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

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

#831
post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Through lawsuits and reporting, I learned that my childhood Boy Scout Troop and church was infested with pedophiles. It's really sad to see things like this. Boy Scouts was one of the best parts of my childhood. Both my parents were heavily involved - dad was the Scout Master, mom was the merit badge counselor for backpacking and other woodland activities, my younger sisters came on many of the trips. It served as…

I was emotionally and psychically abused in cub scouts, led by the pack leader because I did not buy into her specific image of evangelical Christianity. This was in a suburb outside of NYC in the 90s. the lack of oversight and vetting allowed this to proceed and turned more than a few kids off Boy scouting. I would send my kids to Baden-Powell scouting if that was an option.

Had a similar experience with Cub Scouts in the 70's. I just stopped going. Joined the Boy Scouts because I had several friends who'd joined and were talking about the awesome camping adventures they had. That went well until the Scoutmaster quit 2-3 years later for whatever reason. The new Scoutmaster wasn't into the high adventure camping and believed the troop should head another direction. That was the end for me.

That's the single biggest problem with scouting - your experience is going to be largely dependent on the adult leadership. You can have dramatically different experiences depending on what pack or troop you're in and leadership changes often make what was a good experience a poor one.

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

#832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment represents the same worthless platitude. It doesn't make sense to say "yea your life is significantly worse than your parents, but hey at least you aren't a slave building the pyramids at Giza." The fact is it's relative. People are, in general, worse off than their parents were in the west at this point in time. That matters.

Being slightly economically less well off (although still doing exceedingly well and having lots of opportunity) is not the same thing as “boomers wrecked the world”. There are people in very tough situations and as a society we need to help them more but the vast majority of young people (and I say this as one who isn’t doing exceedingly well) need to grow up, cheer up, and start taking more responsibility for thing…

Younger people will be the ones enduring a transformation of our economy as they attempt to prevent the worst consequences of global warming.

Also, not sure what "grow up" means in this context. Quietly endure injustices and environmental catastrophe instead of speaking out and taking action?

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

#833

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…

You forgot a couple letters, each of which represents actual human beings who have historically been denied fundamental rights and have been subject to violence, including state violence.

Also, your understanding of the origin of the welfare state is way off the mark. Sometimes, the best thing a person can do is spend a little time studying basic history.

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

#834
post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The phrase "wreck the world" is obviously referencing climate change and environmental degradation. The danger of carbon emissions was well understood in the 1980's, yet we still have a large portion of the population who believe it is some elaborate conspiracy instead of an urgent crisis. Guess what generation most of those people belong to.

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

#835

Working for Facebook/Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. is today's equivalent of working for a tobacco company.

Snapchat is a messaging service. Quite different from the rest imo.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-05-10/lawsuit-sn...

https://www.businessinsider.com/mother-sues-meta-instagram-s...

https://nypost.com/2019/09/30/teen-commits-suicide-after-hes...

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

#836

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…

And here it is, perhaps the actual issue: TED talks. And everything else, that is, all of the information of the information age, including social media. Life for kids and everyone is drastically different from what it was just a few decades ago, because we have drastically different access and exposure to information, in general. This has changed the human experience. I suspect it is because I have not looked hard e…

Nice. I was that person in 2006 and 11 months

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

#837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children aren't being directly told these things. They are seeing it every day on blast from every source of media. It's not just kids. Its young adults choosing not to get married or have kids. The reality is grim. Progress is relative. Even if the young generation isn't that bad compared to the 1700s, it's bad compared to what it could directly be related to, which is the previous generation and the era of good and…

I'm not claiming that people tell their children this verbatim. I agree that this is what they are effectively being blasted by from media sources and this is very detrimental. I also think that the pessimism is vastly overstated. Constant comparison is a recipe for disappointment just as much as if you compared your life to a celebrity on social media. There are still vast sources for happiness and life satisfaction…

On an individual level, yes, I agree. But this is against human nature - which is to compare. It requires strong mindfulness to overcome and this is not available to the general population.

This isn't "they have a BMW and I have a Corolla." The basic things are further and further out of reach.

Again, if you say to someone "well at least you aren't a slave" they'll scoff at you. We've progressed to a certain point and are on the verge of regressing if we haven't already.

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

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are challenges and problems. There always will be. The important thing is to teach the youth and give them confidence that they can solve these problems instead "hand-wave" them away in a negative way as pessimists tend to do. There will always be trials and tribulations. The ones that solve those are the ones that truly believe they can. The more blind optimism we instill in folks the more confidence…

Dude, you blogged about being super thrilled about your garage door opener . Don't let the rest of us drag you down, but also don't presume to have figured the exact mental attitude that leads to successful outcomes. Not everything is peachy keen.

Man that was a good day! No one is dragging me down, nor am I saying everything is peachy keen. I do however think it's important how we present ourselves, and our problems to the youth both IRL and on social media.

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

#839

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…

And here it is, perhaps the actual issue: TED talks. And everything else, that is, all of the information of the information age, including social media. Life for kids and everyone is drastically different from what it was just a few decades ago, because we have drastically different access and exposure to information, in general. This has changed the human experience. I suspect it is because I have not looked hard e…

> To what degree is the lack of access to wonder a root cause of the decline in teen mental health?

This is grasping at straws. While the expectation is you'll create and maintain curated online presence tied to your real life identity in a world of increasingly economically stratified society.

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

#840
post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all seriousness, I think the freedom to tell (and receive) bigoted jokes as a youth was an integral part of my maturation.

Why?

Not OP, but the processing of learning that being X isn't a joke in and of itself taught me respect for other groups. You compare the joke about being gay vs a joke that someone is gay. One is a funny commentary on the gay experience, and the other is homophobic. Learning that difference, through experience help teach me where to draw the line between appreciating other cultures and cultural appropriation. And yeah a lot of these lessons can be taught other ways, but I have often found experience to be the best teacher. We should encourage kids to discover better morals and not just follow the morals they are taught. We learned a lot over the past century letting kids do that, we shouldn't stop now. The youngest generation has constantly shown the older how to be more accepting of neighbors, and kinder to our friends.
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