post by naasking »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #222
naasking wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Achieving 90% of not is simpler than you think: ban smartphones from schools during school bours. If the parents want the kid to have a phone, then the parents can get a flip phone.

I think we should go even further: ban all phones during school hours. There is absolutely no reason that kids need to have a phone in school. If the parent needs to reach them, then call the school office who can get your kid on the line. There is no emergency so dire that a few minutes' delay in talking to your child will make a meaningful difference.

> There is no emergency so dire that a few minutes' delay in talking to your child will make a meaningful difference.

You're neglecting emergencies that are happening in the school itself. School shooters, for instance.

I frankly don't see the problem with kids having the phone with them as long as they're not actually using it outside of an actual emergency.

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

#703

Post by gwervc »

amplex1337 wrote: post #646
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…

You certainly can just throw things out there, but if you are obsessed with making every single person satisfied with your thoughts, you are going to have a bad time. The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my…

> You certainly can just throw things out there

On 4chan sure, on Reddit absolutely hecking no. On the main subs in French wrongthink comments get deleted super fast, and on one English-speaking about a hobby it's an immediate ban.

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

#704

Post by uconnectlol »

thegrim000 wrote: post #212
rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

It's funny .. earlier today there was a front page HN post about the federal government mandating safer circular saws. It seemed like the majority of users in the thread were in favor of the federal government mandating technology changes to prevent harm from being done to the population. Now for this issue, there's harm being done to children, and the majority of users in the thread seem to be against government int…

hes actually trying to say, "that's stupid". HN and reddit would be so much easier if negative posting were allowed.

your argument is dumb too, it doesn't even deserve acknowledgment, but we are little babies here and have to politely explain to everyone why they're wrong, to the point that the insane people just always win and get their dumb ideas into law because nobody cares anymore and are tired of explaining common sense over and over. having safety controls on hardware is not anything remotely equivalent to the hypothetical problem the article pitches. there is not any world where regulating social media makes sense, and i say this as someone who has never used social media in my life. the entire issue at hand here is like a bear shitting in the woods and someone happens to step on it once in a thousand years, almost none of these so called people who get addicted to social media would have any better off chance at life without it, they would just get addicted to one of the millions of other things one can get addicted to. the remaining one in a million people who actually had their life ruined by social media is like the bear shitting in the woods, its just life.

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

#705

Post by yungporko »

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?

i don't think social media is inspiring people to act like this, i think the vast majority of people are just pricks in general and the internet lets them act like this without any negative consequences.

if there was some way to just start arguments about nothing in real life and then pause them at will to go and cherrypick stuff that supports your argument, then come back and act smug about it (or not come back at all if you don't find anything), people would incessantly do it in person too.

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

#706

Post by red-iron-pine »

rchaud wrote: post #572
silverquiet wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the psychiatrist his idea or the parents'? I assume the parents, but if it was his then that's something. I heard something interesting on a podcast recently - Kara Swisher was interviewing her son who said that if you're Gen A, it's sort of hard not to be a nihilist. For me personally, I sort of look at how fast the world is heating up and do some basic math about life expectancy, and I'm sort of expecting to se…

The oldest Gen A person is 14yo, I was plenty nihilistic then too, and that was in the golden age of the 90s.

it's not a phase, dad

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

#707

Post by makeitdouble »

10xDev wrote: post #639

The recent Twitter drama over a use of a word is all you need to see how bad things are. It takes nothing to get a mob of mentally ill people on your case which can have a psychological toll on anyone especially teenagers. And if you try to reason with such people you just get sent down a rabbit hole. We need to have limits on what we allow our brain to process the same way we do for our body with ultra-processed foo…

Is X/Twitter the barometer of how good social media is for us ?

Otherwise I find it interesting how people attribute toxic discussions to online media, when the wisdom of our elders were to never talk politics at dinners to avoid having people literally beating each other.

We can't be focusing on the absolute worse with the illest use cases, and make it into a societal problem. Looking at our world today, I genuinely think we're in a better place than three decades ago when we had absolutely none of our online networks.

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

#708

Post by [deleted] »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

[deleted]

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

#709

Post by Ginguin »

quest88 wrote: post #625
VA0 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is designed to make money, whether that be from selling data or conglomerating it and advertising to you. They want the user to be purely a consumer. They are designed to make people reactive and have a short attention span, they are easier to sell to.the users mental reward system is essentially brainwashed to be an easier target to sell to.

I think that's part of it but not all of it. Even here on HN, with no ads, you can find hostility in the comments.

Even in a place like HN, you can't escape the behaviors and attitudes that people pick up in other social spaces online. If someone gets used to reading ill intent into a comment, they don't suddenly stop doing that because they are in a place where ill intent is less likely. Those social norms get carried with them from space to space. The toxicity is a contagion, even if this space isn't an incubator for it.

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

#710

Post by quest88 »

mm263 wrote: post #701
dotnet00 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed and something about the way you're asking her is off. I saw a couple of years of similar reactions from my sisters after they went through some difficult times without any of us knowing (since they were studying abroad and this was before easy internet calling). They'd get mad when asked seemingly innocuous questions, which turned out to be…

> To me thos reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed With social media, it’s hard to gauge what’s the chicken and what’s the egg in this issue. Is she on social media because she is depressed and the brain is looking for quick dopamine? Or is being in social media making her more depressed?

I don't think social media helps. It probably exacerbates the underlying issue? Otherwise we'd all be like this.
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