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Social media and pornography are the two biggest enemies of teenage mental health, and both of them have been available for almost the entire Gen-Z person's lif

Social media and pornography are the two biggest enemies of teenage mental health, and both of them have been available for almost the entire Gen-Z person's life, delivered straight to their bedroom via high speed internet, and follows them everywhere they go on their smartphones.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Both social media (in some form) and porn has been around for far longer than this has been a problem. I'm a card carrying "Starcraft and DeusEx defined my teenage years"-millennial, and these things have been around most of my formative years as well. I think I was like ten when a friend showed me you could type "boobs" into altavista and get whitehouse.com, which back then was a porn site alluding to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. I think the big difference now is smartphones, and being always online. It's much easier to have your entire world view informed by the Internet now than it was twenty years ago. It's a stark contrast. If you look on twitter and reddit, everything is always burning, the sky is falling every day for a hundred different reasons, the bees are dying, the Russians are about to trigger a nuclear apocalypse, there's indignant outrage and injustice everywhere. If you look out the window, there's literally none of that going on. Like it's almost all speculation, or happening somewhere else. Twenty years ago, a lot of bad things were happening as well, but they weren't up in your face in nearly the same way. For some things, you had the dotcom bubble, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq. While they made a prominent impact on the news, the news was only on while you watched them. They didn't follow you around everywhere you went like they do today.
- riedel 5y ago
  The problem is IMHO not that things change, but that parents and teachers have difficulty adapting to that change and prepare their offspring for life. We are trying to establish a protected physical world that does not really teach you much about that "other" life and helps kids to develop resilience.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    Maybe. I do think this parallel reality you get from primarily interacting with the world through social media is deeply problematic. It may not be a learning-to-relate issue as much as needing-to-change-the-medium issue. Social media is probably the 2000s' tobacco industry. The are likewise big vested interests pushing back against any report that it's harmful.
    - riedel 5y ago
      I guess the point about the tabacco industry is really resonating with me in the sense that the possibility to generate life long revenue by advertising to minors really is a problem. In the end it is about getting children to use drugs.
- CPLX 5y ago
  Arguable. I’m in my mid 40s and the internet as we know it didn’t really exist at all until I was a college graduate. The speed with which things have changed is staggering on a cultural and generational timescale.
- wedn3sday 5y ago
  I strongly agree with you. Social media, if it was used through a computer, isnt the problem, its instant access to everything all the time via smartphones. I feel like Bo Burnams "Inside" struck a chord with me and has been living in the back of my head for a year and a half now as I slowly digest it. See a man beheaded, Get offended, see a shrink, Show us pictures of your children, Tell us every thought you think, Start a rumor, buy a broom, Or send a death threat to a boomer, Or DM a girl and groom her, Do a Zoom or find a tumor, Here's a healthy breakfast option, You should kill your mom, Here's why women never fuck you, Here's how you can build a bomb, Which Power Ranger are you? Take this quirky quiz, Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids, Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything, All of the time, Apathy's a tragedy, And boredom is a crime, Anything and everything, All of the time
  - sylens 5y ago
    That song is a masterpiece
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
infiniteL0Op 5y ago
mensetmanusman 5y ago
This is according to the teens themselves, but people still are hesitant to listen…
jeltz 5y ago
Social media has been around since the early 2000s, over 20 years, and easily accessible porn has been around slightly longer. So, no, I am not convinced this is it. Smartphones on the other hand is a possible culprit.
- treis 5y ago
  Social media wasn't ubiquitous and certainly not mobile. What was there was an extension of your meat space life. It wasn't until the late 00s early 10s that social media blew up and took on a life of it's own.
Aerroon 5y ago
I don't see how you can blame this on porn. The people who grew up with east to access online porn are now in their 30s. In the early 2000s it was harder to escape porn online, because you'd see it in ads and people would trick each other with (eg the content of downloads were swapped out). >Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of teens who reported having “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 37 percent. The starting figure from 2009 would consider teens who grew up with easy access to porn. But it fell from there.
trinovantes 5y ago
It makes me feel pretty lucky to be born in the last generation where those aren't part of my life till I'm almost out of my teenage years. I didn't even get a smartphone until I started university and that was considered early adopter for my group of friends.
- sylens 5y ago
  I wish tech had frozen at like the 2005-2006 era; good enough for wireless routers in homes and some Web 2.0 capabilities but before everything was aggressively targeted towards an always connected phone in your pocket at all times
loceng 5y ago
Add very unhealthy inflammatory diets/low quality food (processed etc), pharmaceuticals, and multi-generational dis-ease progression to that list; your parents' health, society's health as a whole and how they interact with you, much more greatly affects a culture than is talked about - most of society has lost the ancient traditions and understanding of health, and the body-mind-spirit.
dijonman2 5y ago
Where did pornography come from? I’d argue social media is far more damaging, especially Twitter and the advent of outrage culture. It breeds hatred and intolerance, two thought patterns that will send us back 30 years.
kar5pt 5y ago
Porn was around long before 2009 so this doesn't make sense.
yobbo 5y ago
It's not smartphones or "straight to the bedroom". Online communities for teenagers have been around in some form since the 80s. Now everyone is expected to be on social media and it is the main community for a teenager, not an escape for nerds. If you're not successful there, you're also an outcast in reality.
- prepend 5y ago
  This exposure wasn’t mainstream until the early-mid 10s when every high schooler got a phone and social media. Before then, it was computer and game system based and that changes. I don’t know real screen time data, but the use of phones probably added an extra 4-10 hours of screentime per day. And the type of activity is very different with notifications and pickups being top of mind.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sdoering 5y ago
Do you have any scientific sources for those claims? Any qualitative good studies?

marginalia_nu 5y ago

Both social media (in some form) and porn has been around for far longer than this has been a problem. I'm a card carrying "Starcraft and DeusEx defined my teenage years"-millennial, and these things have been around most of my formative years as well. I think I was like ten when a friend showed me you could type "boobs" into altavista and get whitehouse.com, which back then was a porn site alluding to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. I think the big difference now is smartphones, and being always online. It's much easier to have your entire world view informed by the Internet now than it was twenty years ago. It's a stark contrast. If you look on twitter and reddit, everything is always burning, the sky is falling every day for a hundred different reasons, the bees are dying, the Russians are about to trigger a nuclear apocalypse, there's indignant outrage and injustice everywhere. If you look out the window, there's literally none of that going on. Like it's almost all speculation, or happening somewhere else. Twenty years ago, a lot of bad things were happening as well, but they weren't up in your face in nearly the same way. For some things, you had the dotcom bubble, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq. While they made a prominent impact on the news, the news was only on while you watched them. They didn't follow you around everywhere you went like they do today.

riedel 5y ago
The problem is IMHO not that things change, but that parents and teachers have difficulty adapting to that change and prepare their offspring for life. We are trying to establish a protected physical world that does not really teach you much about that "other" life and helps kids to develop resilience.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Maybe. I do think this parallel reality you get from primarily interacting with the world through social media is deeply problematic. It may not be a learning-to-relate issue as much as needing-to-change-the-medium issue. Social media is probably the 2000s' tobacco industry. The are likewise big vested interests pushing back against any report that it's harmful.
  - riedel 5y ago
    I guess the point about the tabacco industry is really resonating with me in the sense that the possibility to generate life long revenue by advertising to minors really is a problem. In the end it is about getting children to use drugs.
CPLX 5y ago
Arguable. I’m in my mid 40s and the internet as we know it didn’t really exist at all until I was a college graduate. The speed with which things have changed is staggering on a cultural and generational timescale.
wedn3sday 5y ago
I strongly agree with you. Social media, if it was used through a computer, isnt the problem, its instant access to everything all the time via smartphones. I feel like Bo Burnams "Inside" struck a chord with me and has been living in the back of my head for a year and a half now as I slowly digest it. See a man beheaded, Get offended, see a shrink, Show us pictures of your children, Tell us every thought you think, Start a rumor, buy a broom, Or send a death threat to a boomer, Or DM a girl and groom her, Do a Zoom or find a tumor, Here's a healthy breakfast option, You should kill your mom, Here's why women never fuck you, Here's how you can build a bomb, Which Power Ranger are you? Take this quirky quiz, Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids, Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything, All of the time, Apathy's a tragedy, And boredom is a crime, Anything and everything, All of the time
- sylens 5y ago
  That song is a masterpiece
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

infiniteL0Op 5y ago

mensetmanusman 5y ago

This is according to the teens themselves, but people still are hesitant to listen…

jeltz 5y ago

Social media has been around since the early 2000s, over 20 years, and easily accessible porn has been around slightly longer. So, no, I am not convinced this is it. Smartphones on the other hand is a possible culprit.

treis 5y ago
Social media wasn't ubiquitous and certainly not mobile. What was there was an extension of your meat space life. It wasn't until the late 00s early 10s that social media blew up and took on a life of it's own.

Aerroon 5y ago

I don't see how you can blame this on porn. The people who grew up with east to access online porn are now in their 30s. In the early 2000s it was harder to escape porn online, because you'd see it in ads and people would trick each other with (eg the content of downloads were swapped out). >Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of teens who reported having “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 37 percent. The starting figure from 2009 would consider teens who grew up with easy access to porn. But it fell from there.

trinovantes 5y ago

It makes me feel pretty lucky to be born in the last generation where those aren't part of my life till I'm almost out of my teenage years. I didn't even get a smartphone until I started university and that was considered early adopter for my group of friends.

sylens 5y ago
I wish tech had frozen at like the 2005-2006 era; good enough for wireless routers in homes and some Web 2.0 capabilities but before everything was aggressively targeted towards an always connected phone in your pocket at all times

loceng 5y ago

Add very unhealthy inflammatory diets/low quality food (processed etc), pharmaceuticals, and multi-generational dis-ease progression to that list; your parents' health, society's health as a whole and how they interact with you, much more greatly affects a culture than is talked about - most of society has lost the ancient traditions and understanding of health, and the body-mind-spirit.

dijonman2 5y ago

Where did pornography come from? I’d argue social media is far more damaging, especially Twitter and the advent of outrage culture. It breeds hatred and intolerance, two thought patterns that will send us back 30 years.

kar5pt 5y ago

Porn was around long before 2009 so this doesn't make sense.

yobbo 5y ago

It's not smartphones or "straight to the bedroom". Online communities for teenagers have been around in some form since the 80s. Now everyone is expected to be on social media and it is the main community for a teenager, not an escape for nerds. If you're not successful there, you're also an outcast in reality.

prepend 5y ago
This exposure wasn’t mainstream until the early-mid 10s when every high schooler got a phone and social media. Before then, it was computer and game system based and that changes. I don’t know real screen time data, but the use of phones probably added an extra 4-10 hours of screentime per day. And the type of activity is very different with notifications and pickups being top of mind.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sdoering 5y ago

Do you have any scientific sources for those claims? Any qualitative good studies?