Earlier quoted context omitted.
So ... funny story there. There is the concept of the "N-word pass" that black kids will "give out" to non-black kids "allowing" them a use of the n-word in front of them. I had heard about this several years ago, but now several of the black kids in my son's school are giving them out occasionally. I advised my son to never use the option were he to receive one! Not a physical card in this situation, but there are s…
It's not a real concept.. it's just a meme. There's no "pass" that will grant you anything, and if there is a black person who says such a silly thing to a white person it's just shenanigans. Still won't change the context of the white person using the N-word after that anyway, especially it's historical context in the US. Also what I surely find interesting is that I only ever hear white people talk about an "N-word…
Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
961–970 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#962Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boomers wrecked the world, Millenials are wrecking minds, I'm sure Gen Z will find plenty left to wreck. Thankfully, each generation also builds.
As usual GenX gets skipped. But whatever. Apathy is our lot in life.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#963Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fully wrong, which you would have known had you bothered to read it. Additional data does NOT account for the increase in mental health issues.
I read the posted paper. Please point out where the authors factor in improvements to how we elicit, diagnose, and catalog mental health problems today. I was specifically looking for it and couldn't find it. The paper mentions the historical increase in 1.2 and 1.3 but offers no context or mitigation for long-term improvements in mental health reporting. Their NYTimes source in that section only goes back one decade…
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#964Unpopular 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…
> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, On HN that's likely to be a popular opinion, given how many members here probably work in social media corporations. I have lots of experience looking after relatives' kids in the UK and your points don't apply at all to them. It's anecdata vs anecdata, but yours doesn't refute the article, and given your opinion may well suit HN biases well (we don't want to th…
My teacherly anecdata (from about a decade of teaching) led me to think (in no particular order):
* Anxiety is way more prevalent and central to teen experience than most people realize. Definitely more so than I saw when I was a kid. You could say we use the language of mental health and anxiety to conceptualize experience more these days, and that's true to a degree, but it doesn't fully account for the prevalence or centrality.
* Social media is absolutely an amplifier of the problem. You can really just ask a kid -- they're often very self-aware about it. Many will say something like, "Yeah, I hate it, but you have to be there" or "I hate it but I'm obsessed with it."
* Further to the last point, kids are often a lot smarter about social media than we tend to give them credit for (and often a lot smarter about it than adults). Many are good at compartmentalizing online experience onto different platforms and different public or private or anonymous or real-name accounts -- since they've grown up with it, they've had more impetus to develop adaptive mechanisms. A lot of them create relatively private or close-knit digital spaces to retreat to when the big screaming public square gets overwhelming.
My own kid's a toddler, and I definitely worry about what all of this will look like for him. I want to expose him to technology and teach him to use and understand it, but at this point I'm super leery of exposing him to YouTube/anything with a whiff of social media any time in the foreseeable future.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#965Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think WWII could actually be quite a fun time to be alive for young people on the home front in the UK (and maybe N America). They had much more social freedom, often worked in groups with other young people, and had a sense of purpose, unity and camaraderie. The future was uncertain, but their own role was much clearer. And rationing even meant that people were getting fed properly. The modern world is brilliant a…
> "Why do the richest most stable countries feels so insecure?" Are you referring to only USA/Canada? I don't feel so much sense of hopelesness or insecurity in Germany.
I could offer reasons as to why but they'd only be educated guesses. It's a big problem so some definitive data would be very helpful/useful.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#966Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any studies showing using 4chan, tumblr, or reddit has better mental health outcomes than non-anonymous social networks? I'm skeptical from my own experience.
I grew up on 4chan, it’s nice to be a total flaming fuckface every now and then. Even on this website I throwaway accounts after a while. Anonymity is an escape from the drudgery of this pseudo “real life” created by social media. You associate your real anything and you will pay the price. Whether it be a photo or video, saying something that someone somewhere might find offensive—you end with all hurt and pain with…
The best way to engage with these platforms is to not take shit on them seriously and have fun (whether that's being a total flaming fuckface or otherwise). If some subset of the population can't handle that, that's their problem, and they should get off the platform; otherwise, everyone's well-being collapses down to some lame common denominator, and no one's happy.
A thing that sucks is that the platforms themselves are inherently at odds with their users' well-being. Not taking things seriously? That's low-engagement. Humor? That's bound to upset some advertiser, somewhere. No sex, no jokes, only solemn outrage with no bad words plz.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#967Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't hav…
Indeed but I think again information does have a role to play here. Back then everyone around you was going through the same shit and you learned to deal with it. Now you have social media giving a constant reminder that you're not good enough and that you need to achieve more. Conversely I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness" that I've noticed is a bit more prevalent in the younger generations, a…
It's why I keep coming back to developing resilience in kids at an early age. Challenge them early on and they'll cope better later. As I keep repeating at every opportunity, I cannot overstate the extent to which this has changed for the worse since I was a kid.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#968Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Digital drugs on the other hand are something that nearly everyone uses and thus you have to use them if you want to effectively fit in and participate in society. Not consuming these drugs just makes you an outcast especially in a ruthless environment such as school. Perhaps this idea is the problem then? Having some mental requirement to fit in I would qualify as a mental illness. What did the parents, or others…
> Having some mental requirement to fit in I would qualify as a mental illness. I strongly disagree - humans are social animals.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#969Earlier 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…
It’s interesting how they don’t report with the same enthusiasm how prevalent sexual abuse and harassment is in schools: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/10/15/sexual-a...
For an organization that explicitly advertises itself as a morally driven environment, it's extremely hypocritical for it to have any level of an abuse problem (sexual or otherwise).
That being said, it's been having an identity crisis for years, far longer than the circa-2018/19 attention on getting them to allow women. Obviously, like school, all of the troops are difference and experience their own unique sets of issues.
I was in Boy Scouts from 2004 to 2010, and Cub Scouts before then (1999 to 2004). I suppose I was lucky to start my adventure with a pack and later troop that was located in a liberal and wealthy suburb of Chicago that counted many highly educated people among its population (right down the street from Fermilab).
By 1999, they'd already started allowing women to participate as leaders. My den leader was a woman, many of the instructors were women. Cub Scouts (at least my experience with it) didn't have the same religious aspect that the boy scouts did. Our pack was chartered with a school, in contrast to Boy Scouts which typically charters with a religious organization (church, mosque, synagogue, etc.).
The actual material in the handbook and the overall organization has been ever increasingly non-denominational and non-christian-specific for years. While it wasn't explicitly accepting of atheists or agnostics, most troops don't really care that much about it. Religious service is not a required part of the activities, and by 2010 it'd been watered down to the point that you could barely recognize that you're participating. I was openly agnostic in my troop in Alabama. Moms were also openly encouraged to participate as leaders in the troops I was in. My mom was the backpacking merit badge counselor among other outdoor and survivalist activities.
The whole "exclusion of young women and homosexuals" sentiment can be taken a few ways. Obviously in 2022 it's a lamentable position. It's definitely rooted in the very American religious theme that sex before marriage is bad, therefore anyone who creates a situation where it's possible is also bad. So in order to avoid temptation, you must separate the sexes. Homosexuality turns that on its head because the boys can be attracted to the other boys.
No one had an answer how to resolve concerns, so no one changed anything. When the social progressive movement really got off the ground in the late '10s and was flagrantly demanding sweeping and immediate change to long-standing groups, they were kind of blindsided. Venture crew was a co-ed organization that allowed women to access the Boy Scout high adventure camps, but Girl Scouts was not an equivalent organization to BSA. It has a lot less national direction and troops were very different. Some of my coworkers in California have their daughters in it, and they sound like their having a similar experience to what I had in Boy Scouts. However, when my sisters went in Alabama, they were trying to turn them into proper southern housewives. Hence why they tagged along with my troop as "honorary Boy Scouts".
The appropriation of Native American culture other comments mentioned is also lamentable, at least the part where "white suburban dads jump around in costumes". For the most part it's not too bad, most of the call outs use their culture as an example of one that was more respectful of nature, in contrast with the European colonial worldview the US was largely embraced in their interactions with the Native Americans.
Re: Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
#970Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a teenager in the late 90s, I had escapes from the social hell of high school. I could go home, invite one or two close friends over, and play video games. I could find a super niche community on IRC and hang with them virtually. I felt like I had somewhere I could belong. Now, as a teenager you are plugged into that social fabric 24/7. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to find yourself in that hype…
That’s a great point and it gave me the epiphany that perhaps being always on/connected, i.e. smart phones combined with everything else is actually the cause of change. You can’t just get up and walk away (obviously you can put your phone down, but then you are cut off!)