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tl:dr correlation between them all getting mobile phones and facebook. Perhaps because of the need to reduce it to six paragraphs, it is a very unconvincing pie

tl:dr correlation between them all getting mobile phones and facebook. Perhaps because of the need to reduce it to six paragraphs, it is a very unconvincing piece.

lisper 9y ago
It might be an unconvincing piece, but it still seems like a very plausible hypothesis to me.
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  I didn't say otherwise. Plausible hypotheses are a dime a dozen.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I've got a plausible (to me) hypothesis of my own - namely, that the "kids these days are getting worse and worse" is something people have been thoughtlessly regurgitating for as long as we have historical written records, and that new customs or technologies are easiest to blame. Today it's Facebook, previously it was TV, earlier still it was walkmans and metal bands. Hell, if I'm to believe random quotes from the Internet, even earlier it was paper/pens and... books. "Facebook is bad for the kids" seems to be the cheapest thing you can write these days while being sure you'll have an audience that agrees with you.
  - cwar 9y ago
    I think a big difference is social media causes people to constantly compare their lives to people's Facebook posts, which are usually people just sharing stuff that makes them look like their life is amazing. I know when I was in high school I compared myself to others and felt inadequate even without Facebook in my pocket. Now kids can just mindlessly scroll through a highlight reel of their peers and feel inadequate wherever they are.
  - m4x 9y ago
    They are not "thoughtlessly regurgitating" anything. Depression and suicide rates have risen significantly, and they are putting some effort into identifying the cause. This is stated explicitly in the introduction to the article.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    I think there is actually a bigger danger with people summarily dismissing negative consequences of technology, and then just saying "it's no big deal" because it's been going on a long time. Look at TV. Of course TV has many positives, but it's also another factor in people (at least Americans) becoming much more sedentary over the past 6-7 decades, which has been a large factor in the US obesity epidemic. It's a mistake to dismiss the negatives of TV just because we've gotten used to the fact that nearly everyone is so fat. Similarly, with social media, forget about teenagers, as I think many people are able to see the huge negative effect it has on their own lives. The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Not trying to dismiss all negatives; just biased against this particular flavour (kids getting sad or unruly is surely because of the things they enjoy, as opposed to e.g. broken economy visible every day through their parents). So I'm not dismissing e.g. sedentary lifestyle issues. > The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons I think social media is actually a step up here - the time spent comparing ourselves to idealized versions of our friends is the time not spent comparing ourselves to the apparent presence of all those celebrities and rich people, which was a constant of the previous century. Mass media broke the availability heuristic; the generic dysrationalia it caused in people is clearly visible. Which would be a kind of tech negative I'm not denying.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    Did you read the article? Or even the post title? No one is talking about kids getting "worse", they're talking about trying to explain an uptick in things like suicide.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    Walkmans and metal bands came after TV. In fact so did miniskirts and the Beatles, each of which were also decried as the end of civilization in their turn. Nonetheless, just because people have been saying "the world's going down the shitter" for a long time, doesn't mean it's not.
rmchugh 9y ago
I don't think that's a reasonable summation, there is a correlation between mobile phone use while there are other studies showing teens assigned to use less of Facebook are more happy. The author could not find movement in other variables that could account for this change, although of course that does not prove that they don't exist (she only mentions homework and economic growth). It's obviously not definitive and she acknowledges this, but it is striking nonetheless.
Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
Thanks for saving me a click, the title is clearly clickbait.

tl:dr correlation between them all getting mobile phones and facebook. Perhaps because of the need to reduce it to six paragraphs, it is a very unconvincing piece.

lisper 9y ago

It might be an unconvincing piece, but it still seems like a very plausible hypothesis to me.

lazyasciiart 9y ago
I didn't say otherwise. Plausible hypotheses are a dime a dozen.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I've got a plausible (to me) hypothesis of my own - namely, that the "kids these days are getting worse and worse" is something people have been thoughtlessly regurgitating for as long as we have historical written records, and that new customs or technologies are easiest to blame. Today it's Facebook, previously it was TV, earlier still it was walkmans and metal bands. Hell, if I'm to believe random quotes from the Internet, even earlier it was paper/pens and... books. "Facebook is bad for the kids" seems to be the cheapest thing you can write these days while being sure you'll have an audience that agrees with you.
- cwar 9y ago
  I think a big difference is social media causes people to constantly compare their lives to people's Facebook posts, which are usually people just sharing stuff that makes them look like their life is amazing. I know when I was in high school I compared myself to others and felt inadequate even without Facebook in my pocket. Now kids can just mindlessly scroll through a highlight reel of their peers and feel inadequate wherever they are.
- m4x 9y ago
  They are not "thoughtlessly regurgitating" anything. Depression and suicide rates have risen significantly, and they are putting some effort into identifying the cause. This is stated explicitly in the introduction to the article.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  I think there is actually a bigger danger with people summarily dismissing negative consequences of technology, and then just saying "it's no big deal" because it's been going on a long time. Look at TV. Of course TV has many positives, but it's also another factor in people (at least Americans) becoming much more sedentary over the past 6-7 decades, which has been a large factor in the US obesity epidemic. It's a mistake to dismiss the negatives of TV just because we've gotten used to the fact that nearly everyone is so fat. Similarly, with social media, forget about teenagers, as I think many people are able to see the huge negative effect it has on their own lives. The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Not trying to dismiss all negatives; just biased against this particular flavour (kids getting sad or unruly is surely because of the things they enjoy, as opposed to e.g. broken economy visible every day through their parents). So I'm not dismissing e.g. sedentary lifestyle issues. > The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons I think social media is actually a step up here - the time spent comparing ourselves to idealized versions of our friends is the time not spent comparing ourselves to the apparent presence of all those celebrities and rich people, which was a constant of the previous century. Mass media broke the availability heuristic; the generic dysrationalia it caused in people is clearly visible. Which would be a kind of tech negative I'm not denying.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  Did you read the article? Or even the post title? No one is talking about kids getting "worse", they're talking about trying to explain an uptick in things like suicide.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Walkmans and metal bands came after TV. In fact so did miniskirts and the Beatles, each of which were also decried as the end of civilization in their turn. Nonetheless, just because people have been saying "the world's going down the shitter" for a long time, doesn't mean it's not.

rmchugh 9y ago

I don't think that's a reasonable summation, there is a correlation between mobile phone use while there are other studies showing teens assigned to use less of Facebook are more happy. The author could not find movement in other variables that could account for this change, although of course that does not prove that they don't exist (she only mentions homework and economic growth). It's obviously not definitive and she acknowledges this, but it is striking nonetheless.

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago

Thanks for saving me a click, the title is clearly clickbait.