The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#831

Post by paulmd » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #778

paulmd wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they also should feel ashamed for what they get and consume, as it has a CO2 impact and their future is doomed if they use too much. I loathe how this has turned into an easy way to dismiss any product you don't like, a thought-terminating cliche, because hey, you're not going to argue that your iphone is more important than the planet , right? What a jerk! I have seriously had probably a dozen discussions wher…

"Being charitable I'm sure tons of people just have an extremely bad intuitive yardstick for what actually matters" People on average just have very bad physic knowledge. No understanding of basic science at all. I actually think that we cannot solve climate change without fixing those knowledge holes - otherwise we just get more pointless activism (like the ones you mention) and ignorance.

Yeah. And again, in fairness, I suppose it's counterintuitive how much energy is stored by a gallon of fuel, unless you have already been surprised by it in the past :) But even comparing to batteries, you have to stationary-bicycle for a long time to make the energy to charge even a single 18650. Hydrocarbon fuels are the rocketship that fueled the 20th century's insane industrialization (on top of their use as fertilizers, feedstock, etc) and things would look very different if we were still cranking the washing machine by hand, so to speak.

But I also agree with your point on the importance of "napkin math", understanding the relative order-of-magnitude of effects and being able to do some rough estimates on the spot, etc. I had some teachers who were big on doing this and I hear it's a fairly frequent interview question as well (often in the form of things like "how many ping-pong balls can you fit into a sedan").

Whole-systems thinking is another tough one, and unfortunately it's full of confounding effects that make this extremely difficult. Improving efficiency in one area but requiring a supply of physically-delivered goods is often not really a win in total. Another place this came up recently was discussion about the UA Flight 232 was that the FAA knows that having kids riding on lap in airplanes isn't ideal, but they allow it because the alternative (making people pay for a seat for children) would increase the number of car trips, which likely substantially increases the total death toll etc due to higher risk-per-mile.

Gotta be careful about "pushing the problem around", and that's an engineering lesson too. Making the application 10x faster but blowing up the DB is much worse - we can scale out to more containers if we need, but scaling the DB is hard. So even a "higher-efficiency system" (serialize JSON in C vs in java) might perform worse once it hits the wall. You haven't solved the problem, you've just pushed it around, and this is a worse place for a problem.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#832

Post by RickJWagner » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 1:59 AM UTC

Recent studies confirm earlier works that show that household political views strongly influence teenage mental health.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/548381/quality-parent-child-rel...

[2] https://www.carolinajournal.com/report-conservative-parents-...

[3] https://ifstudies.org/blog/parenting-is-the-key-to-adolescen...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#833

Post by cf1241290841 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 2:14 AM UTC

stainablesteel wrote: post #567

ativzzz wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why for pretty much the majority of human history, we had some form of religion to trick ourselves into ignoring this. Now that religion is on a decline...

religion gave purpose, it didn't hide a lack thereof people need purpose not to hide from the truth, they need religion and purpose to embrace it

There is no story or belief that can justify unethical behavior.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#834

Post by ironman1478 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 2:25 AM UTC

1-6 wrote: post #349

Opinion: We’re treating kids like adults too early in their lives. Of course breaking laws isn’t ok but who here hasn’t done something crazy? Neighborhoods aren’t being neighbors any longer and people simply want to have law enforcement be the negotiator for everything.

I don't think we're treating them like adults. We're kinda just treating them like toys. My parents grew up in a dictatorship and poor, but ironically they had more freedom of movement. There were significantly less eyes on them at all times and the only real expectation was that they get their homework and chores done.

I believe now kids outside of crazy dense areas basically study, playing video games, and are forced to depend on their family to take them around. They have no true independence because you can't get anywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if around the early 2010s phones were made much more accessible and that has some correlation with the issues seen in the article.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#835

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 2:38 AM UTC

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #483

mathgradthrow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are quick to blame social media because there are exceedingly plausible mechanisms by which social media could cause such a phenomenon, and there is tremendous profit in doing so and not just of the money variety. State level actors run secret influence campaigns on facebook, and more recently, just create and control whole social media platforms without oversight. The time for skepticism about the scale of th…

People made the same arguments about violent video games (a major panic in the 1990s), about youth literature, about Dungeons and Dragons, and so on. All about depraving children and getting them hooked on smut for profit. Social media is "adversarial" in the sense that yeah, most platforms want to maximize engagement, and maximized engagement might not be best for you. But that's also the relationship you have with…

The sheer scope of this argument is ridiculous.

The number of people on social media even that can’t mentally withstand the negative effects absolutely dwarf the number of people who have ever placed violent video games.

Notice I’m not making a statement on games at all? The could be the absolute worst thing in the world for mental health, and by scale social media still is the larger issue.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#836

Post by throwaway-0110 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 3:20 AM UTC

The author attributes the rise in mental illness among teen girls to them "spending hours each day posting photos of themselves and scrolling through hundreds of carefully edited photos of other girls". As someone who was a teen girl suffering depression and extreme anxiety in the 2010s, the idea rings quite shallow. I can assure you I was not suicidal because ... other girls are pretty? what? ... but because of narcissistic controlling hyperreligious parents fucking me up mentally and withdrawing into a smaller and smaller fringe bubble, cutting me off from normal people and normal life. I think the main problem destroying people's mental health is social atomization/isolation/polarization/decay, and social media does have a role to play in that, but is not the problem in and of itself.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#837

Post by zdragnar » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 4:00 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #644

everdrive wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection here does seem to be a lot more firm. Teen suicide rates are way up, and they do seem to strongly coincide with widespread smartphone and social media adoption. Do you believe those correlations are just circumstantial?

I have a different theory which is just as plausible. These teen mental problems are a result in a shift in attitudes in America - the attitude that everyone is a victim, achievement is bad, one should get everything for free rather than the old idea that kids should work for their goodies, the mounds of presents kids get for Christmas, participation awards, everyone gets an A, parental supervision of kids play even…

I think there's more to it than this, too. There's a greater push to mold kids into activists now than when I grew up.

It used to be that you'd color in some pictures to save the rainforest or the whales. Now, it's we need to radically change society or else climate change will kill us all. Despite more people being killed by fists and feet than rifles, school shootings sound like a daily occurrence and might happen at any moment. Having white skin makes you guilty of having too much privilege. Accidentally calling someone by the wrong gender is practically a crime. If your grades aren't good enough or you don't have enough extracurricular activities for college you'll never make enough money. Anything you say online will haunt you forever. Being popular among your peers doesn't just mean being cool at school, everyone is always online spreading influence. There's no way to turn off anymore, and they're convinced they can't or they'll miss out.

They're literally surrounded by existential crises day in and day out. Going through puberty is hard enough, but somehow we've made it harder for them.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#838

Post by flappyeagle » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:02 AM UTC

AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #95

I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. It's 100% bad but it's just trash filling the hole society is making. Looking top down at the problem, humans need self actualization or propose to be happy. Originally we evolved to live in medium sized social groups that worked together to ensure their survival, we took care of each other and that was what drove our purpose, or rather why that need evolved, it…

You got cause and effect reversed. Can’t have global competition without global reach. No instagram, no influencers.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#839

Post by flappyeagle » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:03 AM UTC

Almondsetat wrote: post #680

anon373839 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. I think phones may well be responsible. Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime - unstructured moments with nothing to do except be in your surroundings, feel your own boredom, experience your thoughts. Now, the moment our attention isn’t occupied by something external, we reach for our phones to have something to fill the silence. I bel…

>I think phones may well be responsible take a smartphone, remove its internet connection and you'll quickly discover it's the internet access thst causes all problems

You need both. Internet to connect to the global rat race. Phone to inject it into every waking moment of your existence.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#840

Post by _gabe_ » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:32 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #806

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #783

A spiritual void, a loss of social cohesion, isolation, alienation, a loss of a culture that reinforces ways of life that enable flourishing, radical individualism. The decline of traditional religious faith in the West. The sexual revolution and its dreadful distortion of human sexuality. The culture of consumerism and the worship of desire and appetite divorced from reason and one's objective good. So what's a smel…

So, to piss off as many religious people as possible.... A couple of goat herder psychologist a couple of millennia ago figured out if you told people they had a purpose things in general worked better. The particular problem is they made up a whole bunch of shit and when the sciences in general came around, people when "wow, religion is a bunch of controlling bullshit". Now, I will say that religion is only mostly a…

> The particular problem is they made up a whole bunch of shit and when the sciences in general came around, people when "wow, religion is a bunch of controlling bullshit".

I think you have your history a bit backwards.

Galileo is considered the father of modern science, and he was one of the people that believed those goat herders. He argued that his views were in accordance with the Bible, not that the Bible was a bunch of random shit that was made up. Here’s his words on the matter:

>> Holy Scripture and nature both equally derive from the divine Word, the former as the dictation of the Holy Spirit, the latter as the most obedient executrix of God’s commands.[0]

The reading the rest of that letter also seems to indicate that he was pretty heavily invested in his beliefs of religion and science being supportive of one another. The father of modern science believing and arguing for religion kind of makes your whole argument a moot point.

[0]: https://web.stanford.edu/~jsabol/certainty/readings/Galileo-...