[HN Gopher] Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental ...
___________________________________________________________________
Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen
girls
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 709 points
Date : 2023-02-22 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jonathanhaidt.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonathanhaidt.substack.com)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The reality of it is that social media, and our use of technology
| in general, isn't actually governed by any value system. Be it
| truth, human flourishing, welfare, health, what have you. We're
| completely on autopilot and are conditioned to accept all of it
| as inevitable.
|
| If we had an actual _telos_ to our use of technology work like
| this by Haidt would be in the evening news and it 'd inform
| decisions at every level. From parents keeping their kids away
| from harmful social media, to communities and institutions
| refusing to use these platforms for anything, to governments
| regulating the worst aspects of it.
|
| We're terminally screwed if the trend of letting technology (and
| profit maximizing firms) control design of social media rather
| than the other way around.
| oblib wrote:
| I have been telling friends and family that they need to focus on
| things close to home and not worry or get all red in the face
| about stuff they see on the internet and "News". That they need
| to compartmentalize that stuff and keep in context.
|
| I learned this lesson back around the early 80s. When I got off
| work I'd stop and grab some food and then go home and watch the
| "News". The station I watched started off with local Los Angeles
| and State news for a 1/2 hour, then a 1/2 hour of National News,
| then another of World News.
|
| The station was a predecessor to "FOX News" and was purchased by
| FOX just a few years later. They focused almost entirely on
| negative news, car crashes, murders, rapes, robberies, etc. So by
| the end of 1.5 hours I had consumed most all the major tragedies
| for the entire planet, and I was depressed AF.
|
| I finally realized that it was consuming all that "bad news" was
| the cause of that because days when I didn't consume it I felt
| fine.
|
| That was just 1.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, of my routine back
| then.
|
| Nowadays I would offer you need to put your phone down and spend
| more time doing something you can learn from and enjoy, like
| friends and family, like people did before the internets.
| blueicelake121 wrote:
| [flagged]
| cm2012 wrote:
| I am really doubtful. Everyone forgets that suicide and mental
| health issues are up the _most_ for boomers, and they use social
| media the least as a cohort (yes, they use it less, even with FB
| boomer memes).
|
| I'm at -3 right now but look at the data yourself:
| https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/, scroll down to suicide
| rates by age range.
|
| And yes I think suicide deaths is the best measure of mental
| illness since it has the most life impact and is the least prone
| to measurement/diagnosis error and changes,
| BryantD wrote:
| This is an important piece and I'm glad Haidt put it together.
|
| I do wonder if there's room in this analysis for specific social
| media analysis. It seems like it would be very hard to separate
| out effects of Facebook vs. effects of Twitter and so on, but at
| the same time I worry about throwing the baby out with the bath
| water.
|
| A technology-intermediated social life is not inherently bad. Pen
| and paper letters are technology. Dumb phones are technology. We
| have been adapting culturally to new ways to communicate with
| each other for a long time; I want more about what's driving this
| trend now, and I think it might be more than just feedback and
| cycle speed.
|
| Or maybe it is simply the democratization of platforms; it's bad
| when speech is filtered through a few trusted authorities but
| that doesn't mean the opposite doesn't have risks. (Yay, it's the
| free speech debate!)
| return_to_monke wrote:
| my only nitpick is - if social media were truly a drug, as some
| suggest, studies asking participants to reduce time on it
| wouldn't work because of addiction. how do we counter this?
| it_citizen wrote:
| Gambling, cigarette, alcohol, weed, cocaine or social media can
| all potentially get you addicted. It doesn't mean that on a
| random sample, most people cannot reduce their consumption. It
| depends of how hooked you are.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Not all drugs are addictive and some are more addictive than
| others.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I am a guy but I was in middle school when FB first became
| popular (around the time of the recession).
|
| I was definetly quite lucky that my dad worked in the tech
| industry as well and was a bit of a luddite around social media
| (locked down accounts and parental controls) while also
| maintaining a non-social media related friend group (swim team,
| tennis, debate, hiking, boxing). By the time I was old enough to
| learn how to bypass these (around 12-13) I feel I was a bit more
| mature and able to handle the kinds of pressures on social media.
|
| But then again, my parents were also pretty pro-active in my
| life, so maybe issues caused by social media are due to lack of
| parental involvement leading to parents using FB/YT/IG/TikTok as
| a substitute for parenting.
| ceedan wrote:
| I'd been hoping that there would be a counter-culture generation
| at some point that says no to social media - but it seems like
| they're just saying no to one social network in favor of another
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Social Contagion[1] is more prevalent in females. So is an
| affinity for people/relationships over objects. I suspect it's
| nearly as toxic for males if they were to consume on equal doses,
| but social media is naturally more tuned for relationship (and
| subjective) focus than object (and objective) focus.
|
| Would be great if we could start doing properly controlled trials
| with folks who _never_ use these things we're widespread
| experimenting across the population. A few examples that might
| make sense: social media, pornography usage, and perhaps any fast
| tracked vaccines. Might make sense to have even just a few
| randomized folks be controls for research purposes. As of now you
| likely cannot find even a single person over ~15 who hasnt used
| social media/porn _ever_ in their lifetime.
|
| [1]:https://dictionary.apa.org/social-contagion
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| In the future we will look back on unrestricted access to social
| media for children the way we look back at smoking ads targeting
| children today.
| xchip wrote:
| Any idea what the reasons are why teen girls are more affected by
| social media?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Don't forget that HN is also a form of social media. It will make
| you angry and emotionally exhausted. :)
| snovymgodym wrote:
| It's true, but the lack of curated feeds, semi-anonymous
| profiles, and the relatively strict moderation of topics and
| discussion style certainly make it seem less addicting and
| harmful than the others.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| "No it isn't and no it won't" :) lol.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| I keep saying it every time and there are no good faith arguments
| to not do it, what we need is:
|
| - Make social media illegal to underage kids, just like tobacco
| or alcohol
|
| - Enforcement through ID verification of every user (would solve
| the bot problem as well)
|
| - Jail terms for executives of social media companies who fail to
| enforce these rules and protect children from harmful content
| deely3 wrote:
| - During use of social media webcamera should be turned on and
| competent goverment agent should check video feed real time to
| ensure that there no underage kids near and to ensure that user
| that use social media is the same that registered.
| sidfthec wrote:
| Of course there are good faith arguments, you probably just
| don't agree with them.
|
| The most convincing argument is that I don't want social media
| companies to have access to my ID. Remember, even websites like
| HN and Pornhub would need to verify your age with your ID.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| > I don't want social media companies to have access to my ID
|
| You don't want them to know your real name and age? Then
| don't use them. Social media is harmful and so it needs more
| regulation and safety. You can't enter a casino right now
| without an ID. You either accept that the casino will know
| your name and age when you enter it or you don't go to the
| casino. It's so funny when tech folks think their little
| shitty thing is something special that should not have to
| follow any logical common sense laws like everything else in
| the world.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Having nearly every site require government ID for access
| would be a pretty grim end to the arc of de-anonymization
| that started with Facebook's "real name" requirement. Do we
| truly value social media as a product and an industry more
| than our privacy/anonymity?
| warner25 wrote:
| I'm still reading it, but this is great so far. As a father to
| four little girls, though, it makes me feel really defeated. I
| can already see that social media has eroded my wife's mental
| health. I just don't know what to do in the next few years when
| our girls approach the age when everyone else will get an iPhone
| and have an Instagram account. I want to say no, but that leads
| to many other issues, including what the author describes
| perfectly in this passage:
|
| "Suppose that... a 12-year-old girl decided to quit all social
| media platforms. Would her mental health improve? Not
| necessarily. If all of her friends continued to spend 5 hours a
| day on the various platforms then she'd find it difficult to stay
| in touch with them. She'd be out of the loop and socially
| isolated."
| prepend wrote:
| As a parent to a 12 year old girl, I've been fighting the "no
| social media" fight since she requested at 9. Every single one
| of her friends have social media and I think it is negative to
| be isolated in that way. But I also notice that she seems to
| have positive benefits over her friends, but of course it's
| tough to measure.
|
| It's strange to me because I've talked about this literature
| and whatnot with other parents and they just shrug and say that
| their kid won't abuse it and will withstand the negative
| effects. Of course, many of these are posting on social media
| quite a bit themselves.
|
| It's tough for parents but I'm encouraged by more evidence on
| this subject and hope that there's soon public health guidance
| about when to allow social media.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| This is really baffling to me, because social media sites
| have an age limit of 13 in most western countries.
|
| ...and this is by the companies themselves, if they are found
| out to be "marketing to children", they get hit with a whole
| another set of legal issues. Epic just got hit with this
| because of Fortnite and has to pay over $200M fines.
|
| The only issue is that there is zero oversight on the age
| limit, there is no way to report underage users on social
| media sites - and even if there is, nothing happens until
| someone goes through the courts.
| lozenge wrote:
| You definitely can report an underage user.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I tried to do it on WhatsApp (age limit 16 in the EU),
| but guess what?
|
| You can only report YOUR OWN CHILD:
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/695318248185629
|
| Other Meta properties are better at this though.
| ravenstine wrote:
| How are girls actually using social media? My impression is
| that the problem isn't so much obsessively posting as
| merely scrolling through content, thus a social media
| account for the purpose of infinite-scrolling isn't
| necessarily going to appear to be for someone underage or
| even be surfaced to anyone who would even care enough to
| report it.
| neogodless wrote:
| Disclaimer: Not a parent, did not grow up during the era of
| social media (and my own childhood experiences cannot be
| extrapolated!)
|
| As a kid, I was bullied, outcast, left out. Oddly enough, I
| don't think I was depressed. Sure, I was sad sometimes. But
| given that my options didn't include doing things with kids
| from school, I did things on my own. Fortunately for me, I also
| had access to a (relatively) safe outdoors to explore. Or if
| the weather wasn't cooperating, I would play with toys inside.
|
| But it sounds like social isolation can lead to mental
| illness/depression, so I don't know if enduring that is an
| acceptable alternative to the near certain mental illness that
| being part of the internet-connected social scene seems to
| cause.
|
| Should we redirect our attention to figuring out how to keep
| kids mentally healthy despite likely social isolation that's
| going to happen no matter what? Is that possible?
| e40 wrote:
| You've hit on the conundrum. Damned if you do join the social
| network (for the known reasons) and damned if you don't
| (isolation from friends).
|
| Until a major of parents remove access, this will always be the
| problem.
|
| Btw, I had the same issue with games and my son. I could not
| let him play, but then he wouldn't have had access to the sole
| socialization his peer group had. Both decisions were bad, but
| one was worse. Letting him play video games was the least bad
| choice. Interestingly, we've had discussions about this, now
| that he's an adult and (I believe) he agrees with this
| analysis.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| Video games and social media are two entirely different
| things.
|
| Some of my best times with my friends is LAN parties as well
| as going together at demo parties, traveling, coding
| together.
|
| Frankly, a ban on videogames is stupid as hell. Even today on
| discord and over the network, it?s stil entirely unlike
| social media.
|
| /smh
| e40 wrote:
| I agree they are different, but they definitely share some
| things.
|
| Moderation with video games is hard for young people. Same
| for social media. That's why I mentioned it.
|
| And, I wasn't suggesting a ban on video games.
| shagie wrote:
| While the generations are a bit dated -
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-...
|
| > Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone
| else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present
| an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people
| who chime in the most about their careers are usually those
| whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while
| struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This
| leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing
| really well, only adding to her misery:
|
| > (image)
|
| > So that's why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit
| frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she's probably started off
| her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very
| disappointing.
|
| > ...
|
| > Ignore everyone else. Other people's grass seeming greener is
| no new concept, but in today's image crafting world, other
| people's grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that
| everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and
| frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you'll
| never have any reason to envy others.
|
| ---
|
| Thus, the "set reasonable expectations" along with "realize
| that what is on social media is a constructed reality
| reflecting the masks people wear in that environment." The
| "what people see on Facebook" is almost as scripted as any
| romcom movie - just that most people realize that the movie is
| a constructed fabrication yet tend to expect that they can live
| day to day the same as what people project into the constructed
| reality of social media.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the people who chime in the most about their careers are
| usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the
| best
|
| I'm skeptical about this. I suspect that it's more likely
| that such people are presenting an image of their lives that
| is much better than the reality.
|
| In my experience, people who are living great lives rarely
| feel the need to tell everyone how great their lives are.
| Even when they're teenagers.
| layer8 wrote:
| "Career (superficially?) going great" doesn't imply "living
| a great life". Communicating the former merely gives the
| (superficial) impression of the latter. And some of those
| chasing a "great" career are doing so because they aren't
| otherwise fulfilled. In any case, _among_ those who
| communicate about their career /life, there will be a bias
| towards communicating a successful career/life.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This article is the classic "millennials are sad because they
| have unrealistically high expectations" drivel that I thought
| we had buried for good. Even for 2013 it seems pretty trashy.
| Lucy doesn't think she's unusually wonderful, and to assume
| so is completely unfair to Lucy. Lucy was told over and over
| and over that all she needed to do was go to college and work
| hard at anything somewhat respectable, and financial
| stability and personal comfort would follow. She only ever
| wanted a decent liberal arts education, and after that a
| decent career. You know who fed her that BS? Her delusional
| _parents_.
|
| Yes, it's easy to get unrealistic expectations from social
| media. But that's not the point of the article, for anyone
| tempted to click and read.
| shagie wrote:
| The high expectation drivel fed by parents is something
| that in that context is something that the millennials
| needed to overcome. That, however, is only part of the
| story.
|
| Setting aside the expectations of "you are special and can
| be anything you want to be" from parents there is also the
| "the world around you is crafted to a degree that previous
| generations didn't deal with."
|
| Recognizing that part of it is also important. If you
| compare yourself to influencers and expect to be able to
| live a life like them, you will likely be unhappy.
| Correspondingly, if you compare yourself to the crafted
| image of your peers all the time, you may feel that you're
| not doing as well as they are.
|
| That part isn't a millennial issue but rather a "everyone
| who uses social media to compare or boast about their
| current social situations."
| try_the_bass wrote:
| > You know who fed her that BS? Her delusional parents.
|
| I thought the Wait but Why article made a point of calling
| that out. It didn't come across as blaming Lucy for her
| delusions, saying "she has _been told_ all her life that
| 'she's special'".
|
| "Been told" seems to put the blame for that squarely on
| those doing the telling.
| gtvwill wrote:
| You don't have any kids yet do you? If you do, what dreams
| do you fill their heads with if not that of a happy life?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The flip side of that, is that there are a fair amount of
| parents, who get incredulous if their child _doesn 't_
| have the dream social standard that they themselves found
| it easy to achieve. How many people in their mid-20s
| today are homeowners without student debts?
| welshwelsh wrote:
| I'm not convinced that any of that is bad.
|
| >the people who chime in the most about their careers are
| those whose careers (and relationships) are going the best
|
| As it should be. Only a very small minority of people have
| careers or relationships worth emulating, and they should be
| setting examples for everyone else to aspire to.
|
| Lucy is upset because she knows that she can do better. She
| sees people who are no smarter and no better than her getting
| much more out of life, and she is rightfully disgusted with
| her mediocrity.
|
| Personal anecdote- at one time I made 30k a year, and I
| actually thought that was _good_. I thought it was good
| because I made more than my friends.
|
| Then I started hanging out on Blind and /r/cscareerquestions.
| I got a CS degree and a job paying $70k a year, but felt like
| a failure because everyone on Blind seems to make more. As
| soon as I could I hopped to a higher paying role, but still
| felt poor.
|
| But I'm not complaining now. Peer pressure from social media
| pushed me to build a great career, even if it made me feel
| miserable and inadequate for a time.
|
| Is it better to be happy and complacent? I don't think so.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| there's a lot to unpack in this comment but I'll pick off
| one point and maybe others will contest the rest
|
| > Only a very small minority of people have careers or
| relationships worth emulating, and they should be setting
| examples for everyone else to aspire to.
|
| Of those that have relationships worth emulating I doubt
| they are parasocially broadcasting it for the world to see.
| To the contrary, most of these images that you see on
| social media are heavily curated and manicured and don't
| really reflect reality.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Most people's social animal brains cannot really deal with
| being consistently shown to be low status individuals
| without starting to act like low status individuals:
| defensively and risk-aversely.
|
| This is an unconscious reflex, you cannot control how
| anyone perceives your social worth, including yourself.
|
| The problem is that it tends to be a vicious circle: once
| you start behaving in a weak way due to illusions, people
| will perceive you negatively and it will become harder to
| bounce back for real.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They wouldn't be out of the loop if enough other girls did the
| same thing. They you'd have your own group.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Let's be honest though. That would simply never work. You'd
| have to get a group of teen girls to make a pact to all be
| out of the loop. Not one of them can sneak a peek at social
| media!
|
| Knowing what teens are like I'd say that experiment would
| last a week. Social media is addictive probably even more so
| for teens and fomo is real
| ljm wrote:
| I would contest one point in the article, and I admit this is
| dependent on where you live:
|
| > But social media is very different because it transforms
| social life for everyone, even for those who don't use social
| media, whereas sugar consumption just harms the consumer.
|
| In countries with single-payer healthcare (or socialised
| healthcare), it's not true that it harms only the consumer. If
| it turns into obesity, diabetes, or other medical conditions,
| then it may transform social life by virtue of adding pressure
| to the healthcare system. This is a rephrasing of the argument
| against smoking, where the argument that was smoking harms
| nobody else, and the counter was that smokers created a
| healthcare burden.
|
| Arguably this is the same case in insurance-based countries,
| but the payment structure keeps the onus on the individual, not
| the overall system.
|
| The point being that social media has damaging externalities no
| matter how it's framed.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| [dead]
| thfuran wrote:
| >This is a rephrasing of the argument against smoking, where
| the argument that was smoking harms nobody else, and the
| counter was that smokers created a healthcare burden.
|
| Smoking also has much more direct second hand effects from
| releasing smoke into the area of the smoker. Poor diet lack
| such effects.
| ljm wrote:
| Which most people would agree - smoking in public is not a
| personal activity; but this debate raged on throughout the
| 90s and early 00s. The secondary effect is on the
| healthcare system some time after the fact, which is the
| same for sugar, alcohol, smoking...where it is a new
| generation that is funding the care.
|
| I don't mean to distract from the main point, but sugar is
| not an innocent example, especially when lobbying happened
| to use sugar in favour of fat.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > In countries with single-payer healthcare (or socialised
| healthcare), it's not true that it harms only the consumer.
|
| This is a fallacy. Public health measures benefit some
| individuals more than others; but everyone benefits. Free
| treatment catches TB infections, for example, which occur
| overwhelmingly among homeless people. We're all better off if
| there are no homeless people wandering around with TB.
|
| I'm glad my neighbours all benefit from the NHS, and that I'm
| not surrounded by sick people.
| sayrer wrote:
| I can recommend the book "American Girls" by Nancy Jo Sales.
|
| I don't have any daughters, but I've worked at some big social
| media companies, and this was required reading at one of them.
| The boss there did have daughters, but it wasn't only so we
| would understand. It was so we wouldn't build Trust and Safety
| headaches in the first place.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| In mid 2022 I started doing what I called Facebookless Fridays.
|
| Eventually that progressed to also on a Saturday afteroon-ish
| I'd update my status to "See You Noon Tuesday"* and then not do
| FB til noon Tue, in addition to FL Fridays.
|
| It was odd at first. But then it's liberating in the sense you
| realize how much junkfood for the mind and soul it is. Mind you
| I'm not a 12 y/o but perhaps if it was a group / family effort
| you can pull back enough to develop healthier perspectives not
| based on SM and only SM?
|
| * Yes, it's any intentional play on see you next Tuesday ;)
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's ok for a 12yo to be out of the loop for a few hours. They
| see their friends every day at school.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| When I was in school, kids whose parents chose not to expose
| them to cable TV were ostracized. I can imagine something
| similar happening today with social media.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I definitely felt left out not having an N64 or Playstation
| growing up, but in hindsight I didn't actually miss much.
| What stings at the time is the _feeling_ that you 're
| missing out.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| "Oh my god, did you see what Stacy posted last night!"
|
| But your daughter missed it because " _you_ didn 't let her
| have an Instagram account!" It seems to me that such worries
| are well-founded. At best, she made the decision herself and
| still feels the pain of it.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Then they get to blame the parent. "I want to use social
| media but my lame parents won't let me." Then they're left
| out of some things, but they get to deflect that social
| stigma. I'm willing to accept being the lame parent. That
| ship sailed a long time ago.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That's letting kids parent themselves.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| What does it mean to parent anyway?
| IncRnd wrote:
| Even chatgpt knows.
|
| (prompt:) what does it mean to parent? To
| parent means to raise and nurture a child from infancy to
| adulthood, providing them with love, care,
| guidance, and support as they grow and develop.
| Parenting involves a wide range of responsibilities and
| activities, including providing for a child's physical
| needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care, as
| well as their emotional and psychological needs,
| such as love, affection, and encouragement.
| Effective parenting also involves setting boundaries and
| rules, providing discipline when necessary, and
| teaching children important life skills, such as
| communication, problem-solving, and decision-making. As
| children grow and mature, parents often adjust
| their parenting style to meet their children's
| changing needs and help them develop into independent and
| responsible adults.
| Xylakant wrote:
| ChatGPT has no idea what parenting means. It parrots what
| other people have written about parenting.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That's a good point.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You're looking at it in isolation because you are not
| privy to the kids' social circle. What the gp is
| describing is a social cost imposed on the non-
| participant kid. If repeated often, this will lower their
| status within their social circle and (much like
| chickens) the least popular kids become the default
| target for emotional abuse and bullying. If they withdraw
| form their social circle to cut their losses, then they
| potentially become a general bullying target, because
| they are not part of a protective circle.
|
| It's easy to be dismissive of these ideas, but there is
| an extensive and rigorous literature on network topology
| and dynamics. A good introduction with a strong
| quantitative/mathematical orientation is _Social and
| Economic Networks_ by Matthew Jackson. Arguing on the
| basis of your own developmental experience in which
| significantly different conditions obtained (eg the non-
| existence /availability of social media or the internet)
| is equivalent to just wishing the problem away.
| concordDance wrote:
| The problem comes down to putting kids in forced
| confinement with a bunch of other kids for 6 hours a day
| with no way for them to escape. Mandatory "education" of
| teens is harmful on the net. It wastes some of the most
| energetic and productive hours of life while teaching
| very few useful skills (and those could be taught in a
| fraction of the time).
| IncRnd wrote:
| It's easy to be dismissive of these ideas, but there is
| an extensive and rigorous literature on network
| topology and dynamics.
|
| Parenting through rigorous literature on network topology
| and dynamics? Arguing on the basis of
| your own developmental experience in which
| significantly different conditions obtained (eg the
| non-existence/availability of social media or the
| internet) is equivalent to just wishing the problem away.
|
| Actually, it was a description of having fixed the
| problem, because it wasn't as much of a problem as people
| believe beforehand through network topology that
| simulates k-12 social circles. When parents love their
| children, talk to them, are privy to their kids' social
| circles, and make decisions in the best welfare of their
| children, those children are able to recover from the
| intense loss of missing what Stacy posted last night.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Ah, sarcasm.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm a parent, and I was what you call a "non-participant"
| kid who was bullied when I was in junior high and high
| school. Here's the thing: School ends. It's a tiny part
| of one's life. I know, when you're in it, it feels like
| it takes forever, but once you graduate high school,
| nobody on earth gives a shit about where you were on the
| social totem pole. In the grand scheme of things, the
| cliques and social circles are entirely unimportant, and
| I plan to teach my kid that. Keep your eye on the prize.
| K-12 school is something you simply endure until you are
| an adult in the adult world.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's universalizing agency.
| testTED wrote:
| It never gets old hearing HNers lament being bullied by
| their children into rethinking unpopular parenting
| decisions.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I feel similarly to seeing parenting advice from people
| who clearly aren't parents.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Funny thing is, I'm not a parent and have no plans to be
| one. Just seems kinda obvious to me.
|
| Edit: I guess I didn't word this very well. Please
| consider this comment in the context of my earlier one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34901931.
| danielheath wrote:
| "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple,
| obvious, and wrong."
| theGnuMe wrote:
| It is way more difficult and nonobvious then you think.
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Parenting is by far the most difficult, stressful thing
| I've ever undertaken. My kids are mostly not too
| difficult, but they're very different nonetheless. My son
| is Mr. Compliant and is exactly the kind of kid that
| makes people think they must be rockstar parents. My
| daughter, on the other hand, routinely makes me feel like
| an ineffectual failure at parenting. I love her more than
| anything in the world, but she might well be costing me a
| few years of lifespan :).
|
| One major problem, at least from my perspective, is
| managing the transfer of responsibility as a child
| progresses from toddler to adult. It's not like you throw
| them the keys at 18 and say 'good luck!'. So there is
| ongoing give-and-take, rules, negotiations, and extending
| trust. My kids are 10 and 12, which is an exciting time
| for sure. Puberty is a wild ride whether you're the
| victim or not :)
|
| Haven't let her get a smartphone yet, but this is an
| ongoing battle. Because when she says 'but all my friends
| do!' she's not lying. I have to temper my fears and try
| to remember what it's like to be a kid. As an adult I had
| largely forgotten what it was like in middle school.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Thanks for sharing!
|
| > Parenting is by far the most difficult, stressful thing
| I've ever undertaken.
|
| From my observations, I don't think this can be
| overstated, at least from an American perspective. It is
| easily the single largest factor in my decision-making on
| this topic, and seems to be something which many people
| underestimate.
| creato wrote:
| I'm not a parent but it's pretty easy to see why there is
| no obvious solution here.
| testTED wrote:
| Getting back to why we're all here: at least "make" them
| jailbreak or root the device to get around some of these
| apparently arbitrary limits!
| testTED wrote:
| Your daughter might do something that matters (to her,
| even!) instead of aspiring to be a TikTok influencer.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's time to develop a backbone. You'll need one when she
| starts dating someone with a motorcycle and leather jacket,
| or modern equivalent.
| u801e wrote:
| Not all 12 year olds are in a single social group. If one
| is being left out because they don't have an instagram
| account, there's another social group they can gravitate to
| that has other interests besides instagram posts.
| verse wrote:
| > there's another social group they can gravitate to that
| has other interests besides instagram posts.
|
| no, there isn't
| tlear wrote:
| Most likely there is in nicer schools. There are social
| groups around swim competitive clubs, ski race teams,
| hockey teams, ball hockey, summer long duration live in
| camps etc.
|
| In many ways hanging out with kids who are banned from
| social media is hanging out with kids from a pretty
| exclusive club. This is why unless you homeschool it is
| REALLY worth it to put your kids into school where
| parents are from a similar group as you are.
| acedTrex wrote:
| But then they are out of loop in the in person discussions
| that are predominantly focused on the happenings of whatever
| is on instagram at that time
| mulmen wrote:
| Do they? Is social media being used in morning classes to
| plan lunch? Will a socially isolated student even _have_
| friends? I haven 't been in school for many years so I don't
| know the social dynamic but it isn't hard to imagine.
| swader999 wrote:
| They do seem to live on Snapchat lately.
| sdwr wrote:
| Kids are a lot more susceptible to feeling left out of stuff.
| They don't know it's all the same crap everywhere yet ;)
|
| There's also a spectrum of FOMO, from accidental to
| intentional. Some people feed off of excluding others.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Same. It have no idea what I'm going to do about it.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| So we know that social media causes depression and anxiety
| and we know that kids will want to be on social media so we
| have to teach them the skills to regulate their emotions.
|
| Most importantly that they can identify when they need to ask
| for help and will ask for it. We need to normalize asking for
| help.
|
| Right now kids can learn these skills in therapy but that is
| not the only place those skills should be taught or
| reinforced. Schools for example are a good place for that.
|
| Remember that cliques in school were reinforced by the
| telephone and just like the game of telephone a lot gets lost
| in communication. Social media is an extension of that.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I don't even have the skills to regulate my emotions
| dudul wrote:
| There are schools where phones are forbidden until high school.
| If you have the means and the problem is important to you try
| to find one.
|
| You can't pick your kids friends but you can do your best to
| curate the pool they are picking from.
| samstave wrote:
| As the Father of Three girls ; I propose a screen-age limit.
| Just like the drinking limit, and I think that certain sites
| should have a limit of 10 years old.
|
| Only educational sites and videos should be available to anyone
| under 10.
|
| I KNOW this is a horrendously hard problem to solve - but kids
| should EARN sceen time by 'playing outside time' or something.
|
| Kids born to cities are fucked. kids born to dense 'no-
| nature'access' environs are fucked.
|
| But growing up in the forrests of california and being a latch-
| key kid in the 80s was a godsend to my imagination and thus my
| IQ.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Only educational sites and videos should be available to
| anyone under 10.
|
| I don't think you could enforce this anyway, but it's also a
| terrible idea. I can't imagine what my life would have been
| like if my local library or bookseller felt like you do about
| the internet and I was trapped reading fiction way below by
| level.
|
| The solution to the problem isn't censorship and holding
| inquisitive children back, it's parenting and guiding
| children safely while they explore their interests and the
| world they live in.
| [deleted]
| corbulo wrote:
| Nature is the best solution by far. Everything else is a half
| measure IMO.
|
| The thing that these devices take away from us is time to
| think, or 'boredom'; we're meant to walk everywhere. The only
| solution is to restore that, what better environment to do so
| than a forest?
| lettergram wrote:
| My parents always told me "we can only control what goes on in
| our house"
|
| I'd have that attitude -- show your children this study and
| explain why they can't use it in your home. "I won't support
| making you mentally ill"
|
| In reality, your kids will likely subvert you to some degree.
| That said if you set the clear boundaries and alternatives it
| might not be bad. Particularly, if you're upfront and explain.
|
| I personally send my kids to a school that where we signed an
| agreement for no tech in the classroom (or generally limit it
| at home). At the very least, that ensures kids can be kids at
| school. After that; I suggest getting them in activities and
| keeping them active.
|
| In many ways connectivity is great, it's the algorithmic
| enhancement and broadcasting that's at issue. I doubt there's
| mental health issues related to texting one-on-one for instance
| (or very limited issues).
| barbazoo wrote:
| It must be frustrating to see this problem approaching and not
| knowing what to do. I wonder if at some point the only way out
| is to radically change one's family's lifestyle. Maybe
| homeschooling, very limited technology at home, living in a
| community with like-minded people, something like that?
| dmonitor wrote:
| this model breaks down because you have to enter society
| eventually. transitioning from homeschooling to highschool
| junior year and then into a large university was very
| difficult in my personal experience.
| seanw444 wrote:
| It worked well for me. Homeschooled until 7th grade. It
| helped me make friends, because I had no concept of cliques
| at the start. Also gave me a good "bullshit" meter for some
| of the crap public school has started teaching.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This was very much my observation of my nieces and nephews
| who went through that experience. They went all the way to
| adulthood home schooled, and the net result was they were
| wholly unprepared to be adults in modern society. They made
| it, mostly, but it was a rough couple years of adjustment.
|
| On top of that, far from acquiring the values their parents
| hoped they'd get, they ended up with the reverse. Their
| attitudes are largely polar reversed from their parents,
| and they're incredibly resentful of having had those values
| pushed on them for the entirety of their childhood.
| snerbles wrote:
| I've been through the whole gamut.
|
| Homeschooling to private middle school was rough, mainly in
| my social circle going from a polite mixed-age group to a
| crass morass of the local rich kids. 18 months of that did
| more for my toilet humor repertoire than four years in the
| military.
|
| Private to rural public school was a bit more relaxed. Less
| fistfights and emotional distress, but the academics were
| truly lacking - the district didn't have any more course
| material beyond Algebra 2 so I spent 8th grade math as a
| study hall. Chill, but ultimately wasted time.
|
| Switched to a public charter for high school, and did a
| combination of home study and local community college
| courses. By that point I knew what I was "missing" from
| regular institutional education and was fine with the
| trade-off.
| warner25 wrote:
| Yeah, I see that side of it too. I'm an Army officer, and
| there's an interesting phenomenon in our ranks. Officers
| who attend West Point live under some extreme restrictions,
| whereas officers who are products of ROTC and OCS tend to a
| have a normal civilian college experience. You can guess
| who gets into the most trouble after they graduate and
| enter the "real Army" with all the freedoms that young
| officers have. We have a long history of tinkering with how
| much freedom to give new enlisted troops during their basic
| training and specialized job training, trying to balance
| "discipline" with the fact that it's counter-productive for
| us to graduate new troops who immediately go wild when they
| get to their first real unit.
| biomcgary wrote:
| I'm a father of a non-verbal autistic son. We have chosen a
| non-traditional path for him to avoid bullying and he is
| generally doing quite well (and slowly becoming a bit more
| verbal). It helps that he has siblings that love him as he
| is.
|
| Our kids have a mix of private schooling, tutoring, and
| homeschooling. They spend a lot of time outdoors and have
| very limited access to screens and no social media. We chose
| this path because the typical classroom has 25-30 barbarians
| and 1 civilized person, if you're lucky.
|
| Most social media appears completely overrun by highly tribal
| barbarians.
| antod wrote:
| As a parent of a 13yr old girl, we've tried with mixed
| success during her preteens to find her interests/activities
| she liked where she could get good at something and have a
| source of self esteem that came from somewhere outside her
| peer group interactions.
|
| But yeah, the interest dies away a bit by 13 and we're not
| fully sure it worked. But we can see that her peers that
| didn't have earlier hobbies/skills had even lower self
| esteem. Shrug
| itronitron wrote:
| You might want to look into sewing/textiles/fashion as a
| creative and intellectual activity. It's a nice combination
| of history, creativity, technical work, and learning
| from/with adults.
| flerchin wrote:
| Let's find a solution that does not involve expanding the
| Amish model.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| The Amish kinda slap, they didn't invent addictive social
| media, put a game show host in charge of nuclear weapons,
| or have a bunch of corporations change their icons to
| rainbow icons while still being shitty.
|
| They literally realized 300 years ago that they should opt
| out of the nonsense America descended into
| asah wrote:
| lol, the Amish are not competitive on the world stage and
| if left to run the country, we'd have actually been
| invaded a dozen times already - or at the least, we'd be
| a vassal state.
|
| opting out of "the nonsense" is fun to think about, but
| not when competing countries have robotic factories.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Some of them have opted out of nonsense like reporting
| sexual assault to authorities, as well.
|
| From "Child Sexual Abuse in the Amish Community: A Hidden
| Epidemic":
|
| > _"I've learned that sexual abuse in their communities
| is an open secret, spanning generations," she wrote in
| the 2019 article. "Victims told me stories of
| inappropriate touching, groping, fondling, exposure to
| genitals, digital penetration, coerced oral sex, anal sex
| and rape--all at the hands of their own family members,
| neighbors and church leaders."_
|
| [1] https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/child-sexual-abuse-
| amish
| bavila wrote:
| > The Amish kinda slap
|
| For anyone else who was confused by this:
| https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/slap/
| TheGeminon wrote:
| Slap means really good in this context, e.g. "this song
| really slaps".
|
| This makes me want to make a generational/chronological
| slang chart now
| bavila wrote:
| Thanks, just edited my post to link to the definition.
|
| Guess I'd fall under the generation that would have said
| "rock" instead (although the Amish most definitely do not
| rock).
| deafpolygon wrote:
| That's kind of glossing over the nonsense they _did_ opt
| into.
| Loughla wrote:
| I know that's meant to be funny, but the Amish community
| is a nightmare, from the outside looking in, very
| closely. I live in an area where there is a large Amish
| community; they outnumber "English" about 4:1.
|
| Patriarchy in all decisions. The old men make choices for
| families based on what they know is best, and you follow
| that rule, regardless of your own views. Women are not
| allowed a voice in formal decisions. Children are a
| tradable commodity. If you upset an elder, your life is
| over.
|
| You're raised speaking German first, so that you can
| "learn your heritage" (read: always feel the divide
| between yourself and the rest of the country). You get up
| to an 8th grade education and nothing more. Only if it
| doesn't interfere with your chores. If you are sent off
| to college for whatever reason (my neighbor was a college
| educated Amish; he was the legal representative for the
| community) they treat you like an outsider. You are not
| allowed a voice in community votes, if they have them.
| You get the scraps. If you start a business, and someone
| else wants to start the same thing, you give it over to
| them, no questions asked.
|
| God forbid you disagree with the elders. Imagine being in
| your 30's, with just an 8th grade education, and your
| entire community, family, and support system turns their
| back on you and yours. You're screwed.
|
| If the bishop believes another community could use your
| skills, or doesn't like your family, you have to move,
| possibly hundreds of miles. That's after selling
| everything you own, usually at a loss. But that doesn't
| matter, because the community itself and the church
| actually own everything, you are just renting your own
| business and/or home from the church.
|
| Absolute rule by the male elders. Lies and buried
| secrets. That's the way of the Amish. But they get a
| pass, because their beards and hats look funny.
| autoexec wrote:
| > You get up to an 8th grade education and nothing
| more...Imagine being in your 30's, with just an 8th grade
| education
|
| This at least would be a massive improvement for most
| people in the US who only read at a 6th grade level and
| have a comparable level of skill in math and science.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/
|
| https://people.com/parents/most-parents-math-and-science-
| kno...
| oblio wrote:
| You're assuming that the average Amish are great at
| school, which based on nost communities around the world,
| is most likely false.
|
| I.e. the average highschool graduate probably reads at
| 6th grade level but the average middle school graduate
| probably only reads at 5th or 4th grade level is a
| reasonable assumption.
| autoexec wrote:
| You're right, it assumes that teaching to an 8th grade
| level means they've learned to read/write at an 8th grade
| level.
|
| There's also an assumption that the Amish are more
| rigorousness in their teaching and that they would make
| sure kids learn to read at the level expected from them
| which may or may not actually be true.
|
| Although a few minutes with Google didn't give me a lot
| of firm numbers, it did return results which suggest that
| the Amish may be more concerned with making sure their
| students are literate and that they care very much about
| ensuring their children are well educated as a matter of
| cultural identity. I didn't see anything to support the
| idea that they would perform worse than non-amish
| children at least. It also mentions that they're nearly
| all fluent in two languages which is a bonus.
|
| > Yet illiteracy is virtually nonexistent in Amish
| settlements. Without television and computers, they read
| more than most Americans. They have a remarkable ability
| to learn new skills--even complicated ones--and value
| lifelong learning. Amish parents are heavily involved in
| their children's education: they donate the land and
| building supplies for the school, visit regularly, attend
| school events, and take turns caring for the facilities.
|
| > In the book Amish Society, John Hostetler wrote, "On
| several standardized tests, Amish children performed
| significantly higher in spelling, word usage, and
| arithmetic than a sample of pupils in rural public
| schools. They scored slightly above the national norm in
| these subjects in spite of small libraries, limited
| equipment, the absence of radio and television, and
| teachers who lacked college training."
| (https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-
| and-blo...)
|
| > That is one thing that sets our culture apart from the
| Amish. The Amish grow up writing. And yes, I grew up
| writing too but in the Amish culture reading is one of
| the biggest things in their culture. And even as adults
| such as Eli and Anna in the article; they participate in
| circle letters with people that have the same background,
| interests, or anything else that the have in common.(http
| s://edblogs.olemiss.edu/jmswartz/2020/09/04/literacy-
| and...)
| tsol wrote:
| >Patriarchy in all decisions. The old men make choices
| for families based on what they know is best
|
| Is this not a thing where you are? Americans(and I am
| one) speak much about patriarchy but still uphold it
| strongly. Even countries like Indonesia and Pakistan have
| already elected female leaders. I see people say things
| like this, and yet many American women would still call
| it a patriarchy in every sense.
|
| >Children are a tradable commodity.
|
| ? That's kind of a huge accusation and I'm not sure what
| it means. That could also be describing surrogacy which
| is widely accepted in our society.
|
| >If you upset an elder, your life is over.
|
| This is true in a lot of places-- including the US
| senate-- and is often the result of power concentrating
| in the hands of those with the most tenure. While they
| may lean on this more in their culture, it's still not
| exactly unrecognizable behavior.
|
| >You're raised speaking German first, so that you can
| "learn your heritage"
|
| There are immigrants(and most European countries) that do
| that. It's hard to teach a second language once a child
| is speaking English with their peers. If you teach the
| non-english language first, it's easy for them to learn
| English as a second language in school where they'll pick
| it up naturally speaking with peers.
|
| > If you are sent off to college for whatever reason (my
| neighbor was a college educated Amish; he was the legal
| representative for the community) they treat you like an
| outsider.
|
| Sounds difficult. I won't deny there I'm sure there are
| peculiarities about their culture worth disagreeing with.
|
| >Imagine being in your 30's, with just an 8th grade
| education, and your entire community, family, and support
| system turns their back on you and yours.
|
| Doesn't this happen to trans youth all the time? Minus
| the education thing.
|
| >But they get a pass, because their beards and hats look
| funny.
|
| That's not why they're not discussed more often. It's
| because they mostly stick to themselves so people don't
| bother looking into their communities. This can happen
| with highly insular communities, it's not an excuse but
| it is what it is.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| How's their teenage girl depression stats?
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Given the rates of child sexual assault, probably not
| great.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some of this varies by the exact community and sect. But
| there are some good lessons in there too. Health-wise
| they are great, with some of the lowest costs, low
| chronic disease, and getting about double the recommended
| 10k steps per day.
|
| So we don't want to emulate them in every way, but we can
| take some lessons in certain areas.
|
| If you truly want resilient kids, that lifestyle will do
| it. Safety is another thing though. I saw a 1 year old
| just fall 3 feet off a playset and it only cried a
| little. The parents weren't very concerned. I guess when
| you have 6 kids, it's like you have "spares". Not that
| it's the right way to look at it, but ignoring balance of
| other concerns they will be tough.
| olau wrote:
| > The parents weren't very concerned. I guess when you
| have 6 kids, it's like you have "spares".
|
| As a parent of 4, having multiple children does tend to
| put things in perspective, but really what makes the
| biggest difference is probably that you can't physically
| helicopter all of them. So you have to give up that
| mindset. Not that you don't still need to keep an eye on
| them.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "So we don't want to emulate them in every way, but we
| can take some lessons in certain areas."
|
| Living tight as a community is probably what they are
| doing right, I "just" would use a different approach to
| power.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The western model is built on patriarchy, they just
| continually import people from patriarchies to supply
| western work forces. Without patriarchy the western model
| would collapse because westerners aren't interested in
| creating a non-patriarchal model of society which might
| reduce their standards of living and force them to expend
| labour on things like childrearing.
|
| It's an out of sight, out of mind patriarchy. The amish
| are so offensive partially because they genuinely are
| extreme, but also in part because they're self-sustaining
| so they can't hide and abstract away such cruelty. In any
| case, there's perhaps a middle path between the extremes
| of amish society and "Patriarchy for the poor" western
| society.
| dymk wrote:
| What's the term for a weeaboo but for the Amish?
| officeplant wrote:
| Protestants
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Mennonite with a cell phone:
|
| https://youtu.be/Pt_XU4W4DBA?t=858
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The ridiculous Amish model of being conservative with new
| technology and considering as a community if it has benefit
| to the society before introducing it?
|
| Inconceivable. If a new technology comes out, we need to
| adopt it in 0.1 seconds, or we'll be Stone Age caveman
| losers!
| oblio wrote:
| Are they just conservative though? Or paleoconservative?
| I.e. not 5-15 years behind current tech (okish), but more
| like a century (catastrophic)?
| warner25 wrote:
| That's exactly how we've positioned ourselves so far, for a
| variety of reasons that mostly reduce to not feeling like our
| values fit in well with American society at-large. It's not
| perfect, but I hope you're right and it helps with this
| issue.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| There is a reason homeschooling pods are in fashion with
| middle class and above right now.
|
| It's a growing trend.
| luckylion wrote:
| It may be a bit cynical, but the other option might be to make
| sure they're validated by social media, not depressed. Pay for
| photo shootings and makeup so they look larger than life and
| get lots of likes. Do that enough and they'll be the ones with
| the seemingly perfect lives, body and beauty that others get
| depressed by while liking their pictures, and thus sending them
| positive signals that will improve their self-esteem.
|
| Might trigger some narcissism issues, but that might be an
| acceptable trade-off. In the end, it's a game like private
| schools and universities. You're not the ones making the rules,
| but if you want your children to succeed, playing by the
| idiotic rules might be your safest bet.
| somethoughts wrote:
| One strategy that should help is to load them up on
| extracurriculars. Keep them busy with extra math tutoring
| (russian school of math, kumon, etc.) and physically active in
| a healthy way with enough sleep (swimming, track, soccer).
|
| That way there is not a lot of dwell time to be depressed about
| missing out on stuff.
|
| Also taking away privileges due to not passing grades, not
| keeping up with math tutoring, etc. is a great way to get them
| out of the social media loop.
|
| It gives them a highly plausible and relatable reason to not be
| active on these platforms (i.e. uggh, I "wish" I could have
| seen that instagram post but my parents are soo strict!).
|
| Having a big important swim meet or soccer game early Saturday
| morning is a great reason for not being at Friday's drinking
| party (i.e. I would have been too tired to go anyway).
| zabzonk wrote:
| this is satire, surely?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| andrewflnr wrote:
| So much for the "play based childhood", then. (And no, of
| course assigned sports don't count)
| oblio wrote:
| Is he wrong though? If the other kids aren't really
| playing, what's the point?
|
| Play for the sake of playing toxic social media social
| games?
| somethoughts wrote:
| I think free range parenting is great in theory and/or if
| you are writing a book on free range parenting and have
| dedicated your life to understanding how to do it properly.
|
| For the rest of us - particularly for dual income parents
| with teenagers who no longer really "play" - there are
| organized after school activities.
|
| Its really about odds. You won't get outlier results like
| Bill Gates or <insert other famous person> but on the flip
| side you won't get a teenager you have to bail out of jail
| or a teenager pranking people for Tiktok views. You'll get
| a decent young adult that can earn a decent living and live
| independently and confidently.
| jrumbut wrote:
| In another thread I mentioned the need for organized (in
| the sense of same place, same time) unstructured activity.
| Gather at the basketball court, if practice or a game break
| out that's good, if not that's OK.
|
| It seems like everyone wins in that scenario, it's healthy
| but playful and low stress while accommodating parents'
| need for scheduling.
|
| Is such a thing common? I don't hear about it much.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| This seems like a solid option. A fair bit of my
| childhood was like this, actually, and it was great for
| us. I don't hear about similar things much, but I bet we
| will eventually.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Agree, its unfortunate that most of the after school
| sports program start getting to be like prepping for
| professional/collegiate level sports once they reach high
| school.
|
| Middle school sports and junior varsity high school
| sports coupled with math tutoring is probably enough to
| keep them busy enough and out of trouble/off social
| media.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This effect is just as true for adults as for kids. I largely
| lost touch with the music scene I was involved in because I
| didn't want to do everything on Facebook, and now Instagram.
| whstl wrote:
| Same. And the worst part of Facebook is that it managed to
| make everything very toxic. Not that my local music scene was
| great, but there were several day-long fights in local music
| Facebook groups. All because of bullshit that wouldn't have
| happened otherwise.
|
| Instagram however had other problems. It's all about
| consumerism. When people started spending money on DSLR
| cameras to make stories about their expensive music
| equipment, that was too much for me.
|
| Glad I quit both.
| ericlewis wrote:
| I have witnessed the same with my wife, we only have one girl..
| the only thing I have imagined could work is keeping her busy
| and teaching her how to be attracted to decent communities that
| may not necessarily be who she goes to school with.
|
| edit: but I have literally no clue what I am going to do, I
| have like another 5 years or so.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| What do you mean you have witnessed the same? Do you mean a
| decline in mental health?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I had my 12 year old daughter read the article and after she
| argued a while I said: Ok, write up your rejoinder and I will
| post it and see what others think.
|
| For context we severely restrict access to social media in our
| house, but of course they find ways around this as expected (I
| don't pi-hole because I want them to learn to be hackers)
|
| -----------------------------------
|
| *Why I think it's reasonable for me to have social media :)*
|
| After reading the article, I still believe that I should be
| allowed to have social media for several reasons.
|
| First of all, the article stated that people using social media
| moderately (half an hour to one and a half hours a day) had
| little to no decline in their mental health, compared to a
| large mental health decline in those using it a lot (3-5+ hours
| a day), and with the limit on my phone, I would be using it
| minimally, especially because I use a lot of my phone time
| daily to listen to music (like 5 [REDACTED], which I am
| listening to right now) and to text my friends, so I would only
| use it for 20 or so minutes a day, which is very low.
|
| Another thing that the article mentioned is that people these
| days who do not have social media may feel excluded or left
| out, and may even miss things because they don't have social
| media, which can lead to a decline in their mental health as
| well. It was also mentioned that not every social media user's
| mental health is impacted, especially those who use it in
| moderation. Yet another point was that people will compare
| themselves to other people on there.
|
| In case you hadn't already noticed, I don't really do that. I
| do find people pretty, but I don't usually compare myself to
| them. Plus, most of them are significantly older than me, so I
| don't expect myself to look like them anyway.
|
| I believe that using social media could actually have greater
| benefits for me, such as being able to record Tiktok dances
| with my friends, or messaging people on Snapchat. I could also
| follow my friends and then help support whatever they do (for
| example, one of my friends has an account for [REDACTED]).
| Also, studies have shown that when people don't get to do
| something as a child/teenager isn't allowed to do or have
| something in moderation, they are more likely to do or have it
| in excess as an adult.
| petercooper wrote:
| That she was prepared to eloquently argue her case and
| demonstrate how much metacognition she has is a demonstration
| she'll probably be resilient to a lot of potentially negative
| influences in life. I'm less interested in the actual
| arguments than her thinking process and I would be impressed
| if my kids showed this level of self awareness.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Just wanted to chime in and say that my wife is due to give
| birth to our first child imminently, and if at 12 he can
| reason and communicate in this fashion, I will consider
| myself to have totally crushed it as a parent.
|
| Keep up the good work.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Yeah I was definitely not even half as articulate when I
| was 12.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >and with the limit on my phone, I would be using it
| minimally, especially because I use a lot of my phone time
| daily to listen to music (like 5 [REDACTED], which I am
| listening to right now) and to text my friends, so I would
| only use it for 20 or so minutes a day, which is very low.
|
| This is a recipe for frustrating yourself. Social media is
| very addictive. You're currently unhappy and you're _not_
| allowed to use it, imagine how much more unhappy you'll be
| after having only 20 minutes. You'll only want to use it more
| and more once you're allowed to use it. You'll be thinking
| about those 20 minutes and what you'll do all day, you'll get
| mad when the 20 minutes is up etc.
|
| >Another thing that the article mentioned is that people
| these days who do not have social media may feel excluded or
| left out,
|
| That's a much easier problem to treat than social media
| addiction. The amount of harm you can experience on social
| media is _unbounded_ , and also not readily anticipated. You
| don't really know how much it can harm you, and you are
| asking to allow it to harm you a little bit so that you can
| then later argue that amount didn't _significantly_ harm you
| so more access is fine.
|
| >In case you hadn't already noticed, I don't really do that.
| I do find people pretty, but I don't usually compare myself
| to them.
|
| Have you considered other people "didn't do that" too, and
| that social media changed them? What if it changes you too?
| Do you _want_ to end up like them? "It won't happen to me" is
| a really common trope when dealing with addictive things.
|
| >Also, studies have shown that when people don't get to do
| something as a child/teenager isn't allowed to do or have
| something in moderation, they are more likely to do or have
| it in excess as an adult.
|
| Perhaps, but have you considered that adults shouldn't be
| using these platforms either? It's not as simple as "when
| you're old enough, you can now jump off a cliff", maybe...
| don't jump off the cliff? It's a silly metaphor but still,
| the default position shouldn't be to use these things.
|
| >I believe that using social media could actually have
| greater benefits for me, such as being able to record Tiktok
| dances with my friends, or messaging people on Snapchat.
|
| There's billions of silly dance videos on tik tok, your life
| isn't any worse for you not making number 9,999,234,255.
| Snapchat is for old people (zoomer-boomers) now, so you're
| also not missing much there anyways.
|
| I'm with dad on this one, social media won't make you any
| happier and it's scientifically proven to make a lot of
| people less happy over time. If I could go back to a world
| where social media never happened I would choose that in a
| heart beat.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| >Perhaps, but have you considered that adults shouldn't be
| using these platforms either? It's not as simple as "when
| you're old enough, you can now jump off a cliff", maybe...
| don't jump off the cliff? It's a silly metaphor but still,
| the default position shouldn't be to use these things.
|
| I've noticed in my life when I was a teenager, I had this
| view of phases of myself. There was my current teenager
| self and then there was my future adult self. My view was
| that my adult self would be completely different than my
| teenaged self. I'd be an "Adult" with a capital A. Nothing
| can stop me then!
|
| Then I learned that I am still very similar as an adult to
| my teenaged self. The things my teenage self would get
| addicted to and obsess over, my adult self also has those
| qualities.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| I enjoyed thinking about this more than I thought I would.
|
| > First of all, the article stated that people using social
| media moderately (half an hour to one and a half hours a day)
| had little to no decline in their mental health, compared to
| a large mental health decline in those using it a lot (3-5+
| hours a day)
|
| This is an excellent, solid point.
|
| > Another thing that the article mentioned is that people
| these days who do not have social media may feel excluded or
| left out, and may even miss things because they don't have
| social media, which can lead to a decline in their mental
| health as well.
|
| Not convincing unless it can be demonstrated that the
| expected harm from being isolated from social media is
| greater than the expected harm caused by being exposed to
| social media.
|
| > Yet another point was that people will compare themselves
| to other people on there [...] I don't usually compare myself
| to them
|
| This is not well reasoned in my opinion: this is described as
| a consequence of social media usage. It hasn't been shown to
| be a preexisting personality trait that, combined with social
| media usage, _causes_ the mental health issues. That is, you
| may not compare yourself to others _precisely because_ you do
| not use social media regularly.
|
| All that said, however, the first point (moderate usage)
| combined with the last point (excessive usage later in life)
| is fairly persuasive for a strategy of allowing small doses
| of social media.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| >First of all, the article stated that people using social
| media moderately (half an hour to one and a half hours a
| day) had little to no decline in their mental
|
| I believe this is akin to "people who drink x% a day have
| no problems", it's _static_. What it totally ignores is
| that the addictive substance subtly changes behavior over
| time and x% of those people go on to become full blown
| addicts.
| qorrect wrote:
| > I believe this is akin to "people who drink x% a day
| have no problems", it's _static_. What it totally ignores
| is that the addictive substance subtly changes behavior
| over time and x% of those people go on to become full
| blown addicts.
|
| Great point, I had not heard that before.
| gsatic wrote:
| Asian parents wouldn't have this debate. Why?
|
| Any problem with a complexity level that has an answer - I
| don't know - gets to be thought about only after you have
| earned your black belt not before.
| qorrect wrote:
| Is black belt a metaphor ?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| That's a very well-argued response, congratulations. I will
| only take issue with the last sentence. I don't know the
| studies, but most of my friends from school who were smoking
| in moderation back then, ended up as heavy smokers as adults.
| Those who avoided it completely (partly due to stricter
| parenting) largely seem to stay smoking-free in later life.
| weberer wrote:
| To be fair, you're bringing in the element of physical
| addiction.
| abraae wrote:
| I love the way she saved her killer point for the end. She
| will go far.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Reverse it and write "Why I think it is reasonable for me to
| NOT have social media"
| somethoughts wrote:
| That's a pretty nice rebuttal!
|
| It would be interesting to have her comment on "Why Nerds are
| Unpopular - Paul Graham" [1]
|
| [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Gosh, your daughter is impressively eloquent and literate.
| I've come across rhetoric like that from a 12-year-old, but
| not very often. You should both be proud.
| austinl wrote:
| I once sat next to a dean of private school on a plane--she
| mentioned that the ~100 parents that sent their children to the
| school signed an agreement that they would restrict their
| children's access to social media until 9th grade.
|
| I have no idea how well it was adhered to or enforced, but it
| surprised me that the parents of the school and the dean were
| trying to collectively organize action around this issue to
| prevent the problems described above. I had never heard of that
| before.
| duxup wrote:
| It makes sense to me that they would do it at the school
| level.
|
| The pressure to use social media and etc will come from those
| around them. Being the one student not on social media would
| have it's own pressures I imagine.
| stuart78 wrote:
| At my kid's school the target is no phones until 8th grade.
| It seems many people adhere to the guidance, but that is only
| based on what we see casually, and we'll see how it looks
| over the next few years. Some 3rd/4th graders have smart
| watches which allow comms but not meaningful apps. Not sure
| it is a great compromise for my family, but interesting to
| see what results other folks find as we all navigate it.
| duxup wrote:
| My local Middle School sends out what feels like weekly (or
| more) emails about poor choices with phones at school,
| using them in the bathroom, etc.
|
| My kid doesn't have a phone. But we get inundated with
| these emails and new plans on what to do and so on.
|
| I wish they'd just confiscate them and only return them to
| the parents, or have some sort of phone not allowed without
| good reason (and revoke it if someone breaks the rules),
| but they seem averse to that kind of thing. The new rule is
| that they have to be powered off during school hours. I'm
| sure that will be complied well by the same students who
| already don't care.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I wish they'd just confiscate them and only return them
| to the parents, or have some sort of phone not allowed
| without good reason (and revoke it if someone breaks the
| rules), but they seem averse to that kind of thing.
|
| A _lot_ of parents will throw a fit if schools try to
| take them away or ban them, and, contrary to public
| perception in some circles, public schools really hate
| upsetting parents. It 's part of why private schools tend
| to have a lot more success enforcing phone-related rules
| or restrictions, since they can just tell a family to
| pound sand if they don't like it (they all have waiting
| lists anyway, if you're not some huge donor they don't
| need to give a shit what you think if it's not in-line
| with their approach and mission)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > At my kid's school the target is no phones until 8th
| grade.
|
| Public or private?
|
| I've got a lot of insight into local school districts in my
| area and a little into local private schools (good ones--
| not poor-quality evangelical schools for parents who don't
| want their kids taught about evolution, or something like
| that) and the public schools have all completely given up
| on policing phones and wouldn't dare suggest that parents
| ought not be giving their 3rd graders smartphones, while
| the private schools both police them more heavily and seem
| to serve way fewer families inclined to give preteens a
| smartphone to begin with.
|
| Feels like the beginning of an even-greater class divide in
| education, to me.
| stuart78 wrote:
| Public, but a very small separated section of a larger
| school district - only one grade school and one high
| school. So it is basically a public school that feels
| private. Having attended private school myself, I think
| the distinction you are making sounds about right.
| thorncorona wrote:
| It will increase with this 'equity' push in education as
| schools attempt to get rid of accelerated learning
| classes as well.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/california-math-
| curric...
| mcbuilder wrote:
| And at 9th grade it's a free for all? Looking back the high
| school years would have been the worst for my own self
| esteem, angst, etc. Glad none of it was recorded. :)
| xeromal wrote:
| Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
| hadlock wrote:
| 6th and 7th grade are pretty brutal developmental years.
| You get a lot more autonomy but also spend a lot of time
| grappling with who you are and what your identity is,
| particularly in monoculture suburbia.
| friendlyHornet wrote:
| Yup, I was the WORST when I was in 9th grade.
|
| I really don't envy my parents for having to deal with that
| version of me, and I did so much stuff I regret.
|
| My self-esteem back then was hair-thin; I use to obsess
| about EVERYTHING, from what I say, to how I talk, to how I
| smell, to how I walk, to the music I listen to, etc
| tempestn wrote:
| Any advice for parents of a kid going through a similar
| period?
| qorrect wrote:
| Thanks for obsessing about your smell though, I just
| stood in a room full of smelly people.
| Adraghast wrote:
| Agreed, but what's the alternative though? Just going full
| Amish on them until they're 18? 25? Look at all the Baby
| Boomers and older Gen X'ers that got on the Internet in the
| past ten years and instantly had their brains rotted
| despite decades of life experience. Should there be some
| kind of emotional intelligence test everyone has to pass to
| earn their internet license?
|
| This is why I think that taking steps to keep kids off
| social media is delaying the inevitable. Just as there's no
| safe age to start smoking, there's no truly safe age to
| start using social media as it currently exists. So either
| we accept the negative aspects of these platforms'
| existence, or we remediate them.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Agreed, and that other generations also struggle with
| social media is additional evidence that it should be
| shut down, or at _least_ heavily regulated (or regulated
| out of existence). There 's nothing inevitable about any
| of this: we don't have to let malicious companies like
| Meta or TikTok or whoever build products that hijack your
| emotions for profit.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| I also see a lot more older folks walking around outside
| not staring at their phones. So while having built up
| habits without phones isn't a cure all for later ills, I
| think it can help.
| bcrl wrote:
| Being a GenXer, my friends and I have regular contact
| outside of social media because we already had those
| habits ingrained in us before the current crop of social
| media platforms ever existed. I can't imagine being a
| teenager today having to deal with everyone in high
| school being on the same social media platforms and
| dealing with the pressure to fit in. We had cliques for
| good reason.
| tempestn wrote:
| Yeah, you've got to look at percentages here. Some
| boomers get sucked into the pit of social media, but far
| more teenagers do. More life experience (and brain
| development in the case of young people) won't always
| help, but it often will.
| smcin wrote:
| > Just going full Amish on them until they're 18? 25?
|
| Seriously false dichotomy. You understand that you can
| access FB/IG from a computer, right? You don't need a
| smartphone to do that. And if you have a smartphone, you
| can turn it off at night, or put it on the table.
|
| And you can use social media without taking and posting
| selfies. Or at least, doing so excessively.
|
| > Look at all the Baby Boomers and older Gen X'ers that
| got on the Internet in the past ten years and instantly
| had their brains rotted despite decades of life
| experience. Should there be some kind of emotional
| intelligence ...
|
| But that's only the highly visibly subset of them who
| don't resist social-validation, confirmation bias,
| mindlessly forwarding viral crap, slurs and gossip. The
| other X% that behave reasonably and refrain from 24/7
| ideological foodfights, we don't notice. Certainly, the
| big social media with quantified vote-counts, followers,
| shares, and in the absence of fact-checking, are
| incentivizing the death of civil discourse based on, uhh,
| facts.
|
| It's pretty obvious one of the main necessary habit is
| skepticism: inquiring for the precise source and
| attribution of claims, checking facts, scrutinizing your
| own susceptibility to want to believe a specific claim
| (or source) without objective proof. And by extension,
| picking the group of people you associate with online to
| be like that.
|
| Haidt also documents how socialization and playing among
| children [in the US] has stopped being face-to-face and
| moved online within that decade. This is something that
| can be reversed at ages 8, 12, 14 etc. Coordinated action
| by schools, classes and parent groups would be great.
|
| > there's no truly safe age to start using social media
| as it currently exists.
|
| *Only as it currently exists post-2016, not as it used to
| be pre-2012*, which is the exact point Haidt repeatedly
| hammers home. People didn't complain about MySpace,
| Friendster, et al: why? The culprits Haidt mentions in
| passing: making counts of likes, upvotes, followers
| visible (let alone prominently showing them like as if
| they're the defining thing), and the (artificial)
| pressure to constantly post (selfie image) content that
| juices them, and to compare to other people's. Also, (for
| adults) retweeting other people arguing. We (= US
| Congress) can easily mandate switch FB/IG back to a 2012
| interface. (Of course, they'd lose lots of advertisers
| and users, boo-hoo. Push the financial incentive to them
| to suggest solutions.)
|
| Consider also how widely US COPPA law [0] is flouted in
| allowing under-18s or under-13s to register a profile and
| self-certify a fake age over 13 or 18: imagine if that
| had to proven in person with ID, just like buying alcohol
| or tobacco, or driving, or buying a gun. But can anyone
| remember a criminal prosecution of either a parent, or a
| social network which knew or had reasonable knowledge
| that one of its users was under-13? Where is basic
| enforcement? COPPA doesn't appear to have criminal
| penalties. Why shouldn't COPPA have criminal penalties,
| on both the parent and the social-media company (gasp)?
| (in conjunction with mandating changes to remove the
| pressure for likes, upvotes, followers). Or, less
| drastically, social-media can monitor its individual
| users' use patterns and suggest them when that becomes
| unhealthy or excessive ("You've been looking at
| influencers for the last 4 hours. Time to do something
| else?"). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act
| officeplant wrote:
| I've found my blog posts as an angsty teen from 2000->2002
| thanks to LiveJournal still existing. They were definitely
| not worth being recorded, but it was a great wakeup call to
| the general idea that I was fairly mature back then.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Maybe, but middle school is often thought to be the worst.
| Kids are so young at that age but also smart enough to be
| exposed to all kinds of things.
| dilznoofus wrote:
| As undeveloped mentally as highschoolers are, they have
| years more development more than middleschoolers
|
| Middleschoolers are suddenly blasted with hormones, and
| are basically accelerating at breakneck speed. Everyone's
| body is changing wildly, you're thinking and feeling new
| things every day, and it's all a total mindfuck.
|
| By highschool, the hypernovelty has worn off. Yes,
| they're still developing and figuring things out, but
| it's not quite as much of the surreal existential body-
| horror that middleschool is.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| There's a slump in classroom performance and
| psychological well-being around 6th-8th consistently-
| observed enough that it's got one or more names in the
| fields of education and psychology ("middle school
| slump", "middle school malaise", "middle school plunge",
| et c.) Mention it to a teacher and they'll likely know
| what you're talking about.
| lumb63 wrote:
| I'm not a parent yet, but I worry the same thing. It's also
| bigger than parenting. I know a lot of folks in their mid-late
| 20s who suffer from self esteem problems due to social media.
| In addition to the overt and obvious depression, there is a
| constant "not-good-enough"-ness and sense of nihilism that
| comes with having the best of the best in hobbies, the most
| social, most active, etc., people shoved down your throat day
| after day.
| cassac wrote:
| Part of it is never letting them start early in the first
| place. Stay strong and don't give in. The old saying "If they
| were your real friends they wouldn't care..." is more true than
| it is cliche. Try to make them understand that.
| waboremo wrote:
| Or, instead of creating hyper rebellious kids who seek to go
| against your strong absolute rules - talk to them. Get them
| bored of social media. Explain what's really going on, what
| different forms of social media exist, how to talk to your
| friends directly in a safe way rather than go through the
| drudge of Instagram. What limits should exist when using any
| of these communication platforms. They'll understand.
|
| Often we want to protect our family through rigid rules, but
| all that does is make them want to pull away more.
| cassac wrote:
| Having absolute rules doesn't mean having rebellious kids.
| I have an absolute rule to look both ways before crossing
| the street and nobody had ever rebelled against that.
|
| But I 100% agree you do have to explain and you do have to
| eat your own dog food and try not to be too much of a
| hypocrite. They need to see you believe it yourself. And
| try not to lie with tall tales. I think every time a non
| life threatening absolute statement is proven false by
| experience they will lose trust.
|
| I read or heard once that if you always told your child to
| put a coat on before they have actually experienced the
| cold they naturally don't understand why they need it and
| will resist wearing one. But if you let them experience the
| cold and involve them in the thought process they will want
| to put a coat on. "Let's see how it feels outside? Oooo
| it's cold! What should we do?" Etc etc. I've tried to do
| that with most things (within reason and when applicable)
| and I think it gives them more confidence and
| understanding. Like the whole tell/show/include thing. The
| more experiences like this where you proved to be right the
| more they trust you even when the disagree.
| timst4 wrote:
| Middle School educator here. I can assure you that your
| daughters will not be alone when it comes to a moratorium on
| social media. However, the girls they may very well want to be
| friends with may be very much into social media and group
| chats. My advice is to be firm but also take steps to create
| social opportunities for your daughters. I have a 12yo and I
| host board game nights with amazing snack trays. I help her to
| play video games socially using air console.
|
| You have to play defense. These apps are deleterious to your
| daughters self worth. I've seen too many hospitalizations and
| suicides to believe otherwise. But you also have to play
| offense. They will need guidance on how to be social in a world
| coopted by manipulation and deceit. Parenting these days is
| challenging but it's possible to raise girls who thrive without
| phones.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Thanks a ton for this. As a father of a pre-teen daughter who
| begs for a smartphone every day, I've been anxious about how
| I'm going to deal with this situation. I'd only been thinking
| in terms of defence, and this article had me really worried.
| Planning for how to create the social opportunities is just
| as important. Defence and Offence. I really like it!
| [deleted]
| zweiasakura wrote:
| thank you for sharing this sobering but hopeful perspective
| [deleted]
| justinclift wrote:
| > using air console.
|
| This one, yeah?
|
| https://www.airconsole.com
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tylerscott wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this perspective. We have a 9yo and it's
| already the case some of her classmates have devices that are
| connected to social media. Very handy advice!
| mrpopo wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but the
| dismissal of other factors is insufficient:
|
| > Why did a measure of loneliness at school go up around the
| world only after 2012, as the global economy got better and
| better?
|
| The economy didn't get better for everyone, in fact inequality
| rose starkly; this might be a correlating factor.
|
| > It's not because of the 9/11 attacks, wars in the middle east,
| or school shootings. As Emile Durkheim showed long ago, people in
| Western societies don't kill themselves because of wars or
| collective threats
|
| OK, so let's dismiss societal violence because a 120-y.o. study
| says so. How about climate anxiety/eco-anxiety? Car-dependant
| suburban life? Ever-growing parental control?
|
| All these factors have been too easily dismissed.
| eastbound wrote:
| > people in Western societies don't kill themselves because of
| wars or collective threats
|
| The dozens of French _white_ teens who joined the war in Syria
| in 2015.
|
| The thousands of English teens who freely enrolled against
| Franco, the dictator who took over Spain in 1936, while they
| absolutely didn't have to, as it was not part of the
| conscription? And if, once there, they deserted, they were
| legible for the death penalty.
|
| While underage. Indeed, many examples of teens engaging into
| collective theoretical threats.
| cld8483 wrote:
| Just as some young men ride motorcycles at 200mph or free
| climb cliffs, others travel around the world to join wars
| that have nothing to do with their family or community. I
| would be very cautious about ascribing noble motives to
| reckless death-seaking behavior like this.
| watwut wrote:
| Raising sexual harassment and rape rates can be contributing
| factor too. The boys commit more of those last years.
| concordDance wrote:
| My understanding is that if you hold both the definition of
| rape and the ethnic origins of the boys constant rape has
| been going down for decades. Is this compatible with the
| evidence you've seen?
| fullstop wrote:
| > The economy didn't get better for everyone, in fact
| inequality rose starkly; this might be a correlating factor.
|
| One thing that I thought about this is that while unemployment
| might have been low, _both_ parents were more likely to be
| working.
| andix wrote:
| I would argue, that the economical situation is not very
| influential on kids and teenagers. Having friends and hanging
| out with them, is much more important. Kids don't need a lot.
| As long as they have food, clothes, a place to sleep and go to
| school, it should be okay-ish. They don't need to go to the
| cinema to have fun, they can just meet up in a park or play
| soccer/basketball to have a good time.
| culebron21 wrote:
| You're arguing with the discussion section in the bottom. But
| in the middle, there's analysis on researches that made a clear
| experiment. Researchers asked students to restrict the usage
| for several weeks, and they showed some effect, while the
| papers where restriction lasted only one week, showed no
| change. This is rather clear evidence of causation.
| hbrn wrote:
| > The economy didn't get better for everyone, in fact
| inequality rose starkly
|
| What is your source for this "fact"? There were no drastic
| changes in Gini coefficient in the USA.
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure suicide rate was also increasing in
| wealthy households.
|
| > How about climate anxiety/eco-anxiety?
|
| Do you really believe teenage girls have "climate anxiety"? Is
| there anything that indicates people suddenly became more aware
| of climate change in 2012? (the only spike Google Trends has is
| around 2007).
| Aunche wrote:
| It sounds like you're projecting your own beliefs onto teenage
| girls. Even if they cared about income inequality or climate
| change as much as you think they do, that's still the fault of
| social media. It's counterproductive to be overly worried about
| something that is outside your control, especially when it
| doesn't affect you yet. Everyone is going to suffer the effects
| aging and death, so it's a very logical worry. However, if
| social media is filled with reminders of sickness and death,
| which is causing you anxiety, then you should quit.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Schools should have Instagram Reality -classes pretty soon. Young
| kids really do compare themselves to the highlights of other
| people's lives.
|
| They don't really take in the fact that the fitspo model in the
| picture is sucking in their stomach, flexing like crazy and
| posing in a very specific way to get the photo. And in many cases
| looking good is literally their job, they can spend 16 hours a
| day to look a specific way and have sponsors and money to do it.
|
| Nor do they notice how that one influencer they are following
| just had one vacation to $fancy_location, but took thousands of
| photos in different clothes and keeps posting them all year round
| to give the impression of constant travel and luxury.
|
| (Social) Media literacy is more important now than it ever was in
| the past.
| DevKoala wrote:
| I wasn't aware that there is a media campaign to discredit this
| finding. Teen suicides exploded in growth YoY the moment
| smartphones became cheap enough around 2009.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Teen suicides rose slower than every other cohort and had a
| lower base. https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
| nerdponx wrote:
| The 15-24 range looks like it had the biggest increase
| compared to other cohorts in 2013-2017, and looks like it's
| in the top 3 overall from 2011-2020, at least from eyeballing
| this chart.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Remember the pro-cigarette media campaigning of the 90s and
| 00s?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No. Can you point to some history on this?
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| https://apnews.com/article/ce9e3e9c7595bae5034193112a75bb7e
| anoonmoose wrote:
| That's about a '97 settlement of a '91 lawsuit...don't
| see how it is relevant to a discussion of "90s and 00s"
| media.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Parent is drawing a parallel. We collectively agreed that
| the tobacco industry played a role in the consequences of
| tobacco addiction by marketing to minors.
|
| The parallel being drawn here is that social media
| platforms, being presented with the consequences of their
| products ie: teen mental health declines with use, are
| complicit in those consequences at some point in the
| value chain, either by marketing, product design,
| accessibility, etc. If the assumptions hold, then the
| conclusions are sound and valid.
|
| There's two ways to disagree with this. Either the
| assumptions are not valid, or the argument is not sound.
| api wrote:
| I've been calling social media companies "the tobacco
| companies of the mind" for quite a while.
|
| The effects are most obvious with teens but I see this stuff
| as bad all around. Social media algorithms have really driven
| today's insane political polarization, and there's lots of
| examples of adults having their brains sucked out by social
| media rabbit holes.
|
| Here's one pile of examples:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/
|
| It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that if you
| connect a bunch of people together and then _artificially
| prioritize content to maximize engagement_ , the result is
| unbelievably toxic.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists existed long
| before social media did.
| api wrote:
| That's not the point. Social media algorithms amplify
| every form of madness and toxicity, because it draws
| people in and gets their attention. Crazy sorts of
| conspiracy theories, radical ideologies, cults, memetic
| mental illness, you name it... the more toxic it is the
| more it drives engagement.
|
| This phenomenon isn't fundamentally new. Media has
| understood "if it bleeds it leads" for hundreds of years.
| What I think is new is how tight the optimization loop
| is, how personalized it is, and the way crowdsourcing the
| inputs leads to a firehose of content that isn't even
| attempting to be accurate or sane. It's a machine that
| automatically curates randomly sourced content for
| maximum inflammatory response and maximum addictiveness.
|
| Here's another pile of examples unrelated to conspiracy
| theories:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/
|
| This is what you get when you run the recommendation
| algorithm on random crowdsourced kids' content.
| [deleted]
| invisible wrote:
| I intuitively just believed this "explosion in growth", but it
| looks like the reality is that they upticked a little bit since
| 2009. The suicide rate (and attempts) are still lower than they
| were in the 90s[0].
|
| 0: https://www.childtrends.org/publications/teen-suicide-
| databa...
| dantheman wrote:
| It seems like 2009 was a minimum, but still better than 1995.
| https://www.childtrends.org/publications/teen-suicide-databa...
|
| So is it really related to smart phones? What was causing the
| decrease?
| concordDance wrote:
| Eh?
|
| That isn't an accurate picture you paint, at least in the UK:
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc2132/heatmap/datado...
|
| Teen suicides first peaked in 1998 at 6.1 per 100,000. The
| numbers are noisy but it looks like it declines to a lower
| level of 3-4 in the 2005-2013 period (with an all time low of
| 3.1 in 2010 but still low at 3.6 at 2012), then starts to
| increase again to the 4-5 range, before covid gives it a giant
| spike to 6.5.
|
| Teen suicides in the 90s were higher than the 21st century at
| between 5.0 and 6.1.
|
| Social media and cellphones, if they are a factor, aren't
| dominant enough to be distinguished from the noise.
| igel-hedgehog wrote:
| See Hans-Georg Moeller's response to Jonathan Haidt Re: Social
| Media and Suicide https://youtu.be/QNEep8lgoiY ;
| https://wiki.ralfbarkow.ch/view/social-media/view/social-med...
| igel-hedgehog wrote:
| MOELLER, Hans-Georg and D'AMBROSIO, Paul J., 2021. You and
| Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity. Columbia
| University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-19600-0: > At the heart of
| all these issues, from suicides and duels to obsession with
| family life or professional achievement, is the impossible
| demand for a person's inner psychology to become fully
| congruent with external social expectations. As with any
| other method of achieving identity, sincerity has as much
| potential to enrich as to oppress, especially when
| obsessively overidentifying with one's roles so that any
| other aspects or potentials of selfhood seem false or wrong,
| or even evil.
| igel-hedgehog wrote:
| MOELLER and D'AMBROSIO continue writing: Regime of
| Sincerity https://wiki.ralfbarkow.ch/view/regime-of-
| sincerity/view/fac... > As empirical research suggests,
| both the prevalence of female over male suicide and the
| prevalence of rural over urban suicide can be related to a
| continued regime of sincerity in a preindustrialized
| setting where women, given their subordinated status,
| suffer even more from role pressures than men.
| igel-hedgehog wrote:
| WU, Fei, 2009. Suicide and Justice: A Chinese
| Perspective. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-86911-6.
| culebron21 wrote:
| This made me think better of lurking at LinkedIn. The more I open
| it, the worse I feel about own achievements and skills. It keeps
| kindly reminding you that company X still hires but didn't reply
| to you; that friend Y got to that position that looks like what
| you dreamed of; or fellow Z got all those certificiations you
| have no time for.
| ddmma wrote:
| Maybe the algorithm that controls the newsfeeds are the cause.
| Social graph networks that were created by connecting billions of
| people was necessary human evolution but corporate management or
| dystopian government want to control the social parameters. So
| there u have it!
| murat124 wrote:
| You gotta feed yourself the likes. And there's no end to it.
| Like, it never gets full.
|
| It's like you're sending SYNs with the tweets and such, and need
| to be ACK'ed. As if just putting it out there for the sake of
| sharing was not enough. Though during Internet's early years with
| tons of personal sites and blogs, watching visitor counter as the
| owner of the site was like seeing all the ACKs. We were getting
| our kicks from watching that number go up. Now, social media's
| likes replaced that simple number with all bunch of numbers, and
| it is incredibly addictive. Internet is definitely connecting us
| people together, for better or worse, but it also amplifies some
| of our destructive emotions and urges. Interesting times.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| some of the comments from parents in this thread scare the shit
| out of me.
|
| apparently discipline society and father morality still reign
| supreme even in the postmodern era as long as you're a child :/
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I agree. Between this article on young women being failed and
| young men being failed in this following article.
| https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...
|
| I think its clear society is on the verge of failure. We've
| allowed radicals and a small minority to take control of
| culture, and break it for the vast of amount of normal people.
| We need to return to the first principles we know most
| societies are based on.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My son at age 20 refuses to own a smart phone or participate in
| social media for these reasons.
| bertil wrote:
| I'm surprised to see so little distinction between what causes
| this, to help with addressing the issues separately and
| proactively: the need to curate your personality (which
| university applications seem to have cornered for a while), body
| image (which fashion magazines have been leveraging for a while),
| or pseudo-social relations that break validation circles (which
| seems new, at least the apparent intimacy of it, unless you count
| some personality on TV and radio).
|
| I think there are approaches to handle each aspect, many of which
| are never recommended in debate about this, seemingly because
| people want single, absolute solution:
|
| * I have no idea if anyone I follow on Twitter, or here too, has
| perfect teeth, a thigh gap, or whatever is the latest unrealistic
| goal; teenagers could be asked to use text-only media or one
| without humans presented as attractive: Reddit has a rule about
| selfie for instance.
|
| * social media companies can choose to let you see more friends
| over people with large audiences; I remember that was a big
| debate at Instagram when I worked there (and a couple of
| brilliant people left because the decision went for a stickier
| audience, slowly slipping towards pros over friends). There's
| definitely an appetite to revert that decision.
| ThalesX wrote:
| My little sister just started high school and in less than a
| semester is unrecognizable. There is no more her in her day to
| day life, everything is curated to perfection. There are no more
| hobbies, no more interestes, no more curiosities, there is just
| "me".
|
| I was so confident in her ability to withstand the impact of
| social media, due to her education, but ultimately I was just
| shocked at how fast the change was.
|
| I now no longer believe the human brain is capable of
| withstanding its effects.
|
| I guess it's a brave new world.
| ceedan wrote:
| Damn that hurt to read. That's such a shame
| RangerScience wrote:
| You might check out a book called "Reviving Ophelia".
| bazmattaz wrote:
| > I now no longer believe the human brain is capable of
| withstanding its effects.
|
| 100% agree. I don't think any brain born after the social media
| age can resist getting hooked on it. For those of us born
| before the dawn of the internet maybe some of us don't get the
| appeal.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I have a 2 year old nephew. I'm curious if being born with a
| tablet in hand will adapt them better to this new world.
| Spivak wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about it too much. Every girl goes through
| that, they're called your formative years for a reason. The
| start of HS is basically a reset where you go from chasing
| whatever fancy catches your attention shamelessly-ish to
| consciously developing an identity filtered through the social
| pressures of wanting to fit in. It starts to wane around 17
| when we start feeling confident enough to be ourselves, but on
| purpose this time around. She'll be fine.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I like how people respond as if I haven't gone through high
| school, or am aware of the typical changes that are
| associated with that period, in boys and girls. I'm also not
| saying she's not going to be fine. I'm just shocked at the
| impact of social media on their experiences and have
| concluded that it's impossible to resist.
|
| They'll all fall in the bell curve so of course they'll be
| alright, but they'll be alright in a way different world than
| the one in which we were alright.
| [deleted]
| nvarsj wrote:
| Relax. Sounds like a typical HS girl trying to be cool and fit
| in. When she reaches university she will mellow out
| substantially.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I'm not, not relaxed. I've also been in high school and spent
| time with typical HS girls. I also have a very communicative
| relationship with my sister. It's typical for today, not the
| typical narration of old. Also have you seen university
| students today?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think it's important to remember that high school is a
| critical time where a lot of people shift focus to their friend
| groups and their own reputation therein. Social Media changes
| the terrain, but the game is not that different. I remember
| back to my own high school experience and how my range of
| activities narrowed dramatically and there was a lot more focus
| on who's dating whom and what the cool kids are up to.
|
| All of this is to say that most people outgrow this stage
| eventually. High school doesn't last forever.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I also remember my high school times, it was at the bridge
| between the analog and the digital and it's a completely
| different playing field. I understand where you are coming
| from, but I am very close to my sister and what they are
| experiencing does not compare to what traditional high school
| coming of age scenarios had.
|
| You mention who is dating whom and what the cool kids are up
| to. Imagine what the global reach and competition do to this
| particular interest.
| alar44 wrote:
| [dead]
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Of course it is! Existing in a constant evaluative state of mind
| is absolutely toxic to mental health. Think about it: would you
| enjoy your spouse grading you on every little thing you said? If
| they did, it would quickly discourage you from saying much at
| all.
|
| Most anyone who has quit social media can attest to the near-
| immediate benefit they get to their subjective well-being. And it
| persists even in spite of realizing they are missing out on some
| of the things social media does well. I REALLY hope we can
| eventually look back at this time and laugh at the incredibly
| high rate of addiction to what are worthless Internet Points.
| Everyone laughed at WoW junkies for staying up late to get epic
| loot, then turned around and did exactly that themselves, or
| worse!
|
| Social media persists because it fills a void in our increasingly
| atomized lives. And some people thrive on what is essentially a
| real-time status market. The real fix is we stop normalizing
| having lives so small they can be so easily filled with such
| worthless garbage like social media.
|
| Edit: really appreciate how Jon calls out how every damn
| journalist treats social media with such kiddie gloves because
| they are too scared to speak what is plainly evident: social
| media is toxic.
| sverona wrote:
| Here's a question I don't know the answer to. How does an already
| depressed and dysphoric trans person --- who doesn't know they're
| trans --- with unsupportive parents ever, ever find out what the
| cause of their depression is without a robust network of
| connection to people from elsewhere?
|
| Let's assume they live in a deeply rural area in which variant
| sexualities and genders are frowned upon. They are the only
| person who feels this way that they've ever met. Their parents
| restrict the media they watch for whatever reason and they assume
| they're broken.
|
| This is not a hypothetical. Coming out saved my life. I don't use
| social media because I have better ways to spend my time, but I'm
| wary of taking away the one light in a tunnel that this only-
| nominally-hypothetical person might have.
| Animats wrote:
| Most of them grow out of it.[1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/441784/the-controversial-
| re...
|
| [2] https://statsforgender.org/desistance/
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Ever seen that graph of left handedness over time?
| sverona wrote:
| When you look into _why_ they "grow out of it," it's usually
| because the world is so inhospitable to them that they cannot
| bear it. [0] The proportion that detrans because they
| realized they were wrong is estimated at 2.4%. [0]
|
| Also, previous studies that look into detransition have been
| methodologically wanting. [1]
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8213007/ [1]
| https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2021-80256-001.pdf
| andix wrote:
| Are there some parents here, who were able to convince their
| girls not to use social media? Was it a success?
|
| I think it's very well documented, that social media can be
| really bad for kids. It seems to be much worse than drinking,
| smoking or bad relationships.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't think social isolation of girls is reasonable knee jerk
| reaction to their issues.
| andix wrote:
| I don't know if that is even true. Maybe it's the better call
| to give the kids a pack of cigarettes and send them to the
| kids who smoke secretly behind the gym, who just laugh about
| the instagram princesses. Or are those kids also a thing of
| the past?
| watwut wrote:
| You know, social aspect of smoking was fairly usual reason
| to start smoking. Because, people are social animals. And
| like it or not, there was period when smoking meant making
| networking connections non-smokers did not had access to.
| The proposed solution has nothing in it for girls. It does
| not make their lives better. It is not helping them in any
| way, except proposing new gender based restrictions on
| them.
|
| Yes, you can go on buy your son new gaming console to play
| with friends while telling girls they are not allowed to
| use technology to talk to people. In a world where no
| social media means no way to organize in person encounters
| too. That is what the proposal amounts to.
| andix wrote:
| Girls can play video games too :)
| colinrand wrote:
| YMMV, but the thing that seems to work in my house (mid teen
| girl) is to actively be engaged with her social life and have the
| meta (not Meta) conversation about social media impact with her
| regularly. She will have to learn to deal with her reality and
| live with it on her own, but helping her have a set of tools to
| describe and analyze it is beneficial. Tools like being aware of
| how much time she spends on it, how other people are affected by
| it, how apps affect your behavior, etc. But it all starts with
| engaging as a parent with her on her level, not forcing her to be
| an adult with a fully formed executive function capacity.
| danbolt wrote:
| I think this hits the nail on the head. Or, it sounds like
| you're engaged to help give your child the self-advocacy they
| need to be responsible for their own life.
| swader999 wrote:
| I like your reply a lot. We turn the wifi off at bedtime too.
| Sleep needs to be sacred.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I have a daughter, I mostly agree. I like to remind people
| teenagers are not "little" adults, they lack full developed
| brains, and extremely susceptible to peer pressure.
|
| I restrict my kids social media very tightly, and make sure
| they have lots of real world activities and real world
| influences.
| Zetice wrote:
| Man, I hope you're ready for a bunch of lonely Christmases...
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I'll do whatever it takes for my kids, and I can accept the
| consequences. I can assure you I've thought about it.
| Zetice wrote:
| Seems like a needless sacrifice...
| kevwil wrote:
| Wow.
| BulgarianIdiot wrote:
| The article promises evidence, but it starts by repeating the
| premise half a dozen times, then offering correlations and loose
| theories. If there was evidence in there, I missed it. Maybe
| there was. But even if there was this was a badly formatted
| article.
|
| Why can't people succinctly describe their thesis and then have a
| nice outline for the fine details on the proof? Is this not
| something we learn at uni, or even high school?
| dadrian wrote:
| Every section ends with a summary of the research discussed,
| and the last section discards some alternative theories and
| ends with the thesis of the article.
|
| Why can't people read the article in question? Is this not
| something we learn at uni, or even high school?
| timerol wrote:
| It's a literature review, and no social science question is
| replicated 100% of the time. But here's the main question and
| answer:
|
| > 5. Question 3A: Do Experiments Using Random Assignment Show a
| Causal Effect of Social Media Use on Mental Health?
|
| > These experiments provide direct evidence that social media--
| particularly Instagram--is a cause, not just a correlate, of
| bad mental health, especially in teen girls and young women.
|
| As for the thesis, it is succinctly described in the title:
|
| > Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic
| in Teen Girls.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you go into the evidence sections, there are many links to
| articles with evidence there.
|
| The structure on this article is the standard academic one,
| adapted to a less formal style. The authors first succinctly
| describe their findings so you can know if you want to read the
| article at all. Then they fully describe their findings, like
| you seem to want, and only then they talk about the evidence
| and how it was gathered.
| hbrn wrote:
| Correlation _is_ evidence.
|
| You might be asking for a _proof_ , but proving causation for
| historical events is nearly impossible.
|
| Overwhelming amount of correlation is as good as it gets. For
| example if you can see the same trends in other regions where
| inflection point strongly correlates with social networks
| entering the market (i.e. being launched/unbanned/localized).
| politician wrote:
| Ask ChatGPT to summarize the article for you?
| [deleted]
| grunmble wrote:
| [flagged]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think he's trying to simplify it for a general audience, vs
| putting out an academic paper that might be discussed and
| nodded over, only to be misrepresented or over-simplified in
| health/science reporting and largely ignored.
|
| I don't fully agree with his argument and have said so before
| (briefly, I think it overlooks other major contextual factors
| like increasing international violence and political
| polarization that are less obvious but just as deadly).
| Nevertheless I think his argument is worth examining because
| mass networking is resulting in huge social changes but many of
| these seem to be making most of us less happy.
| xbar wrote:
| I am completely convinced that international violence does
| not now, nor has it ever, caused much depression in US-based
| 12-year-old girls. Further, I find the notion that it is was
| an increasing trend from 2010 to 2022 compared with 2001 to
| 2010 is maximally revisionist.
|
| Same for political polarization (sidebar: the notion that
| political polarization is an "other...factor" outside of
| social media seems poorly considered.)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You seem bent on having an argument. I think the post-9/11
| atmosphere of the US being at war and the polarization that
| semi-independently ramped up over the same period are both
| important background factors, which themselves were
| amplified by social media and network interconnectivity.
| Public discourse has become more violent and
| confrontational over that time vs 25 years ago, and I think
| there is some relationship between depression and the tone
| of public discourse.
| watwut wrote:
| There was no coup in 2001
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I wonder if online dating tends to lead to similar impacts to
| mental health for some groups of people as social media does to
| teen girls. Just like in Haidt's examples, it's impersonal,
| phone-based, leading to constant social comparison, feelings of
| rejection, ostracism and ghosting. I wouldn't be shocked if a few
| years from now research came out showing that it has similar
| effects to adults, but they're just better at withstanding it
| than teens.
|
| This is purely anecdotal with my group of friends, but we all can
| safely say that we feel mentally so much better when we're not on
| those apps, and yet the pull is always there when you want to
| expand your dating reach beyond your immediate circle and you
| hope that maybe this time around you'll get lucky and find the
| right partner. As a regular CBT practitioner I can detect many
| unhealthy conclusions that my mind makes any time I'm on these
| apps.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Anecdotal, but dating apps sure helped crush the self-esteem of
| my sister.
|
| She still gets on them occasionally, because there's no
| alternative now.
|
| Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar
| the way they used to.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Bars were always terrible for meeting people. Idk anyone
| having success there. If it did work, I don't think apps
| would have taken off
| rationalist wrote:
| Bars seem like a more expensive "pay to play" than apps in
| my opinion.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I don't think we need to go as far as to point fingers at
| MeToo for this. We have an entire generation of young adults
| who hit puberty after smartphones, social media and dating
| apps became standard. They might have never had to ask
| someone out in person, and going to a bar to meet someone
| would be the last place they think of.
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-
| partner-...
|
| To be fair I'm actually shocked by how high bars are on that
| chart, at least given my anecdotal experience.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > We have an entire generation of young adults who hit
| puberty after smartphones
|
| It's unfair to blame #metoo, but it isn't unfair to blame a
| modern version of PC that expresses itself as puritanism.
| This is the least sex-having generation of all time.
| They're afraid that saying the wrong thing to each other is
| genocide or rape, especially the wrong _sexual_ thing.
| quacked wrote:
| It's actually become more bimodal when it comes to
| approaching women, or at least this was accurate between
| 2013-2020: There are largely two groups of men--sexual
| outlaws and polite society. Sexual outlaws (star
| athletes, musicians, drug dealers, frat boys, etc.) are
| expected to behave outrageously and thus won't be overly
| chastised for making outrageous propositions, whereas an
| otherwise polite society member can be blasted for coming
| across as inappropriate in the wrong scenario. It doesn't
| necessarily line up with who's attractive and who's
| unattractive, either.
|
| It reminds me of the Solzhenitsyn quote about knives. If
| a criminal is caught with a knife he doesn't know any
| better, it's his tradition. But if you're caught with a
| knife, this is a serious crime, and you must be harshly
| punished.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Again, pure anecdata and possibly a lot of misatteibution,
| but 2017-ish seems to be some kind of inflection point.
|
| Even back in 2015 or so, it seemed that the overwhelming
| majority of people met IRL, whereas just a few years later
| everyone was meeting online.
|
| Might be a changing demographic thing (I was 22 in 2015,
| and 26 in 2019), but something definitely happened.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| The way they used to??? Jesus H. Christ were they approaching
| women at bars with their genitals outside their pants?
| Because that's what #MeToo was about.
|
| You can still ask to buy a stranger a drink. You're allowed
| start a conversation with someone you find attractive. But
| it's long odds. It's much better to do something with a
| group: join a choir, go to yoga class, take art or cooking
| classes, etc. It's a win-win too, because you won't meet
| someone right off, and while you're building that community
| you still get to sing/exercise/create/eat.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a
| bar the way they used to.
|
| Bars were not a good place to find dates decades ago either.
| That's more of a tired movie trope.
|
| The bigger issue is that people just don't seem to get out
| and _do_ things as much as they did in the time before we all
| had unlimited entertainment options at our fingertips from
| the comfort of home. As soon as you do break the cycle and
| start doing activities in the real world, you discover that
| there are a lot of interesting people just a few degrees
| outside of your friend groups and activities.
| alar44 wrote:
| [dead]
| uoaei wrote:
| Local meetups and hobbyist clubs of various sorts are full
| of interesting people _who are already interested in some
| of the same things that you are_. This brings down a huge
| barrier of getting to know someone: you 've broken the ice
| merely by having an interest in a certain subject.
|
| This is why people advocate to have hobbies (i.e., not-
| monetized ways to spend your time) outside of work, or at
| the very least a "third place" where you can meet new
| people in low-friction ways.
| itake wrote:
| Guys also just don't want to go to bars. Even in my 20s,
| "going out" always felt like a chore that I had to do to find
| a partner.
|
| Approaching girls in public has high social consequences.
| I've read enough reddit [0][1][2] or seen enough news
| articles about people banned from businesses because a guy
| was seen as creepy.
|
| Men need to learn what is ok and not ok when communicating
| with women. This is already an challenge because what is ok
| with one woman is not ok with another. Add in the shifting
| society view of what is appropriate turns it into an
| impossible task.
|
| It just seems safer to do nothing and wait for the girl to
| make the first move.
| berjin wrote:
| Creepy just means unattractive
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Approaching girls in public has high social consequences.
|
| My read on it is that, like cold calling and door-to-door
| sales, this is a skill. You can be naturally good at it,
| you can develop it, or you can be self-aware that you suck
| at it and do something else.
|
| As someone who has met all his partners in places other
| than bars/tinder and without any dramatic public approaches
| like what you're describing I would say that it's important
| to keep in mind that there are plenty of ways you will meet
| people. Obsessing over the ways that you _won 't_ meet
| people is counterproductive.
| renjimen wrote:
| It's a tough call. Tinder made me anxious and depressed but it
| was also more effective than my alternatives for meeting
| people. While being single didn't lead to such acute mental
| health issues it did fill me with a low level sense of
| depression. So I treated Tinder as a necessary short term pain
| to achieve longer term well being.
|
| My advice to those starting their dating app journey would be
| to time box your usage; give yourself at most a few months a
| year on the app. Uninstall in between those periods and let the
| dating pool recharge while you invest in yourself.
| z3t4 wrote:
| No wonder if you feel mentally better if you are not in need of
| those apps - eg. you already have a decent social life.
| [deleted]
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| I tried Tinder (and Hinge) as an average looking guy and found
| it to be dehumanizing. I rarely got matches, the matches I got
| usually didn't respond to my messages, and even when they did I
| could tell they weren't invested in the interaction. I've got a
| great job, a decent face, I work out, I've got friends, family,
| hobbies, and passions. I genuinely like myself; I'm satisfied
| with my life and my personal development. But I'm not in the
| top n% of attractiveness, so nobody cared.
|
| I know the solution is to focus on in-person dating and
| building genuine connections with people in the real world, but
| I've had no success with that either. I asked my friends if
| they knew anyone they could set me up with, but nobody did. My
| job and my hobbies are male dominated. Every activity in my
| area (a large US tech hub) that I've tried is male dominated
| except for yoga. Maybe things will change as I get older (I'm
| in my early twenties), but if things continue as they are now
| it will take a minor miracle for me to find a relationship
| before I die. I just feel so lost, I don't know what to do.
|
| Maybe this is oversharing, but I just wanted to get it out
| there. Thanks for reading.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Sounds like article is correct than.
| https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-
| yo...
| orangecat wrote:
| _Maybe things will change as I get older (I 'm in my early
| twenties)_
|
| It will. Men in their 20s are disadvantaged for the same
| reason that women in their 40s are: there's a lot more
| younger women dating older men than the reverse. The numbers
| will gradually shift in your favor over time.
|
| And yeah, Tinder is usually a bad deal for everyone except
| the most attractive men, and women who prefer hookups to
| relationships.
| corbulo wrote:
| Dating apps select for anti social behavior by default. How
| many women actually _need_ a dating app to find men?
|
| Women also have the advantage on these apps ('putting the pussy
| on a pedestal') whereas IRL its far closer to equal.
|
| Then once you do start getting matches the more formulaic it
| becomes and the more disenchanting and antiromantic it is until
| you've surpassed some high watermark among your sample size of
| interaction.
|
| It's not how we're meant to function. Of course it works for
| some, that's a statistical certainty. The worse the sorting (or
| the more egalitarian) is the worse the experience will be,
| which is why Tinder is more of a hookup app.
|
| The more 'serious' dating sites encounter the same initial
| problems despite better sorting. You're selecting for a certain
| kind of people who for whatever reason have low satisfaction in
| their personal social lives. Race to the bottom.
| dokem wrote:
| I think I have given up on dating apps for the most part. I
| live close to the red light district in my popular city and
| force myself to go out at least once a week by myself if I
| don't have anything else going on. Almost every time I will
| meet a nice girl or interesting person. It might not always be
| worth getting a number or hooking up but it's still fun and
| boosts self esteem and will also shows me that my worth is much
| higher than the apps would lead me to believe. On the apps men
| are sold at a steep bargain.
|
| I do think that people, particularly men, of my generation have
| completely lost the concept of going out to meet people and
| have an idea that it's apps or nothing. In many ways this gives
| the ones who are willing to step up IRL an advantage. I know
| women also hate the apps, even though they are bombarded with
| matches. Meeting someone face to face is always an advantage.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| You have to have money to go out. The younger generations are
| poorer than ever.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Tinder was definitely a contributor to my last bout of
| depression
| farmaway wrote:
| [flagged]
| uoaei wrote:
| Even just the use of the word "transsexual" in your comment
| demonstrates how little you know about this subject.
|
| Where do you shop for your opinions?
| paulpauper wrote:
| It's not just girls and teens. Fitness influencer culture
| promoted unrealistic expectations, body dysmorphia, etc. It's all
| bad. However, at the same time, social media is not the same as
| 'influencer culture'.
| andix wrote:
| Is HN also social media? My girlfriend always tell me to stop
| behaving like a teenage girl. Am I at great risk here?
| yotamoron wrote:
| 8 years ago, after realising how bad doom scrolling facebook made
| me feel, I deleted (not deactivated - deleted) the fb account.
|
| The mental relief was immediate.
|
| Facebook (and social media in general - including linkedin) is
| pure evil.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| I think it's worth considering that we've already had a
| generation or two that have grown up with social media being
| pretty much ubiquitous. I'm in my early 30s (male) and was on
| myspace by age 14. Has social media contributed negatively to my
| mental health over the years? Probably. It's not something I
| think anyone views without a modicum of anxiety, but I have no
| frame of reference to compare the alternative to.
|
| I wonder though, assuming this isn't new just because it's not
| something that was previously not measured: If there's been a
| more recent and drastic decline in mental health due to it in
| young girls due to social media, is it the general concept that's
| the problem, or the current implementation?
| gen220 wrote:
| Is the inevitable conclusion of this vein of research some public
| health program akin to the one that shackled big tobacco?
|
| The link between (early) smoking and cancer seems like it was
| about as difficult to measure as the link between (early) social
| media use and mental illness, but we have better tools for
| collecting and analyzing data in 2023.
|
| There's many gradations between what we have today ("Hey! How old
| are you? Under 13? Try again later") and requiring new accounts
| to be linked to a government ID attesting a certain age, but it
| does feel like the norm today might hem too close to reckless
| abandonment.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| moremetadata wrote:
| Social media is a psychological weapon that leaves no physical
| evidence which is why the state is making a big play on mental
| health.
|
| Its a control mechanism on the population because the state
| deliberately doesn't teach law and parents cant be relied upon,
| so social media can also be a way to psychological and
| biologically profile people before choosing to radicalise
| individuals, set them up for blackmail, or have them carryout a
| variety of Darwinism tasks, to help population levels or boost
| GDP through health care.
|
| Social Media is to the ego, as the Olympics is to the body, but
| parents are not sports coaches, managing the physical and mental
| aspects of failure.
|
| So do parents take the China route and limit gaming time to 3
| hours a week Fri, Sat, Sun and limit access to the FAANG
| companies?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China#:....
|
| Now enjoy your fortnite hot pics on youtube, some of you might
| find it xxx rated in all but name!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fortnite+hot+pi...
| oomemoryerror wrote:
| Have you ever read "The Chaos Machine" by Max Fisher?
| moremetadata wrote:
| No, but a precis on it suggests its the algorithms at fault,
| much like this Ted talk I have seen. https://www.ted.com/talk
| s/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...
| rglover wrote:
| > Social media is a psychological weapon that leaves no
| physical evidence which is why the state is making a big play
| on mental health.
|
| Bingo. The entire thing is a psyop designed to artificially
| limit and homogenize groups to make them more predictable and
| easier to control.
| moremetadata wrote:
| I think its an extension of the divide and conquer mentality
| that has existed since Roman times.
|
| Govts are always looking to control the population,
| especially the military, police and media but it starts in
| the classroom with not running in the corridors, being made
| to sit for extended periods of time which makes it a stress
| position in some military circles.
|
| Just look at the rivalry or disputes between different
| geographic regions like Europe or the Balkans, some disputes
| have gone of for so many generations that nobody knows what
| the original dispute is for.
|
| So when you say its a psyop, yes I would say social media is,
| but its been hijacked by everyone and anyone. Take the Angry
| Karen meme, https://www.reddit.com/r/AngryKaren/
|
| I heard this was a business interests invention to reduce the
| number of items women return for exchange or refund as they
| are the traditional shopper who do the returns. Look at how
| that has morphed on social media, its also a way to highlight
| female abuse to challenge the normal or traditional view of
| women in society.
|
| In my opinion, I think alot of women become psychotic once
| they have kids due to the demands on their body, as whilst
| there is some tacit recognition of post partum psychosis, I
| think alot of goes unrecognised by the medical experts, in
| much the same way the belief in religion is a lawful
| medically unrecognised form of delusional thinking.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| Im sorry but this is just absurd conspiracy psychobabble. Throw
| words and buzzphrases together as much as you like, there is
| still no coherent understanding or argument behind your post.
| "The government" (or the Illuminati, or the Jews, or ...)
| wanting XYZ from you because they are
| evil/malicious/warmongering/control freaks is just a trope.
|
| There is no reason why "the government" (who exactly?) needs a
| control mechanism in order to biologically profile and
| radicalise you. None of this babble passes Ockham's razor or
| basic reason.
| sva_ wrote:
| > have them carryout a variety of Darwinism tasks,
|
| What do you mean by that? And how is this currently achieved?
| moremetadata wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_challenges
|
| https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=dangerous+social+media+c.
| ..
|
| https://poisoncontrol.utah.edu/news/2022/12/dangerous-
| social...
|
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-social-media-pose-
| dan...
|
| Plenty more of these links.
| Aloha wrote:
| I have a generalized view of social media - Humanity has not yet
| evolved adequate social and cultural defenses for the ability for
| every Tom, Dick and Harry sitting on their sofa to reach an
| audience of millions in real time.
|
| One the rumor mill went from days or weeks to real time, once the
| ability to present a.. diorama of life to a large online audience
| became commonplace - it in my opinion breaks a bunch of cultural
| and social factors in human life.
| smm11 wrote:
| The sky is blue.
| magwa101 wrote:
| [dead]
| largepeepee wrote:
| "It also creates a trap--a collective action problem--for girls
| and for parents. Each girl might be worse off quitting Instagram
| even though all girls would be better off if everyone quit."
|
| I like this part, it is quite clear quitting social media alone
| is probably even worse and self-isolating than not taking part.
|
| The solution would be to address it on a societal level, but that
| requires pretty strong societal/political will to put such a
| policy in place.
|
| Such is the dilemma of the age, no doubt this is only one aspect,
| boys and even dating are affected on similar levels.
| IncRnd wrote:
| No. It's not "quite clear" that "quitting social media alone is
| probably even worse and self-isolating than not taking part."
|
| It's clear from my experience as a parent, and from the
| experience of many others, that that isn't an issue. The child
| may whine and throw a tantrum, but that's not a reason to let
| the child be the parent.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I took my phone away from my daughter for a few weeks because
| she violated her technology contract. She literally did not
| meet up with friends a single time outside of school during
| that time because it was all arranged on iMessage.
|
| I don't regret what I did, but it definitely was isolating.
| Granted this is not my most socially pro-active kid (the most
| socially pro-active kid used a friend's phone to sign up for
| social media and meet up with strangers).
| Spivak wrote:
| Was that your intent? You effectively grounded her.
| Actually worse because if she was grounded she could still
| talk to her friends. Trying to equate all "technology" and
| confiscate it like it's an extra nonessential thing like
| video games or toys is a mistake a lot of parents seem to
| be making in an environment where most social activity
| happens online and where everything is planned.
|
| It's fine I guess if that's what you wanted out of it but
| it's a pretty harsh punishment all things considered. I
| would have taken the grounding every time.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It was not our intent; she is not our oldest and we were
| surprised how unmotivated she was to plan outings with
| friends without using the phone compared to others.
|
| A phone is clearly a non-essential thing since she was
| able to function the first 13 years of her life without
| one. We have rules around proper phone use and there was
| a violation that was both significant, and a repeat
| offense, so the phone went away for an extended period of
| time.
|
| P.S. I don't know what kind of grounding you had, but I
| sure as hell wasn't allowed to talk with my friends when
| I was grounded (by the time I got a phone in my room, it
| was removed whenever I was grounded).
| TheGeminon wrote:
| If all of their friends are socializing mostly, or
| exclusively, on social media then it could definitely be
| worse. They could easily miss out on in-person social
| interactions that are planned on social media as well, or
| just feel out of the loop when interacting in person since
| their friend group is discussing something they shared online
| earlier.
| oomemoryerror wrote:
| Isn't this the prisoner's dilemma? Does that make us prisoners?
| RangerScience wrote:
| Huh. I think that's a really astute observation.
| warner25 wrote:
| So this is the part that I've focused on too, and I don't think
| it's _clear_ that it 's _worse,_ but it 's clear that there are
| no good options; we're left with trying to identify the least
| worst option across a number of dimensions.
|
| In college I chose to go to bed early and abstain from alcohol,
| which seems similar to this. It was definitely isolating. On
| the other hand, it ensured that my few friends were people who
| actually shared my (apparently strange) values. But I did it
| voluntarily. If someone's parents tried to _make_ them go to
| bed early and restrict them from drinking in college, that
| seems like it could lead to a lot of resentment.
| andix wrote:
| That would be an interesting study. If somebody is mentally ill
| and just quits social media, does the isolation really make it
| even worse, or is it still better than staying on social media.
|
| There are for sure still some kids that don't use social media.
| So those kids won't be completely alone with that decision.
| webscalist wrote:
| Deplatform Instagram.
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| And yet, this part is inconsistent with the part the headline
| comes from: they argue for causation because they asked
| individual random students to quit social media for 4 weeks,
| and saw an improvement of their mental health.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I kind of feel like social media is this generation's moral panic
| and we need to be careful how we react as parents.
|
| Setting overly strict rules is out of touch and old fashioned and
| the worst possible approach here. That's like what my parents'
| generation did - banning video games and DnD and rock music (I
| had my NiN CDs and DnD books confiscated from me and thrown in
| the trash in order to "save me"). It's a great way to break all
| trust with your kids and is lazy parenting.
|
| We need to be realistic - denying a teenage girl a phone and/or
| social media is akin to making them a social pariah. They will
| ignore your ridiculous rules and figure out ways to do things
| without you ever knowing.
|
| I feel the best approach is to aim for a strong relationship with
| your teenage child. Communication and trust are paramount. As a
| parent, you want to be in the loop on what's going on in their
| lives - so you can provide support and guidance, and be emotional
| support as they navigate this part of their lives. If your child
| is coming to you with their problems, then you have succeeded.
|
| This isn't new, it's just become more important. The influence of
| social media in a vacuum is very strong.
| kornhole wrote:
| I assume the author is referring to the corporate social media
| full of advertising that makes people feel inferior so they buy
| what their selling to fill the hole in their sole that they
| created. There are very different kinds of social media that do
| not have advertising and dark patterns that do this to people of
| all ages. How can we encourage children to use these other than
| setting up firewalls that block them from the former?
| ragetronic wrote:
| [flagged]
| wormloaf wrote:
| [dead]
| jsonne wrote:
| Anecdotally I removed all social media from my phone recently and
| I only am using Twitter for work on desktop. My mood has improved
| dramatically and my focus is improving. Towards the end I found
| myself getting angry at posts that showed curated idyllic lives
| and realized that it's all really a facade.
|
| To that end the last post I saw on Tiktok before deleting it
| basically said that social media is so insidious because it is
| both the sickness and the cure. You feel bad and then you feel
| better ad nauseum and that rang very true for me.
| elliottkember wrote:
| I once read a phrase that was something like "smoking cures the
| anxiety it causes" and I think it's a similar concept
| oomemoryerror wrote:
| Anecdotally, I think using social media requires a sense of
| emotional intelligence in order to not be adversely affected.
| You have to be cognizant that the highlights of other people's
| lives aren't comparable to your own life. Otherwise, you go
| down the spiral of thinking that your life is so much worse
| than others'.
| floren wrote:
| > social media is so insidious because it is both the sickness
| and the cure. You feel bad and then you feel better ad nauseum
|
| Go to an AA or NA meeting and you can hear the same stories.
| jvolkman wrote:
| Does that include Hacker News?
| jsonne wrote:
| HN falls under _work_ for me (in the sense that I learn
| things, I have a company that employs engineers so there 's a
| networking element etc) but point taken. I guess I don't
| think about it as much because it's significantly less
| problematic than say Instagram and at least I learn things
| here.
|
| Notably I did cut out reddit which imho is the most toxic
| social network I was a part of.
| jvolkman wrote:
| Got it. Wasn't trying to call you out; just curious. I've
| read the "removing social media has made me much happier"
| claim so many times but haven't been able to do it yet. But
| I think I'm close.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and
| anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are
| smaller.
|
| Bullshit. These numbers are self reported and show exactly the
| opposite of reality. Boys aged 15-24 are about _four times_ [0]
| more likely than girls to die by their own hands, so clearly
| relying on self reported cases of mental illness is not very
| helpful and is likely to shift focus away from those groups who
| most need help.
|
| Everyone who asks for help should receive it, but don't forget to
| keep an eye on those who stay silent.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187496/death-rate-
| from-s...
| baron816 wrote:
| Yes, we need to help both boys and girls. They have different
| needs and need to be approached in different ways.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| [flagged]
| Zetice wrote:
| [flagged]
| colpabar wrote:
| This is such a ridiculously offensive argument to make.
| You're saying that every living male who is depressed is
| depressed because he's an incel waiting for his perfect
| tradwife?
| Zetice wrote:
| [flagged]
| afavour wrote:
| > The world is so dysfunctional with radicals trying to drag
| your children into their agendas
|
| This was always the case but it was incredibly difficult for
| those people to reach your kids. Arguably an equivalent of
| this is dragging children into "capitalistic" agendas via
| advertising on kids TV, that's certainly not new.
|
| Maybe an unpopular view but I think a lot of the blame lies
| with the tech giant. It's well documented that YouTube pushes
| you towards more and more "engaging" (and not so
| coincidentally extreme) content over time. Same with TikTok
| and all the others. In the ideal world we'd be removing
| "engagement" as a goal anywhere but good luck sealing that
| Pandora's box back up again.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > These numbers are self reported...
|
| But aren't the data for both girls _and_ boys self-reported in
| the cited CDC study? In which case, if the data for boys is
| unrepresentative relative to that of girls, then there is
| either systematic underreporting or a gender-based
| methodological flaw in ascertainment. Either is possible but
| I'm not sure how one would glean that from what was published.
|
| I didn't read the methodology carefully but the ascertainment
| almost certainly did not involve asking (non-silent) people
| with distress to identify themselves; but rather to take a
| representative sample and assess the rates of mental distress
| within that population. So the point about being aware of
| silent suffering is entirely valid but I'm not sure that it
| explains the delta between observed rates of emotional distress
| in boys and girls.
| afavour wrote:
| I'm not writing off what you're saying (I agree that young men
| are suffering and less likely to admit as much) but you are
| equating mental illness and suicide. I think it's important to
| note that it is possible to be depressed and anxious without
| being suicidal.
|
| It's quite possible that young men _are_ less likely to be
| depressed but that those who are depressed are more likely to
| turn to suicide. If that were the case it would be a very
| important distinction to make.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| One way to think about it is that we can't reliably measure
| mental health conditions. So, we can't objectively quantify
| how many boys or girls are depressed, we can only rely on
| self-reports. However, we can see the extreme consequence -
| suicide, and that is an objective measure. If the one
| objective measure we have indicates boys are suffering much
| worse, then that's reason to suspect that our subjective
| measure (self-reporting) may not be giving us an accurate
| reading.
| afavour wrote:
| Reason to suspect, perhaps. Reason to call bullshit... IMO,
| no. There are way too many alternative factors to jump to a
| conclusion.
| ljm wrote:
| I'm going to say this as someone who's attempted suicide
| more than once and failed.
|
| How can you rely on self-reporting? Self-reporting requires
| awareness and it can't be assumed that people are aware of
| their affliction; it also requires that the doctor takes it
| seriously.
|
| You know how many people commit suicide, but unless you
| leave a detailed note behind your reasons are completely
| unknown and all that is left is a medical history which in
| itself may not be reliable or complete.
|
| This is where the pain of dealing with a suicidal loved-one
| kicks in: you don't know what they were thinking. You can
| only fill in the gaps: they were happy all of a sudden,
| etc.
| _0ffh wrote:
| I agree which the general sentiment. If we want to
| determine how much worse things got in recent years,
| though, we would need to compare those numbers to what they
| were a few years ago. I understand that boys were always
| more likely to die by their own hand than girls, but I'm
| not sure by how much.
| akiselev wrote:
| The author discussed suicide in his previous article [1], also
| discussed here on HN [2]. Boys succeed more often than girls
| due to choice of method but hospitalizations for self harm in
| general are far more prevalent among girls. See section four
| and five as well as his collaborative doc.
|
| [1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-
| illness...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707734
| serverholic wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe you. In my experience men are
| socialized to downplay mental illness whereas women are the
| opposite, they wear their illnesses on their sleeve.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| You are comparing two different metrics: depression and anxiety
| _per se_ on the one hand, and successful suicide attempts on
| the other. It can be true both that rates of depression are
| higher in girls than in boys and that rates of suicide are
| higher in boys and in girls.
|
| Furthermore, while in that age group boys are more than 4 times
| as likely than girls to take their own lives as of now, the
| question is whether that proportion was the same before the
| advent of social media. For instance, maybe at that time boys
| were 10 times more likely to do it, which may support the
| hypothesis that social media is to blame--or maybe they were
| only twice likely, which would be evidence against it.
|
| Finally, while depression and anxiety may be increasing in both
| boys and girls, I understand that Haidt is pointing out that
| these disorders are increasing _faster_ in girls than boys.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| There is a huge social stigma for boys and men to admit
| negative feelings- even to themselves. This leads to the
| widespread assumption or observation that most mental health
| issues predominately affect only women. In reality, denying and
| suppressing the issue makes it much worse, and prevents people
| from taking actions that might help.
| js2 wrote:
| Boys 15-24 committing suicide at 4x the rate of girls is not
| something that has changed much since at least 1975. If
| anything, the disparity was even greater between 1985-2000:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm
|
| Meanwhile, the premise of this piece is that social media has
| increased mental illness for teen girls. Yes, that's self-
| reported, but it's always been self-reported (and can only be
| self-reported), so that's not a factor which has changed for
| boys or girls. So why are girls, but not boys, reporting more
| mental illness and at greater rates than boys now than they
| have in the past. That's what this piece is trying to figure
| out.
| lsy wrote:
| I think it's somewhat important to ask _why_ this effect is more
| observable for girls than for boys, and Haidt does not seem to
| really reflect on that. Social media in and of itself is really
| just an accelerant for the particular set of social expectations
| we stack on girls and women around appearance and how that
| relates to self-worth. Boys have more capacity to transcend
| social media 's focus on image and beauty by finding other ways
| to be valued as human beings. What does it say about our society
| that we are not equipping girls and women in the same way?
|
| I'm a little confused about Haidt's pearl-clutching in this
| instance, when he has elsewhere argued against "coddling" and
| bugaboos like "intersectionality" and "identity politics". While
| there is certainly much to criticize in these areas, you would
| think one solution to this issue would be to advance a society in
| which women are valued equally to men. Reading between the lines
| of his body of work, it appears Haidt wants to return to a type
| of mid-century traditionalism, where children and young people
| are both protected and challenged by traditional adult authority
| figures (who are conveniently mostly people like him and his
| collaborators). I'm not so sure that's the direction we should be
| going in, but heavy-handedly cutting off the exploration at
| "social media as cause" certainly precludes any further analysis
| of an underlying dynamic.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| First paragraph: I agree
|
| Second no, just because Haidt is not advocating in his bodies
| of work for feminism doesn't mean he is against a more equal
| society.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > While there is certainly much to criticize in these areas,
| you would think one solution to this issue would be to advance
| a society in which women are valued equally to men.
|
| Women are valued moreso than men. Men are 10x more likely to
| die at work, have little to no access to domestic violence
| shelters, and if war comes, the only people who will be
| conscripted to potentially die will be men.
| caput770 wrote:
| I think part of it is that for every teenage girl spending 5
| hours a day on social media, there's a teenage boy spending 5
| hours a day playing video games, often with other teenage boys.
| I'd guess that video games are a more positive way to
| socialize, because teenagers are cooperating and competing
| rather than comparing themselves to others on social media.
| josephg wrote:
| Yep. People seem to forget the pearl clutching in the 90s
| over boys playing violent video games.
|
| If the media was to be believed, video games were inevitably
| going to raise a generation of men ready to shoot up schools
| at the slightest provocation. Lots of research later, we
| started finding the men who grew up playing multiplayer video
| games were more strategic and often made better leaders. The
| fact that overwatch has guns doesn't actually matter much in
| practice. However, the experience of getting a bunch of
| random people to cooperate is a lifelong skill that carries
| over into lots of other areas of life.
|
| Most of what I learned about working in teams, I learned from
| playing world of Warcraft in my early 20s. If you can run a
| successful raid every week with 40 strangers, working with a
| team in an office is easy.
| beecafe wrote:
| No, we have a generation of men who love shooting up
| schools and each other.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| uhhhhh I don't think the video games are the reason but
| boys shooting up schools did turn out to be a big problem
| you know. So, idk, they were probably worried about the
| wrong thing but it seems they were right to be worried
| about that outcome.
| [deleted]
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| >I think it's somewhat important to ask why this effect is more
| observable for girls than for boys
|
| Interestingly, according to modern society, girls could avoid
| this effect by simply choosing to identify as boys, thus making
| them 'really boys' and no longer affected as harshly by the
| psychological effects of social media
| eastbound wrote:
| > Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on
| image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human
| beings.
|
| Before absconding boys from harm, maybe we should check twice
| on their health. They are often forgotten or their difficulties
| brushed off in studies. How are addictions progressing? Obesity
| maybe? Why are they all on 9Gag? Let's check their level of
| racism and misogyny, it might be a proxy for self-esteem. Have
| right-wing groups gotten more expressive recently? Are we
| taking proper care of the boys?
|
| Can we ensure, if we measure something where girls are
| particularly exposed, that we also measure an area where boys
| are particularly exposed, before assuming boys are exempt from
| harm.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| >misogyny, it might be a proxy for self-esteem
|
| Seems to me misandry would be a better proxy for self-esteem.
| I do know men who are very much misandrist. I'm not just
| talking about them "going woke" I'm talking about kids whose
| fathers abandoned them or whatever and they feel a lot of
| resentment when they look around and see this is a common
| story. As men collectively become more productive, more
| empathetic, less toxic, and all this stuff I only hear more
| and more people pleading that we ratchet up scrutiny of men
| to the point Gilette think's it's a good idea to run an ad
| directed by women about how men need to do better and do this
| and that wrong and just need to get their shit together [1].
|
| Similarly, I would say that self-hating racism is a better
| proxy for self-esteem than racism in general. In fact this
| shit is out of control in Incel communities to the point they
| have terms like "currycels", "ricecels", etc. You know why
| they feel this way? Is it because they themselves are racist
| towards towards others? No it's generally because they look
| at dating site stats and see how women are racist towards
| them (in a highly specific context) and internalise the
| racism of others and hate themselves. Oddly I don't think
| I've EVER heard somebody suggest that women should be less
| racist towards men to improve men's self-esteem, even though
| I've seen such racism CRUSH men's self-esteem over and over.
|
| I don't know I see the idea that the key towards self-esteem
| is holding people other than yourself in high esteem and
| think they're totally absurd on its face. If an Indian Man or
| Black Man or White Man or Asian Man doesn't like people like
| themselves, if they don't look up to proud Malcolm X like
| role models, their self-esteem is always going to be shit.
| Men are generally portrayed as either oppressor or oppressed,
| either way they have cause to feel bad about themselves.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I think this might be whataboutism. It's clear to me the
| original poster was speaking exclusively on the social media
| aspect and the fact that social media does not have a similar
| causal effect of mental illness specifically on boys, and so
| I don't know how addiction/obesity/etc contribute here. I
| agree there may be other effects on men, but it seems very
| clear here that the original poster was talking about social
| media specifically.
| Nadya wrote:
| The answer of why is quite obvious to many people but no
| longer politically acceptable.
|
| There is a large external pressure for studies to show that
| there are no differences between men and women while there
| is also demand for studies that show negative outcomes of
| women in comparison to men. The same problem happens again
| and again with these studies in that nothing explains the
| negative outcomes of women. Except one explanation that is
| instantly discarded for being socially untenable.
|
| The intersectionalist looks at the studies and declares,
| "It must be something - let's keep looking!" while the
| sexist takes a look and nods.
|
| Nobody is going to risk their careers or their funding when
| they can continue being paid to investigate other avenues
| of explanation. The suffering of people will continue until
| a more acceptable explanation is found.
|
| And because I don't wish to speak between the lines: There
| are psychological and emotional differences between men and
| women. And, from all the humans I've known at least, women
| tend to give more of a shit about the opinions of other
| people than men give a shit about the opinions of other
| people. While the toxic negativity of social media impacts
| both genders I would honestly be shocked if it didn't
| impact women more if for no reason other than because they
| _care_ more.
| eastbound wrote:
| We should not accept topics which de facto exclude men.
| Zetice wrote:
| Huh? The article is about how social media impacts the
| mental health of girls. They didn't study boys, why would
| we talk about boys without any data on them in the
| source?
|
| It's overly inclusive to insist on talking about
| everything all the time, lest we leave someone out...
| We'll talk about the men, lots of people are talking
| about the men, but let's take a second to talk about how
| women are feeling, okay?
| nsfmc wrote:
| an earlier newsletter shows this distressing graph of teen
| suicides and, shocker, boys are doing terribly, a suicide
| rate at least three times more than girls, but the author
| seems to find the 34% delta less distressing. the data is
| unsettling, but the author doesn't remotely confront the
| question about why 2017 is a post-2010 maxima for both boys
| and girls. (which would probably change the boys delta to at
| least 60 percent and possibly undermine the premise that
| social media exclusively harms young women)
|
| https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/i/101249738/increases-
| in-...
| Zetice wrote:
| Boys are for sure not exempt from harm, but the harm seems to
| be as a result of equity: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-
| briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...
|
| > "Today in America, women expect more from men," Levant
| said, "and unfortunately, so many men don't have more to
| give."
|
| Powerful stuff.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Quote in more context:
|
| > Women are tiring of their stereotypical role as full-time
| therapist for emotionally distant men. They want a partner
| who is emotionally open and empathetic, the opposite of the
| age-old masculine ideal.
|
| > "Today in America, women expect more from men," Levant
| said, "and unfortunately, so many men don't have more to
| give."
|
| I think it's pretty clear that the harm isn't caused by
| equity, but that the equity exposes the harm caused by
| other things.
| Zetice wrote:
| Yeah fair, I obviously don't think equity is a bad thing,
| I just think a lot of men were taught to rely on inequity
| and now that it's being reduced, those men aren't
| adapting.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| A bit disappointing seeing the implicit bias in that
| article. The thrust seems to basically be "women are fine,
| men are failing and need to do better". Some choice quotes:
|
| > Women are tiring of their stereotypical role as full-time
| therapist for emotionally distant men
|
| > "Today in America, women expect more from men," Levant
| said, "and unfortunately, so many men don't have more to
| give."
|
| > The same emotional deficits that hurt men in the dating
| pool also hamper them in forming meaningful friendships.
|
| At first glance the article is even-handed, but reading
| closely you notice that not a single trait of women is
| described using negative terms, but men are described as
| needing women to be their therapists, as "not having more
| to give" women, and as having "emotional deficits."
|
| This is basically an inversion of the ancient trope that
| women are defective men, and just as harmful.
| Zetice wrote:
| Of course it's on the men to adjust, and that's what we
| see in _most_ men overall. The ones who struggle to find
| relationships are the men who aren 't adjusting. We
| should figure out why they're not adjusting, not ask the
| women to give back some of their hard-earned freedoms
| because some men can't handle it.
|
| The inversion would be if the claim was that a trait of
| men is causing this maladjustment, but the claim is
| instead that men are misprioritizing an equal
| relationship with a woman in favor of career and unequal
| relationships that they're now struggling to find.
|
| Also I dunno if you missed this quote, but it's _firmly_
| discussion actions women are taking that impact these
| single men:
|
| > Heterosexual women are getting more choosy. Women
| "don't want to marry down," to form a long-term
| relationship to a man with less education and earnings
| than herself, said Ronald Levant, professor emeritus of
| psychology at the University of Akron and author of
| several books on masculinity.
|
| The article also ended on a hopeful note, giving an
| example of a group of men who _do_ prioritize
| relationships, with their Man of the Year trophy, saying
| literally:
|
| > "We treat friendship as a luxury, especially men,"
| Ritter said. "It's a necessity."
| [deleted]
| belorn wrote:
| It is a very interesting aspect of all this kind of discussion
| that when any problem exist for girls and women, the problem is
| described as being caused by an external force. When ever a
| problem exist for boys and men, the problem is described as an
| internal force within the boys and men themselves. As long I
| have seen those topics on HN it never fails to display this
| cultural view about men and women.
|
| Men not graduating as much as women, must be mens fault for not
| studying enough. Women not earning the same as men, must be
| mens fault. Boys being isolated and depressed, must their video
| gameing and porn habits. Girls getting mental illness from
| social media, must be social expectations we stack on girls and
| women. Men getting worse outcomes in hospitals? Must be their
| behavior. Women getting worse outcomes in hospitals? Must be
| bias by doctors against women. Why are there more men in
| prisons? Must be testosterone. Why more women at home taking
| care of children? Must be cultural.
|
| Any observable difference between men and women, can be
| describe as either being caused by external factors like social
| expectations or internal factors like behavior and hormones.
| Whenever I see researchers doing a comprehensive and deep study
| to explain why something is observed more in one gender than
| the other the usual answer is a tiny bit of biology and a huge
| (dominating) dose of culture. Such answer generally does not
| change base on gender, so if we are asking _why_ social media
| is causing mental illness more in girls and boys, the answer is
| likely a tiny bit of biology and a huge dose of culture.
| xwdv wrote:
| We _know_ why. But few authors are going to come out and talk
| about that. They do not want to be perceived in the wrong way.
| It should be very obvious to anyone who has spent some time on
| social media and has thought critically about the topic.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on
| image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human
| beings.
|
| If we assume that there's really zero genetic involvement, and
| it's all just environment: If you treat girls like boys (have
| to achieve something to be valued, no inherent value), you'll
| get tougher girls and fewer issues with social media. But
| you'll also get more girls killing themselves and being violent
| towards others when they fail to achieve things that get them
| recognition.
|
| Not sure if that's a huge improvement.
|
| > What does it say about our society that we are not equipping
| girls and women in the same way?
|
| The issue is with girls using social media, not with society
| somehow favoring boys and giving them all the great tools and
| what not. Boys are insulting each other in a shooter games or
| trolling people while girls are on social media. If one group
| hikes through a forest and another swims through a river and
| some of the latter drown, it's not the better equipment the
| hikers were given that kept them from drowning.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys
|
| I agree that's an interesting question. I think it's that girls
| are (conditioned to be?) more sociable than boys. After a
| divorce, many more men find themselves friendless than women,
| because the mens' social networks were really their wives.
|
| The stereotype that women gossip isn't wrong; women chatting
| about nonsense is simply maintaining social networks. Men
| maintain social connnections through team sports and work. I
| don't happen to believe it's "conditioned" - I think women are
| different from men, and behave differently. On the whole. (And
| for "women", read "girls and women")
|
| So if women communicate verbally more than men, it's not
| surprising that women make greater use of social media.
|
| The body-image thing obviously isn't about verbal
| communication, and I think it's a distinct phenomenon. I see a
| lot of young women in the street, with lots of exposed skin
| despite the wintery conditions; and with orange make-up applied
| with a trowel (they're always staring down at their fondle-
| slab). I don't know why young women want to look tacky, like a
| porn actress.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys
|
| I'll take a stab at it:
|
| 1. During most of homo sapiens evolution as hunter gatherers,
| women were more likely to congregate in centralized groups
| while men hunted in small groups. It is documented that gossip
| is an integral activity among the women of a tribe moreso than
| their male counterparts. Without the inhibitions produced by
| in-person interaction, women gossiping on social media are more
| likely to produce negative interactions than their male
| counterparts who have a much lessened propensity to gossip.
|
| 2. From an evolutionary standpoint, a woman's reproductive
| fertility is closely associated with their appearance. Men are
| hardwired to pay close attention to a woman's looks whereas
| women are hardwired to care more about a man's ability to
| "protect and provide". Since social media promotes visibility
| of the most attractive women, this has the effect of reducing
| feelings of self-worth for the female users moreso than the
| male users.
| trieste92 wrote:
| > Social media in and of itself is really just an accelerant
| for the particular set of social expectations we stack on girls
| and women around appearance and how that relates to self-worth.
| Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on
| image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human
| beings.
|
| Sounds like one of those truisms that people love to repeat.
| Like all other instances, this one likely isn't grounded in
| anything concrete
| ravenstine wrote:
| Reflecting on that question means saying things that many
| people would find offensive. It's a lost cause to suggest that
| corporations implicitly understand something innate about
| female psychology and are taking advantage of it, and that's
| exactly why social media wins; the current politics you
| mentioned are a protective layer against taking meaningful
| action against the machine. If society was as concerned about
| the online activity of boys (news flash, your kid is likely
| watching hardcore porn every day), action would be more swift
| because there's no political manifold to dissuade elders from
| trying to save boys. This analogy is of course imperfect
| because parents are evidently not as concerned about boys.
|
| > you would think one solution to this issue would be to
| advance a society in which women are valued equally to men.
|
| There's no reason to believe such a society can exist any more
| than believing it's possible for a thing to be both dry and wet
| at the same time. It's dubious whether such a society is even
| desirable, and even if it is, it's been debated since time
| immemorial and isn't a practical way to address real world
| issues. You might as well ask why the world can't be more like
| _Star Trek_.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You think it would be dubious for a society to value men and
| women equally?
| catiopatio wrote:
| Men and women are not identical; inescapably, the mean
| value contributed by each will material differ in at least
| some contexts.
|
| If a society equally values the contributions of men and
| women in _all_ contexts, then, by definition, it must be
| using an inequitable metric to ascribe value to their
| contributions.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I can't imagine why anyone would find it offensive to believe
| that women should not be valued equally with men. Oh wait,
| right, because that's inherently offensive.
|
| The world can be more like _Star Trek_ , and might move in
| that direction a bit more quickly if there weren't so many
| people premature playing a victim before they try to
| undermine the effort.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > ...that many people would find offensive. It's a lost cause
| to suggest that corporations implicitly understand something
| innate about female psychology...
|
| You are wrong. Feminism as a broad social movement, and as an
| academic discipline, explicitly sought to question and attack
| the social structures and behaviors that were often insisted
| to be "innate" about female psychology and well being.
| Basically no one would find that offensive today. It's
| profoundly mainstream.
|
| Many more people would find it offensive to imply that social
| media addiction, or that an increasing trend of suicidal
| ideation as a result of social media use, is somehow a result
| of _femaleness_ tout-court. That 's downright archaic.
|
| Social media companies take advantage of the ways women are
| socialized into an incredible and unnecessary focus on their
| bodies by pouring rocket fuel on it.
| [deleted]
| olliecornelia wrote:
| That's just your opinion.
| hn92726819 wrote:
| I am not agreeing or disagreeing with either of you.
| However, it seems you say
|
| > You are wrong
|
| But also:
|
| > Many more people would find it offensive ... Is somehow a
| result of femaleness tout-court
|
| But the person you're replying to seems to be saying that
| _if there is_ some ingrained female-related cause, it
| couldn 't be discussed today.
|
| How does the second thing I quoted from you not directly
| agree with the comment you replied to?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Because the implication of their argument is _biological
| causation_ , which is pure conjecture on their part.
|
| On the other hand, the entire posted article goes at
| length to study the _social impact_ of social media for
| young people and young girls in particular and routinely
| references the heightened effect of the hyper focus on
| bodies for young girls.
|
| Their comment is just a naked assertion. Would people
| find it offensive? Well, if the entire basis for your
| point is a strawman, then yes. But as far as I can tell,
| there is no causal evidence between femaleness and social
| media addiction or suicidal ideation. The need to leap to
| biological causation is unwarranted and unsupported.
|
| Acting like they're already agrieved is a rhetorical
| slight of hand without substance.
| ravenstine wrote:
| You're proving my point whether you realize it or not.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I'm not convinced how any of this shows causation. Probably the
| strongest point in this substack pointing to causation is the use
| of longitudinal studies. Haidt is using a meta-analysis of long-
| term specific (as opposed to short term studies which display no
| effect, there's merit here as a longer longitudinal study is
| probably better) longitudinal studies to make this point, so
| essentially saying that a meta-analysis of long-term longitudinal
| studies is required to show that causation can be established;
| this is all indirect. I still think that to prove this point we
| need to make an experiment that actually attempts to show
| causation.
|
| I'm also not sure if it's worth discussing this on HN because
| this topic tends to attract commenters of one opinion, but I also
| think it's worth making opposition known. I fully expect this
| opinion to be unpopular.
|
| EDIT: Indeed, doing a shallow dive into the referenced
| longitudinal study links shows that none of them establish any
| form of control. One of the studies linked's abstract (I don't
| have access to the full paper) has an intervention model but
| doesn't split the initial cohort in order to establish the causal
| effect.
|
| N.B. I am aware that in social science it's hard to find large
| enough cohort sizes to establish effects and that splitting a
| cohort to establish causality could destroy the statistical power
| of the study altogether.
| wufufufu wrote:
| I'd like legislation that acknowledges both the utility and harm
| that social media and more generally smartphones have. All I want
| is an internet-based texting only mobile-phone that doesn't have
| a browser or anything besides utilities. I don't want any feeds,
| reels, TikToks, etc. The fact that you basically need a
| smartphone to socialize, make payments, park, read menus, but it
| comes with a hamster-wheel for dopamine dispensing is like if the
| only way you could hydrate yourself is fountain soda -- you're
| just playing a game where you try not to get diabetes.
| tristor wrote:
| Unfortunately, you can't just ban social media for teen girls.
| That has negative mental health impacts as well, including on
| your own mental health as you try to enforce said ban. Social
| media is integral to the lifestyle of teenagers now, and not
| having it socially isolates you. It makes you a "weirdo" in the
| same way that being homeschooled or being in a religious cult
| would 30 years ago, in fact if you try to do such a ban, other
| parents assume you're a conspiracy theorist, in a religious cult,
| or some other sort of "weirdo" yourself.
|
| Whether we like it or not, unfortunately social media is now an
| integral part of how people are expected to behave in modern
| society. So we have to figure out how to address the consequences
| of it on an individual basis in our home without resorting to
| flat bans. This is addressed to some extent in the article as
| well.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| Why "unfortunately"? I am quite happy that teenagers' access to
| information is not being banned.
| tristor wrote:
| Because I have a teenage stepdaughter, and I would like to
| make her life easier, not harder, and social media seems to
| be a net negative. It's unfortunately so integrated into the
| lives of teenagers they can't get away from it. I learned the
| hard way that social media was also bad for me, and I no
| longer use it (if you don't count HN and web-forums as social
| media).
|
| I also don't like restricting access to information in the
| general sense, but social media isn't "information" in
| anything but the broadest sense of terms.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| Social media absolutely is information. For example, I can
| tell you from experience that it is very hard to really
| learn about another country if you are not living there
| unless you go read what the people of that country are
| saying on social media. What journalists write about the
| country is usually a very narrow view in comparison to all
| the information that becomes available to you if you read
| what people who live there are writing on social media.
|
| Do you think that maybe you could make your stepdaughter's
| life easier not by restricting her access to information,
| but by teaching her how to interact with that information
| in a way that is healthy?
| tristor wrote:
| I'd argue it's hard to learn about another country
| without personally visiting it. To wit, I've made it a
| point to take my family to other countries, for us to
| learn other languages, and to get to experience different
| lifestyles around the world. There are a lot of things
| that my wife and I do to try to help my stepdaughter
| interact with information in healthy ways, but that's
| also easier said than done. To a large degree, the issues
| with social media have to do with the facade people put
| up and the underlying social interactions with her peer
| group, which are hard things to help a teenager address
| because parents are not directly involved in her peer
| group. You can only do so much, and at some point as a
| teenager, your child needs to find their own way. Putting
| up guard rails ("restricting information") is one way to
| help them navigate these nuances of life.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I would guess that maybe
| the peer group is the core of the problem. Probably even
| most, though of course far from all, teenagers realize
| that issues they might have with people on social media
| whom they do not know in real life can be resolved by
| simply not interacting with them. Maybe social media just
| makes it easy for the peer group to be present in a
| person's life almost 18 hours a day instead of as in the
| past, just a few hours a day usually.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-22 23:00 UTC)