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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]

#911

Post by thawaya3113 »

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.

Chat roulette was random. Chat roulette was not pushing the dick streams to more people because it was getting the highest engagement.

If you wanted to watch terrorists sever a head you had to at the very least search for it (it was usually more complicated than that). Facebook wouldn’t stuff it in between videos of kittens doing cute stuff while you endlessly scroll your newsfeed.

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

#912

Post by thawaya3113 »

DougN7 wrote: post #861
throwaway787544 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the only source of the problem, but social media is certainly a big one. Back in the day you didn't get rape threats from 50 anonymous accounts, or see pictures of you photoshopped sucking dicks, or feel like even more of a loser because you see in 4K detail how everybody else in class is having more fun outside of school. The internet is a threat and embarrassment and envy machine. You feel like you're cons…

I had an epiphany below that it’s not just internet/social media as much as ALWAYS being connected to it via smart phones/tablets. Back in the day you got up and walked away, went outside, watched TV and you were completely away from it. Now we all carry it with is everywhere we go.

This is a great point. When logging onto the internet meant no one could make phone calls you spent 30-45 mins on AIM, caught up with your online friends, sometimes worked hard to sound funny and clever, had a great time, and then found something else to do.

But now that kids are connected to each other 100% of the time (being in class in school is also not excuse enough to not be connected) you have to be funny and clever all the time. An off hand comment while distracted by a million other things can lead to havoc in your social and online life.

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

#913

Post by tsol »

mercy_dude wrote: post #203
paxys wrote: post #68

Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment that teenagers have lived through their entire lives. Multiple major recessions, a global pandemic, rising inflation, housing and education getting more expensive by the day, prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation, climate that will be unlivable in a few decades, political extremism becoming the norm, and massive gov…

Largely agree with your analysis but you are missing one key aspect - disintegration of family and community/social support structure such as church or local youth clubs etc. Whether what you are saying as part of your analysis is the cause of this disintegration or effect I don’t know. As a society if anything we can do to better mental health, it is strengthening family and social circle and community support syste…

It's much easier to take apart a system than put it together. Hell even nietzsche talked about these problems coming up, as a result of losing religious institutions that maintain societies cohesiveness. He said God is dead, and we killed him. He asked what great festivals will we have to invent to make ourselves worthy of such a great task? Well we didn't invent any festivals or institutions to replace the church. People just aren't interested in that. So there is no secular Sunday service where you meet and socialize with your community every week

Anecdotally, I'm part of a tightly knit religious community and these problems are much less common. Even the nerdy awkward kids all have friends, why does it matter that they're awkward when they're still good people? But I rarely saw that sort of thinking in public school. It was as much a free for all as adult society and there were kids I saw go without friends from middle school to high school graduation because no one wanted to stomach their being awkward.

But often when I bring this up and rather than help the kids, people would usually try to convince me that my religion doesn't have any value. There's no interest in actually making things better, just taking things apart

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

#914

Post by chiefalchemist »

ThalesX wrote: post #794
chiefalchemist wrote: post #636

How much and how well were we measuring mental health - teens or otherwise - prior to the last decade or so? We are what we consume - food or content. That said, imagine being young and looking back 20+ yrs. Tech bubble burst, 9/11, housing bubble burst, an unproductive gov, an unsupportive social infrastructure, etc. Imagine thinking that past is your future. But sure, let the (do nothing) status quo powers blame so…

> We are what we consume - food or content. That said, imagine being young and looking back 20+ yrs. Tech bubble burst, 9/11, housing bubble burst, an unproductive gov, an unsupportive social infrastructure, etc. When I was young and without social media, with NATO bombing a neighboring country, I heard a couple of times from some concerned adults about the entire situation. Now, I'd be flooded with images of the des…

Agreed. But the problem isn't social media. The root problem is war, as well as a media that knows "hyperbole sells".

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

#915

Post by wilsonnb3 »

iskander wrote: post #774
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.

Infant mortality is down to 5.5 per 1000 from 7.5 in the US.

People living in extreme poverty globally is down to 700 million from 1.9 billion.

The world today is better than the 90s in many measurable ways.

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

#916

Post by notacoward »

The top comment purports to represent an unpopular opinion, but I'll offer one that's even less likely to appeal. Maybe kids would be less likely to over-engage with computers and what's behind them if they didn't see their parents doing exactly that. There are plenty of adults who can barely take their eyes off their phones even while driving. There are even more who work long hours with computers, but to anyone not looking directly at the screen a debugging session can be indistinguishable from a YouTube video binge. Sometimes there really isn't that much difference. All of the parents talking about how hard it is to enforce screen-time rules or limits should think very hard about what the time they spent typing those comments might look like to others.

Addendum: even when kids don't directly witness parents' social-media use, they often become aware of it in other ways. If every dinner-table or in-the-car conversation starts with "I saw this great post on Facebook" or "somebody on Hacker News said" they can figure out what's going on. When parents' beliefs or mood are obviously affected by online events, they see that too and it becomes normalized. Again, people should think carefully about the example - as well as the rules - that they set.

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

#917

Post by akomtu »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #651
gilbetron wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example from my son, a 13 year old white kid, gave me is that if you have one of the "diversity cards" (minority, LGBQT+, female sometimes, or some other thing) than you get to joke and talk in a way than those that don't have such a card. So his friends that are gay or black or indian or disabled are able to tease each other about it and have more liberty to use terms that my son is not allowed to. The gay kid…

I see this often with gangs I grew up around. Black people can call each other niggers in a casual, non-attack way. But as soon as a white person does it, it’s racist.

It means "servant" basically, and it's about an apparent difference in social classes. If I ask a barista "you can also mow my lawn if you want to make some money" it's an insult that the barista can't even refute, but if I ask my friend the same, he'll take it as a joke.

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

#918

Post by 0xBombadilo »

gilbetron wrote: post #853
0xBombadilo wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>he gets it What is there to get?

The systemic repression of non-white-males for many, many decades/centuries?

I feel so sorry for your boy. He deserves a dad who loves him more than virtue signaling. Your boy is thrown into the world with no preexisting moral guilt. And you, his father, are justifying rather than decrying the racial discrimination of your own son, while apparently trying to stand on the alter of that very discrimination.

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

#919

Post by LilBytes »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #852
Spooky23 wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s pretty easy to observe - when parents use a Skinner box (ie Youtube) to keep the kids quiet, the kids don’t develop the same social/coping/etc skills. There’s lots of study on the topic. The decline of toys and play is another related thing.

Used to be TV back in the day, no? Not that this isn't happening but bad parenting has been a thing forever going all the way back to prehistory. As always blaming the medium seems a bit short sighted. Who are the people controlling all these apps and social media sites? They're not run by aliens. And who are the parents letting this happen? There seems to be a much larger problem with society as a whole. The problem…

Problem was you couldn't take your television everywhere and it was a limited resources, e.g. one per household. Not one per person with mobility to boot.

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

#920

Post by gilbetron »

0xBombadilo wrote: post #918
gilbetron wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The systemic repression of non-white-males for many, many decades/centuries?

I feel so sorry for your boy. He deserves a dad who loves him more than virtue signaling. Your boy is thrown into the world with no preexisting moral guilt. And you, his father, are justifying rather than decrying the racial discrimination of your own son, while apparently trying to stand on the alter of that very discrimination.

My son is fine, he is well loved and he knows it - I teach him compassion and understanding while still standing up for himself. I'm sorry you live in such a black and white world lacking nuance. It must be a struggle for you such that you need to tell an internet stranger how little he loves his son.
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