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]

#751

Post by imbnwa » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #686

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 th…

I'm surprised there's little discussion of how it affects people who aren't legal minors

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

#752

Post by meristohm » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:55 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…

I don't think it's the source of the problem either. Social media exacerbates the symptoms, like firearms (technology to kill things easily at a distance) make it easier to do serious harm, intentionally or accidentally.

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

#753

Post by Helitio » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:55 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…

I'm an adult and played around with TikTok half a year ago.

It is shocking ly addictive without any real benefit.

Watching funny or weird stuff for 2h or seeing opinions from some weird people did not add anything to my life

I deleted the app to get out of it.

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

#754

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:55 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…

[deleted]

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

#755

Post by zionic » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:57 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…

Does anyone else feel like homework is stupid?

They have your kid for the majority of the working day, that's more than enough time for work. When they're home the last thing they should be doing is school.

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

#756

Post by bmj » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

listless wrote: post #741

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 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 eg…

To add to your response to #2: kids are watching their parents behave poorly on social media, and spend their time with their noses in devices. When parents of older kids still have trouble "adulting," that is bound to trickle down to the kids. Certainly, I don't look like my dad did in his late 40s, but I also have a pretty firm grasp of the responsibilities I have.

My kids also must avoid social media until they are 18. Heck, my older son had a feature phone until just two years ago, when he absolutely needed a smartphone for tools required for his position as a coxswain on his rowing team. Even then, he couldn't install apps, couldn't use a web browser. Since he turned 18, he's tried out some social media and other things, but mostly avoids them.

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

#757

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, May 05, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

DaltonCoffee wrote: post #711

Nextgrid wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a problem that can be solved at an individual level. Physical drugs are relatively easy to not get into because for the most part, the majority of society doesn't use them and their users are still mostly marginalized. If your current social group are drug addicts it's possible to find a new, healthier group. Digital drugs on the other hand are something that nearly everyone uses and thus you have to use the…

>Physical drugs >majority of society doesn't use Maybe you meant illicit drugs. Almost everyone I know of consumes some type of drug. Your idea seems similar to China's recent policy, restricting access to online games for younger people.

I'm not arguing about censoring anything. Just add regulation to make "engagement"-funded business models unprofitable, which will kill the underlying motivation to make social media addictive.

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

#758

Post by qiskit » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

That's because politics became injected into social media/internet. The problem isn't social media per se, it's politics, news, media, etc that has overrun social media in the past 15 years.

Before Obama, the internet and social media was place for young people to goof off. Then obama used youtube/etc to reach young people and then the lgbt/news/media/leftists went crazy on social media paving the way for Trump - which strangely became a problem. Before Trump arrived, politicians/lgbt/news/media/leftists destroying teens mental health was celebrated on social media/internet.

Of course nobody in the senate or government cares one lick about teens' mental health. They are only interested in better controlling social media to destroy teens' mental health for their own agenda.

I've advocated for social media to ban all politics and news. Lets see how that affects people's mental health. Or better yet, remove all politics and news from their recommendations or frontpage. Instead, social media/tech run "get out the vote" campaigns, lift "authoritative" voices and inject politics/news into everyone's lives.

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

#759

Post by bluefirebrand » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

AlwaysRock wrote: post #676

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... But we also saw countless dicks on Chat Roulette and watched terrorists sever heads of journalists on LiveLeak and talked to plenty of perverts on AIM. It wasnt all peaches and candy.

True, there was some crazy shit out there back then, but we were also more in control of our own circumstances.

If you don't want to see dicks on Chatroulette, don't use Chatoroulette. Or use it, but leave when you see a dick.

Some creeper on AIM? Block them. If they keep making new accounts to come back, create a new account and invite your friends to that one.

With bigger social media, the social cost of not being where your peer group is is high. Things are engineered to try and limit your exposure to the crazy stuff but it's still out there and in higher volumes than ever before.

It's also much harder to avoid now if somehow an algorithm decides you should see it. And you can't just create a new account and leave a dead one behind you, or at least it's much harder.

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

#760

Post by dbsmith83 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #733

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #710

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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