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

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741–750 of 1001 posts

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

#741

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 both agree and disagree here. My qualification is 3 teenage boys.

1. My kids have slack in their schedule. No, they aren't going to Ivy League schools. That's OK. They will survive somehow.

2. This is certainly true, but it's a complete joke to my kids. They aren't confused. They just wonder why all the adults are. Teenagers already think adults are incompetent.

3. This isn't true at my school. My kids have made egregious errors and the school takes it in stride. They know they are kids. They understand kids make mistakes. It's OK. We work through it and move on. The cops are not called and nothing is escalated. At most, the send us an email and we talk to our kids and that's the end of it.

3. I have no idea on this one.

My children don't have social media accounts and never will on my watch. Even as teenagers they don't because they are not allowed. They could, yes, but they don't. However, I have boys, not girls. Perhaps that would be a non-starter if I had daughters.

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

#742
post #675

While this is absolutely true, there's also another elephant in the room: a global pandemic that's destroyed every kid's routine, robbed 2+ years of their childhood from them, and for many put them severely behind in school and extracurricular achievement. Given all the pressure we put on kids these days to excel at everything in order to ensure their futures, it's not surprising that many are feeling more hopeless a…

> While this is absolutely true, there's also another elephant in the room: a global pandemic that's destroyed every kid's routine, robbed 2+ years of their childhood from them, and for many put them severely behind in school and extracurricular achievement. I'm baffled that you're one of the rare person mentioning this. We had 2 years stolen from us so of course people turned to social media to fill that void.

Maybe it's because i saw it first hand; my younger brother graduated high school in 2020 and my partner worked in education until mid 2021. I heard first hand accounts of just how horrific the pandemic was for school age kids.

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

#743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this often with gangs I grew up around. Black people can call each other niggers in a casual, non-attack way. But as soon as a white person does it, it’s racist.

It means different things coming from different people for very clear historical and cultural reasons. Pretending not to understand this is being willfully ignorant at this point.

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

#744
post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with it being an education problem and like... I treat my YouTube watching or online media watching in a way where I would make fun of myself if I allowed myself to be controlled by the thing so I don't allow myself to put myself in situations where I would mock myself if that makes any remote sense. I think it's silly to not be in control of the things that I feed myself digitally or otherwise. It…

And what's your next move once you explained that and still find them "escaping" for hours in these meaningless apps? Do you have children? How many being teenagers? Can you explain in a "soft kind manner" to an addict that they should just quit? You can fight it pro-actively or re-actively. I prefer the former as, at least, prevents the addiction from even forming. Please identify a smoker in your close circle and e…

- make it illegal to gather data/track/serve ads in apps for users -18

- make it illegal to offer microtransactions in apps for users -18

there, you fix half of the problems, no longer companies will make their app addictive to teens

then up to the parents to regulate screen time for their kids

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

#745

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…

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

#746

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…

> Teens are being told the world is terrible by pessimists when there truly hasn’t been a better time to be alive.

A lot of people were saying exactly this right before Franz Ferdinand got shot.

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

#747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Boomers" is just shorthand for the older generation who treated the environment like a toilet, pillaged the welfare state, jailed anyone who wanted to get high in their free time and made hating/mocking LGBTQ people a national pastime (to name a few examples). I'd say #notallboomers but it's implied unless you're being willfully obtuse.

“Boomers” I suppose are responsible for passing the clean air and clean water act which had the effect of essentially ending pollution as we know it in the US. They also essentially created the welfare state… They were and are pretty bad on effective drug policy. LGB discourse went off the rails when progressives added all the other letters. To be fair, it’s not just boomers who are deeply concerned with the politica…

> They also essentially created the welfare state…

Nah the Silent Generation did that.

But also most of our political gerontocrats are also either Silents or very early Boomers. They're not really the core of the Baby Boom generation.

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

#748
post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knock it off. These are children who had no say in what their ancestors did.

They have a say in what remains of the power structures created by their white supremacist ancestors, the privileges that system provides and the inequities those privileges feed on. They could be working to dismantle those power structures, but they have to recognize that they exist first and that yes by default all things are not equal. Ignoring that fact or obsessing over petty things like not having a pass to say…

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

#749
post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knock it off. These are children who had no say in what their ancestors did.

They have a say in what remains of the power structures created by their white supremacist ancestors, the privileges that system provides and the inequities those privileges feed on. They could be working to dismantle those power structures, but they have to recognize that they exist first and that yes by default all things are not equal. Ignoring that fact or obsessing over petty things like not having a pass to say…

I'm going to put this as simple as possible: Stop having kids fight or worry about adult problems.

Surely, we don't have to write a five paragraph essay on the problem with perpetuating hate cycles among children in a thread about plummeting teen mental health.

Let it go. You got a million other places to open this debate.

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

#750
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that list is pure fact: Multiple major recessions —> 2008 was biggest since 1929. Dunno about multiple a global pandemic —> this happened and is still happening rising inflation —> objectively true. Though I suspect the oncoming recession will quash it as in 2008 housing and education getting more expensive by the day —> huge house and education price increases in past decade, far outstripping inflation pros…

I lived my teen years in a collapsing post-communist economy, with hyperinflation (the kind that can add 4 zeros to prices in a span of a few years), massive unemployment and deep real-wage reduction. My mother struggled with a minimum wage that translated to about 80 dollars and two children, well bellow the absolute poverty line, and my father was mostly absent. In my high school and first year at the university, t…

I actually agree. I’m not sure the political milieu is what is causing malaise.

But I take issue with describing the list above as pure media reality.

Thanks for posting your experience!

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