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Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

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Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#851

Post by WalterBright »

nicolas_t wrote: post #393
WalterBright wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have cell phones ever stopped bullying?

I know it's rhetorical but just to answer. No, in general phones increase bullying. Before phone and social media, bullied children would finish the school day and leave the bullying behind them. Now, it follows them on their phones with countless mocking messages... Messages like "X should kill himself for being so ...." and so on. It makes the psychological part of any bullying that much more relentless.

Today, when a kid gets bullied, other students stand around recording in on their phones and posting it to the internet.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#852

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

SirMaster wrote: post #848

As a 36 year old, I still don't understand what people find so compelling or addicting about social media. OK you can argue that HN is social media, and so I understand the reason why I like to participate in this site. However, I am just a username and comments. I don't understand the (bigger?) social media where you post all the details and photos of your life online like facebook, instagram, and twitter, etc. I ne…

Did you attend high school in the US? It's basically the online version of high school. They've brought all the popularity contest, show-boating "look at the nice things I do, have, etc", and gossip from high school onto social media. Many people don't grow out of that mindset.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#853

Post by [deleted] »

fransje26 wrote: post #469
abigail95 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're implying causality by saying it worked well, that's probably backwards. a country with no problems with alcohol consumption won't have any need to create strong regulations. the implication that deregulating alcohol in sweden would decrease consumption seems bizarre.

I'm replying to the postulate made by OP that potentially addictive items need to be regulated strongly, using the example of strong alcohol restrictions from the country he grew up with. The sarcastic comment that "it was going well" was made to highlight that the very example cited was unfortunate, with many, many countries with unregulated strong alcohol having notably lower alcoholism percentages. Denmark, German…

[deleted]

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#854

Post by ajkjk »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

I think of it as: in 50 years it will be obvious to everyone that these things fall in the category of "health problems", because they are, similar to junk food, and we'll have a way of societally regulating the danger that is aligned with our ethics.

But we're presently in the middle of the long transition in which not everyone has figured that out yet, and in which we don't have a widely-agreed-upon moral stance on the subject that reconciles the need to do something about it with our existing value systems.

We're going to have to find it one way or the other, so the question is "when", not "if".

No doubt in 2174 we will have a bunch of new issues that are at different places in the pipeline. We'll probably be debating the ethics of mind-control implants or something. But in the meantime this one will solved.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#855

Post by belthesar »

pksebben wrote: post #774
kbrackbill wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how did disconnecting lead to a career change?

Was bartender, always liked computers and wanted to work with 'em. Self-taught my way into the field (which is a gross simplification but broadly gets at the meat of it). Disconnecting from social media was part of a larger effort to remove distractions - around the same time I also deleted steam and cancelled my netflix account. The wealth of time this left me to focus on self-development was absolutely critical to…

One of the things I do agree with, and personally struggle with, is that the attention economy makes it incredibly easy to fill gaps with things that spark the good brain pleasure chemicals, but do not create any positive outcomes. Removing the space to process complex information, or think about ourselves and our needs/wants/desires seems to lead to a lack of capacity to think critically, at least in my own experience.

It sounds like you made more space, and that allowed you to invest more in things that interested you, which translated to being able to make a career change. I imagine that could be swapped with "thinking about how to improve one's mental well being" or "engaging with other folks to discuss things that bother you".

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#856

Post by SirMaster »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #491
skilled wrote: post #337

I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…

My brother is essentially the male version of this, just swap the cosmetics for video game DLCs. He's early 20's, no job, no interest in work, no interest in getting out of the house, no interest on anything... talking to him is the most frustrating experience ever, nothing comes out of him, no emotion... I talked so many times, tried to get an idea of what might drive him: travelling, learning, walking around in the…

You just described one of his interests though. Video games and their DLC content.

Why is interest in video games not a valid interest, or somehow a worse interest than a few that you listed like wasting money, drinking, smoking, drawing dicks on wall?

Is there no chance of interest in video game modding or content creation?

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#857

Post by seabrookmx »

asdf6969 wrote: post #841
skilled wrote: post #337

I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…

I’m like this too except a man. It’s because I need to work on myself before I date or make new friends. I think it used to be easier to be happy as a loser before phones made us too self aware. It’s hard to be confident when I’m so aware of how much better things could be, and there’s really no excuse for failure when I can get a step by step guide on anything I want.

> happy as a loser

"Loser" is however you want to define it. If you legitimately want certain things (fitness, skills, whatever), then by all means go out and get them.

But don't forget some people are living in a hippie commune, or in a van, by choice. There's lots of these types that are completely broke and "losers" by some definition but they're fulfilled because they can spend more time hiking, painting, or whatever it is they want in life.

This is my long way of saying, don't let social media define what "success" is in your eyes :)

> I need to work on myself before I date or make new friends

Real friends/partners will see you at your worst and stick around. IMO if you think you need to do XYZ first you'll never take the leap to make these connections. The fact that you're working on yourself is what they'll see.. "it's the journey not the destination"

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#858

Post by ajkjk »

lynx23 wrote: post #241
NoPicklez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has the ability to exercise personal accountability for how much they gamble, smoke, eat junk food, play video games, use social media etc. However, if these consumer products become so addictive, or are designed to be so engaging and as a result people are by and large struggling to exercise personal accountability and it is causing adverse health outcomes. Then the government should step in, either should…

So, why are alcohol (and nicotine) still legal then? Maybe there is a 100 year old lesson hidden somewhere...

Um. They are heavily regulated? Isn't that what is being argued for for social media?

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#859

Post by spxneo »

Teever wrote: post #468
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit now is not even vaguely close to the site it used to be. Doomerism is popular on Reddit because the power users are Reddit are basically everyone who failed life. Can't get a job, can't find a partner, no friend, and normally for reasons their own fault. Those people used to be social shunned and live on the edge of town but now their voice gets amplified 1000x because they are willing to live online 24/7 and…

Can you really say they failed at life when they have so much power over society? Some moderators have control over an audiance of millions, something media moguls like Ted Turner dreamed of in the beginning of his career. If anything the real losers are the people like you and me who frequent the site but didn't take advantage of the opportunity that it provides.

I think its hilarious you think reddit mods hold sway over society when the rest of us who don't use reddit consider it to be 4chan with login

one good examples are city subreddits. they are almost always toxic and negative. lately they cleaned it up but I remember subreddits like r/vancouver were a cesspool of angry white locals who were convinced the CCP laundering money was why they couldn't afford homes

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#860

Post by OkayPhysicist »

edg5000 wrote: post #220
burningChrome wrote: post #84

I will attempt to at least inject some hope into this discussion. My formative years from ages 15-25 were spent in the 80's and 90's. It was the apex of the mall experience. We saw the mall as a place to get away from our parents, hang out with our buds, run into other classmates and feel some sense of freedom while running amok playing video games in the arcade and chowing down tacos in the food court. Then smartpho…

Interesting point you bring up. With e-commerce, I am surprised that malls can work at all. There is a brand new, massive and beautifully designed mall in The Netherlands called Westfield Mall of the Netherlands. I went there once to quickly grab something and I got hopelessly lost, even while my phone navigation actually was able to display and navigate the layout of the mall, due to the sheer size I underestimated…

Westfield's basically the only company left making money on malls, because they made a crucial observation: The anchor store is dead. Sears, Macy's, etc., they're in direct competition with Amazon, and they're losing their shirts. Most malls had made huge concessions to these anchor stores, operating under the assumption that they were why anybody goes to the mall, but Westfield pushed the opposite: People go to the mall when they want attainable luxury. People going to the mall in the 21st century aren't going there because they need something specific. People go to the mall to see a wide assortment of luxuries, recreational activities, and food options, so that they can treat themselves a little. Board game shops, brand-specific retailers like Doc Martin or Abercombie, Lego stores, jewelers.

And it works. Walking around Valley Fair (Westfield's flagship location in San Jose) is fun. You can wander the place for a good long time, being presented with a seemingly never ending array of frivolous luxuries, and even if you don't end up buying any clothes or jewels or whatever, you can swing by the food vendors for some fancy ice cream at Salt 'N Straw.

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