Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

judiciary.senate.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 1001 posts

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

#771

Post by solenoidalslide »

qiskit wrote: post #758

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 - whi…

The fact that people exist who actually blame Obama should be proof enough that our society was mentally ill far before social media.

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

#772

Post by ThalesX »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #310
odessacubbage wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could it be that women are more likely to seek treatment for mental illness? also to the degree that mental illnesses are gender variant, some are more pro social and less subject to stigma than others.

I have some recent anecdata on the topic. When browsing Google Maps reviews to compare psychotherapists in my area, the overwhelming majority of the reviews are from women.

I'm not sure if this translates to other countries, but in my back of the woods, the whole field is basically women.

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

#773

Post by carlgreene »

WHA8m wrote: post #768
drewcon wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non data based take. Support with information.

Climate change, increased Cost of living, etc. - Do you really need data for this? About the abortion thing, just visit the page of a random media outlet. It will be among the first 10 articles.

These are problems, yes. But how did they "wreck the world". It is these kind of outlandish takes that are pervasive on social media and give no context or relativism to the current problems of the world.

Of course we have problems. There will always be problems. Instead focus on giving the younger generation confidence that they can solve the problems by being optimistic about these things. I'm not saying to ignore these things. But instead recognize how good we actually have it, and how powerful and creative we are in solving insanely hard problems.

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

#774

Post by iskander »

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…

>when there truly hasn’t been a better time to be alive

...I liked the 90s a lot better, other than gizmos and means for distraction I can't really imagine why someone would prefer the 2020s.

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

#775

Post by LewisVerstappen »

wackro wrote: post #370
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The impact isn't massive just on mental health, but also on general productivity and people's social lives. It's just way too addicting. My main app of choice is YouTube and it's just astonishing how much amazing educational content there is on the app. MIT OpenCourseware, 3Blue1Brown, PBS Eons, SmarterEveryDay, ... and I could go on and on.... DESPITE THIS, their recommendations and the YouTube search has gotten s…

I remember reading part of a study a few years ago that noted that youtube was the only social media (in the study) that didn't negatively affect mental health. In fact it had a slight positive impact. If I find it I will link it, but here's an article in a similar vein: https://www.psychalive.org/worst-mental-health-instagram-fac... So yes, the search is obviously geared towards engagement. But not at the cost of me…

Yeah definitely agreed. I was talking about "The impact isn't massive just on mental health, but also on general productivity and people's social lives. It's just way too addicting" so moreso general productivity as opposed to mental health. That's why I highlighted that part in my comment.

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

#776

Post by rendang »

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…

(1) is an upper-middle class kid problem, I don't think your average public school B- student is dealing with that level of stress, so if that class stratum is also seeing plummeting mental health, I would look elsewhere for an explanation.

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

#777

Post by s1artibartfast »

pier25 wrote: post #727
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 not from the US and I've never lived there, but from what you're describing (except point 4) it seems like stress is one of the fundamental values in the US society. Stuff like not having public healthcare, exorbitant college costs, being fired at any moment, etc. It seems like kids are taught that early on with the stuff you're mentioning through the imposition of cultural values, rules, etc. I'm from Europe but…

A lot of these anxieties are psychologically self imposed and a cultural failing that focuses on materialism. In the US, you are considered a failure if you don't own your own mansion by European standards and achieve a high degree of professional success. Essentially being compared to a standard that only 1% of people will ever achieve.

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

#778

Post by themitigating »

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…

" Schools teach cultural tolerance while enforcing zero tolerance"

The zero tolerance you mention refers to the punishment of a particular situation not that the school doesn't tolerate anything. It's not a contradiction just another use of the word

As for diversity is good but blank, what blank?

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

#779

Post by Xamayon »

zionic wrote: post #755
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.

Very. I only ever did the most important graded assignments when I was in school in early 00s and I came out fine(ish)! I hope it's similarly easy to get by with the minimum required these days. If nothing else, learning how and when to skip homework is good practice for future work/life balance~ ;)

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

#780

Post by ThalesX »

mirrorlake wrote: post #689

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…

I've never been as afraid in a car as when my "crypto-bro" cousin picked me up to drive 3 hours and he basically had a scrolling wall of notifications and tried to 'absorb' as much as possible; news, crypto, memes, stocks, business, you name it... horrible 5 hours.
Post reply on HN