6 ms·

If the mental health crisis is exacerbated by other stressors, how does that explain the following? 1) The crisis started suddenly in 2009, 2) It affects girls

If the mental health crisis is exacerbated by other stressors, how does that explain the following? 1) The crisis started suddenly in 2009, 2) It affects girls far more, and 3) It is occurring in many countries. Haidt brings up those points in the testimony to rule out other factors and prove that social media is specifically to blame.

mattnewton 4y ago
1 & 3) seems to be more indicative of the fact that there was a global economic crisis at the end of 2008. I'm not following these points from the paper. 2) seems to point the finger at social media more heavily though I think, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of that but this point is convincing to me.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  The financial crisis of 2008 (2007-2009?) was not that significant in large parts of the world. I was living in Finland, and many of my friends were graduating and finding jobs around that time. From our point of view, the crisis was something that happened mostly in the news and had little effect on the real world. The depression in the early 1990s was another story. It may have hit Finland worse than the Great Depression in the 1930s.
irrational 4y ago
2009? You mean right after the 2008 housing bubble burst and the recession set in?
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  The trend didn’t recover unlike the recession. It only got worse.
- tehbeard 4y ago
  And, I'd argue, when we saw social media and big tech start to lean towards ML/algorithm driven techniques for content curation. At college my social feeds where friends and clubs I picked, by university 3-4 years later, Facebook et. al was feeding me a lot more other stuff intermixed with friends posts.
veltas 4y ago
"It affects girls far more". Don't far more young men kill themselves? How is this being measured? Seems more complicated than that.
- bart_spoon 4y ago
  My understanding is that young men are successful at killing themselves far more than young women, but young women attempt to kill themselves at higher rates than young men.
  - veltas 4y ago
    Compared with suicide statistics, suicide attempts are much harder to measure (and also sort of misleading). They classify 'serious suicide attempts' (SSA) as where there is serious intent of death (SSA is the real suicide attempt, everything else is suicidal behavior or a gesture). Where suicide attempts are reported, men are more likely to commit SSA's. Not all suicide attempts are reported... and there very well may be a difference between the proportion of reported male attempts versus female attempts. Likewise the classification of the attempt is often self-reported, again the accuracy could vary according to gender. We don't know, but I would guess men are less likely to report, and less likely to commit a 'gesture'. Mental health as well is a moderately subjective matter, and there's no doubt that the self-reported aspect of mental health problems has been highly influenced by cultural and societal changes, like how the public perception of mental illness has changed over time. Likewise I'm sure men and women think differently about this, and I'm sure the societal expectations of men/women impact it as well. When we talk about mental health getting worse over time, or impacting women more, this is inherently imprecise. But suicide is suicide: From 1981 to 2017 the male suicide rate per 100,000 in my country (the UK) has gone from 19.5 to 17.2. The female suicide rate has gone from 10.6 to 5.4. Mostly good news: the rate has gone down. But the gap between men and women has increased, men have gone from roughly twice as likely to kill themselves to about three times as likely as women. It's sad that even now concern about mental health only seems to get weight when phrased in a way that makes it sound like it's impacting women more, when one of the more concrete, key statistics clearly indicates it could be the other way around (and getting worse). This observation may very well be related to the disparity at this point.

mattnewton 4y ago

1 & 3) seems to be more indicative of the fact that there was a global economic crisis at the end of 2008. I'm not following these points from the paper. 2) seems to point the finger at social media more heavily though I think, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of that but this point is convincing to me.

jltsiren 4y ago
The financial crisis of 2008 (2007-2009?) was not that significant in large parts of the world. I was living in Finland, and many of my friends were graduating and finding jobs around that time. From our point of view, the crisis was something that happened mostly in the news and had little effect on the real world. The depression in the early 1990s was another story. It may have hit Finland worse than the Great Depression in the 1930s.

irrational 4y ago

2009? You mean right after the 2008 housing bubble burst and the recession set in?

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
The trend didn’t recover unlike the recession. It only got worse.
tehbeard 4y ago
And, I'd argue, when we saw social media and big tech start to lean towards ML/algorithm driven techniques for content curation. At college my social feeds where friends and clubs I picked, by university 3-4 years later, Facebook et. al was feeding me a lot more other stuff intermixed with friends posts.

veltas 4y ago

"It affects girls far more". Don't far more young men kill themselves? How is this being measured? Seems more complicated than that.

bart_spoon 4y ago
My understanding is that young men are successful at killing themselves far more than young women, but young women attempt to kill themselves at higher rates than young men.
- veltas 4y ago
  Compared with suicide statistics, suicide attempts are much harder to measure (and also sort of misleading). They classify 'serious suicide attempts' (SSA) as where there is serious intent of death (SSA is the real suicide attempt, everything else is suicidal behavior or a gesture). Where suicide attempts are reported, men are more likely to commit SSA's. Not all suicide attempts are reported... and there very well may be a difference between the proportion of reported male attempts versus female attempts. Likewise the classification of the attempt is often self-reported, again the accuracy could vary according to gender. We don't know, but I would guess men are less likely to report, and less likely to commit a 'gesture'. Mental health as well is a moderately subjective matter, and there's no doubt that the self-reported aspect of mental health problems has been highly influenced by cultural and societal changes, like how the public perception of mental illness has changed over time. Likewise I'm sure men and women think differently about this, and I'm sure the societal expectations of men/women impact it as well. When we talk about mental health getting worse over time, or impacting women more, this is inherently imprecise. But suicide is suicide: From 1981 to 2017 the male suicide rate per 100,000 in my country (the UK) has gone from 19.5 to 17.2. The female suicide rate has gone from 10.6 to 5.4. Mostly good news: the rate has gone down. But the gap between men and women has increased, men have gone from roughly twice as likely to kill themselves to about three times as likely as women. It's sad that even now concern about mental health only seems to get weight when phrased in a way that makes it sound like it's impacting women more, when one of the more concrete, key statistics clearly indicates it could be the other way around (and getting worse). This observation may very well be related to the disparity at this point.