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Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualificatio

Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. My sole qualification to post this: I have four kids that are either teens or in their early 20s, and one who will be a teen next year. Here is what I see out there: 1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work things out mentally. School, practice, volunteer, homework, bed, do it all again. This builds up to a very difficult to unwind ball of stress, anger, fear and despair. 2. Everything is conflicted and unclear. Schools teach cultural tolerance while enforcing zero-tolerance policies. Diversity is good, but being ____ is bad. So many areas where what we teach and preach are the opposite of what policies and actions actually do. 3. The stakes are too high. View the wrong website on your chromebook and get referred to law enforcement. Have a kid send you the wrong selfie and get charged with a sex crime. Get a bad grade and you are off the volleyball team, and you won't make the team next year - so done forever. Misbehave and you'll be arrested by the resource officer and face time at juvi, and potentially a conviction that will be held against you for a very long time (in some states juvi convictions count against three strikes laws). 3. Kids are targeted. Sexual predators, gangs, fringe and mainstream ideologues looking to recruit followers, sports agents and talent scouts all have one thing in common: they want to exploit kids or sell them something. It's really hard to be a kid right now, and that needs to change. We need to lower the stakes, the stress and have something that resembles consistency.

hef19898 5y ago
I have to agree with most of your points, even if they seem to be US problems to a large extent. What social media does, so, IMHO is enabling and aggrevating those problems.
jliptzin 5y ago
Seems very plausible to me, I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion
dash2 5y ago
The article makes a strong claim, based on evidence, that social media and not anything else is the real culprit. Why is it wrong? What evidence supports your alternative proposed causes?
- WithinReason 5y ago
  The article points out correlation, which would be also explained by GP's comment
  - treis 5y ago
    It's not even really correlated. The timing is off. Teen Social Media usage exploded in the early to mid 2000s and all the bad trends started 2010 or later. Plus, it was a seismic event. We went from little social media in 2000 to ubiquity by 2010. We should have seen one big rise to a new steady state not a continually increasing problem.
    - looknee 5y ago
      Social media definitely picked up 2000-2010, but the current manifestation of it didn't really lock in until ~2010 with the advent of the iPhone, instagram, snapchat, and all the other social media mobile apps that compelled people to constantly be sucked into it throughout the day rather than just whenever they were on or near a PC or laptop.
    - dash2 5y ago
      The graph here shows social media exploding from 2008, not before. https://www.worldline.technology/post/over-2-5-billion-people-use-social-media-this-is-how-it-has-changed-the-world https://www.worldline.technology/post/over-2-5-billion-peopl...
      - zeroonetwothree 5y ago
        This is showing all users worldwide. Surely US teens were ahead of the curve.
deleted 5y ago
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api 5y ago
I'll add one more that IMHO is huge: Youth culture seems dead. I remember being a teen and early-20 in the 90s-2000s and there were things like a hippie festival circuit, raves, goth culture, club culture, and so on. I keep hoping I'm just old and don't see it, but I remember back then it would seep out and get covered by the media and get chatted about on the nascent Internet. I see nothing like it today. Sure there are concerts and IDM shows and the like, but they don't have a mystique. It's just entertainment, not a coming of age subculture. Subculture is dead. I think this is a factor from personal experience. If I hadn't gotten into the rave/club culture in the late 90s I'd probably be dead from suicide. These cultures were where kids that did not exactly fit the popular mold would be able to go out, make friends, have experiences, and have a sense of belonging. I still miss it to this day.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  Youth culture is still very much alive. It is primarily online or in school, and kept into circles largely out of sight of adults. You wouldn't come across them unless you happened to pass by, actively seek it out or cultures cross over. The above is further amplified by communication between children and adult strangers being seen as a big no-no.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  Genuinely and speaking in the kindest way: I think what you consider culture has aged out. Youth culture does exist, but has simply changed in a way that no longer appeals to your definition of culture. It’s also covered in the news, see: the Astroworld crowd crush. There’s new terminology (bussin, deadass, bet, etc.), new aesthetics (cottagecore), and new music consumption (the rise of kpop). And my knowledge is likely a older now (the teenagers I know are aging out into college).
  - api 5y ago
    Is/was there a sense of being part of something special and exclusive in those scenes or was it just something fun to do? I didn’t say it in my OP above but I have heard young people bemoan a lack of interesting culture that is “theirs.” Hip hop, IDM, etc are all things from GenX or earlier, though obviously with a fresh coat of paint.
radarsat1 5y ago
> Diversity is good, but being ____ is bad. Can you fill in the blank? I actually have no idea what you are referring to here.
- seydor 5y ago
  any term taken from the 50% of diversity can fill that blank. i think they are referring to the cancellous but ostensibly tolerant culture
  - radarsat1 5y ago
    Sorry, still lost. What is "the 50% of diversity"? Are you trying to say "white"? (Not sure that's 50%...) Not judging, literally just trying to understand the semantics here. This is some kind of code that I'm not getting.
    - seydor 5y ago
      yes that s a good example. "being proud to be black" is diverse, being proud to be white is not. There is definitely a level of doublespeak here, although i'm not sure if teens are really annoyed by it
      - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        That’s because we have a history of white supremacy in that country though. Similar to how in Germany you’ll get weird looks if you’re echoing nazi talking points; there’s an existing history and cultural context to that sort of thing in that country that the country now wants to not repeat.
        usrn 5y ago
        There are effectively no Nazis in Germany but there are still ethnostates and genocide in Africa. I really don't see how White people are special here. EDIT: As usual with the social justice crowd: no discussion just downvotes. It makes a lot of us feel like there legitimately is no argument for your position.
throwaway787544 5y ago
It's not the only source of the problem, but social media is certainly a big one. Back in the day you didn't get rape threats from 50 anonymous accounts, or see pictures of you photoshopped sucking dicks, or feel like even more of a loser because you see in 4K detail how everybody else in class is having more fun outside of school. The internet is a threat and embarrassment and envy machine. You feel like you're constantly losing a battle to be relevant and have a good time, and you pathologically monitor feeds of other people's lives to try to stay ahead. When that doesn't work you lose yourself in mindless entertainment to avoid mental stress, also avoiding processing hard emotions. That's not all new, but it's at a level higher than ever before.
- sharemywin 5y ago
  Don't forget the 24/7 of it. No escape from bullies
- roland35 5y ago
  The internet was certainly a lot lower stakes and fun in the 90s and early 2000s. We had fun taking over the mic and singing karaoke in Yahoo chatrooms, watching albino black sheep, and playing flash games on kongregator. Even early Facebook was just making funny groups and posting in each other's walls. None of those activities really had me envying anyone else. I remember the first thing that made me feel worthless and unaccomplished was TED talks! I agree the problem is that it's hard to separate our online life from our offline life now.
  - theclansman 5y ago
    Yeah same, the internet of early 2000s was a super cozy place for me, I remember everyone at first was like "wow it's so amazing how you can be someone else online," now the internet is just a giant window to your life. I remember my mom telling me to never share any info about me online, now everyone has their entire lives uploaded, full name, face picture, phone number, it's all there. Funny thing is it didn't actually get any less dangerous, people just decided that if everyone did it then there's no problem.
Spooky23 5y ago
I’ll counter that with the caveat that my kids are grade 5 and younger. We’re very involved in school and other activities - my wife is a PTO president and long time member, I coach youth sports and other community type programs. The kids we have seen mostly don’t engage with social media directly. But the ones who transition from cute 5-6 year olds to problematic 10-12 year olds have a key common factor. Tablets. You see kids as young as 2-3 hiding under a table engaged in some awful kiddie YouTube trash or a game. It ends up being a pacifier that induces anxiety, and I think that effect combined with social media is powerful and difficult for kids to manage. In terms of targeting, i actually think that things are better today. Through lawsuits and reporting, I learned that my childhood Boy Scout Troop and church was infested with pedophiles. The Boy Scout leader basically roamed the country and landed in NYC where he was eventually arrested for an unrelated rape. Today, there’s extensive background checking everywhere and it’s more difficult for a known offender to be in that position of trust. Sports and the college recruitment funnel are another thing hurting kids. I had a kid drop out of little league because his soccer academy coach flipped out that he, as a 10 year old, isn’t fully committed to soccer. So he’s playing “elite” soccer, at a cost of almost $4k, because that’s how you make the high school team.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  So you don't have a teen yet, then. Let me know how it goes when you have teens - the transition is crazy! (or for some kids, not)
- trey-jones 5y ago
  I think there are probably a multitude of factors, and both social media and too much generic screen time both are unhealthy in quantity. Many things are unhealthy in quantity after all. My oldest is 12, for context. Another factor that I think is really important is that I observe a lot of kids aren't given any responsibility at all. A lot of parents are control freaks. After all, it's easier for me to just do it myself than clean up the mess you make when you do it. 100 years ago you sent your 10 year old out to plow the field because that was the only way the family survived winter. I'm not saying those were better times, but those kids might have had the satisfaction of a job well done, and that's definitely good for mental health. What's also interesting is that many of the kids that do get responsibility are the ones in really crappy situations. That is, responsibility is forced on them because of circumstances. So these kids might do poorly in school, but end up with a better work ethic than rich kids with education. Or they end up dead or in jail. It's all messed up and there are no easy solutions. We all just need to do better.
raxxorraxor 5y ago
> The stakes are too high. View the wrong website on your chromebook and get referred to law enforcement Whoever implemented the surveillance of children should burn in hell. Since that probably doesn't exist the next prison with strong similarities should be chosen. You teach them that this kind of 24/7 surveillance is normal and I think they have enough problems with peer pressure through social media. You also teach a zero trust behavior. That can be good in a context and it can be really bad if it becomes learned cynicism. I could understand it until age 10 perhaps but at some point you want your kids to be independent. If they aren't bots by that age.
- rapind 5y ago
  > I could understand it until age 10 perhaps but at some point you want your kids to be independent. There's surveillance (parental supervision) and then there's "surveillance" (corporate psycos / overbearing governments). You want your kids to learn independence in a gradual and some what safe / controlled way (not too safe of course). There are still some things I don't want them exposed to at age 10. Unfortunately unsupervised internet isn't the best option here. Outsourcing it to tech is a really bad choice for sure. You need to be present as a parent to help them navigate and answer questions. If you aren't, then some youtuber (or worse) will do it for you. There's also an argument that being present as a parent has become harder than ever on average for economic reasons (double income, wage stagnation, inflation, etc.), and also the problem that many parents have no clue how to navigate the internet responsibly themselves.
  - raxxorraxor 5y ago
    I agree completely, but blocking access is something different than surveilling their every click. At some point children will look at content the parents don't approve off and for many that can be important. You probably just have to remind yourself of your own childhood. Perhaps a few years longer than 10 stronger supervision is needed, granted, but at some point children profit from a little distance from their parents.
    - rapind 5y ago
dc-programmer 5y ago
I’m led to believe from my experience that social media and anxiety are two dark stars in a system spiraling into collapse. Social media causes anxiety; and anxiety increases social media use because we’ve been conditioned to dissociate negative thoughts by looking down into our screens. Engaging in one initiates a self perpetuating loop. When I have no stress (on rare occasions I’m able to detach from my problems), my desire to use my phone at all is non-existent. So I think you are right that’s it’s difficult to attribute causality when kids are constantly under stress. This study, in fact, appears to only assess correlation. Haidt also strikes me as someone guided by a maverick worldview (he’s a serious thinker usually and I’ll read anything he writes)
bdefore 5y ago
While the risks you bring up are valid, many of them are not new but amplifications of preexisting ones. In the past, children have largely managed to navigate these on their journey to adulthood. An unsolved problem with social media: it's an amplification of parking lot scuttlebutt. It will entice you to see catastrophe and share it with others. Perhaps despite your position on this, you are being affected more than you realize.
- rapind 5y ago
  Another amplification is that many many parents haven't even solved this problem for themselves. How are they going to help their kids navigate social media use when they're pissing about on Instagram, and retweeting outrage garbage, etc.
  - bdefore 5y ago
    Indeed, one generation breaking the loop can support the next. Perhaps the antidote to social media is regularly sharing with your children: it doesn't matter what Alice or Bob think of you, ignore them and do what you enjoy most with this gift of life.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      I appreciate the sentiment, but question how realistic this is. Social media is where my kids interact with their peer group. By the time they hit their teens "sharing with dad" can't compete with that. I still try but I don't expect to have the power to break the cycle.
      - bdefore 5y ago
        I'm not a dad, so these are but grains of salt. What I meant was not that you have the power to force your children out of social media - they're gonna do what they want. More a lead-by-example life where you present an example to them of a life (a social one) that is enhanced by not reacting to what Alice and Bob think. They may see it as out-of-touch. They may change their minds years later. Or not. So you can break yourself out of the loop. And maybe your kids will be inspired by it. Or maybe it skips a generation.
scythe 5y ago
How do you reconcile (1,2) with the observation that similar health problems are occurring in other countries? Isn't (3) now heavily mediated by social media?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
webmobdev 5y ago
> Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. I am sorry, that's an absolutely naive way to look at it. The fact is that it is being increasingly recognized that current Social Media networks are a stress inducers in kids and thus causing mental health issues in them. It is in fact not a great medium to communicate with someone too - if any kid prefers to talk to a friend through social media, than in person, it indicates social anxiety issues that need to be addressed, as otherwise the dependence on SM will actually aggravate the symptom. Not to mention parents should be teaching their kids not to share personal and private feelings on SM with questionable privacy policies (and lack of laws) that will one day be used against them publicly, directly or indirectly. > School, practice, volunteer, homework, bed, do it all again. This builds up to a very difficult to unwind ball of stress, anger, fear and despair. Sounds like all our childhood (with slight variations) before social media. Now add social media to this mix as one of the daily rituals / chores and you will begin to partly see how it can add to the stress in teens.
thenerdhead 5y ago
Your argument seems more positioned around public education than it does social media. This seems to be the same problem, new generation. TV in the 50s. Video games in the 90s. Now smartphones.
- naravara 5y ago
  Arguably TV was actually bad for kids. (And adults too, considering what kind of brain poisoning seems to accompany overconsumption of cable news).
  - thenerdhead 5y ago
    That’s what I meant. Screen time in general. Suggestive screen time even more so.
zahllos 5y ago
I kinda agree and kinda disagree. My context is that I was youngish (late teens) when Facebook first arrived in force, and we'd had MySpace/MSN before that. My other context is that I have had an anxiety disorder for a while and was diagnosed with asperger's (we still say that in Europe) not long before I turned 30. I think I would always have had an issue, but I can quite directly point to the pressure cooker environment of getting into University. It is "not enough" simply to be good academically (which I was), you also needed to be a well rounded person, so you better use all your spare time doing activities to signal your well-roundedness! I don't feel I was explicitly trying to do this, but I also, being 17, didn't really say no - I mean how do you say no to a bunch of career advisors telling you "you have a chance to go to the top university!!!" etc. In such an environment, there's little respite, because there's always some kids telling you what they are doing. I don't think social media in and of itself is to blame, but what it does, in concert with phones, is remove any and all "downtime" from this messaging. There's an encouraged perfectionism, so young people are bombarded with images of how _great_ everyone else's life is. Not only are kids pushy/perfect in the canteen, but now they're pushy/perfect at 10pm on your mobile too. I struggled very badly with this at university. By that time I was a guy with panic attacks trying to keep up with a course, and I wanted to do all the normal stuff too like party. Of course since I _couldn't_ always do this it ended up being interpreted by most people as "let's not invite him". Social media wasn't directly responsible for this situation, but it is definitely a negative contributing factor. When you're far from home doom-scrolling facebook and all the stuff you missed that you're being left out of, this is really not helpful. So what I think is that social media will reinforce people who are naturally self-confident, but it will not help people who have issues. I suspect every experience is slightly different, but the inability to escape constant reminders of your own inadequacy, if interpreted that way, is a problem. Or if I can sum it up, it is simply the same old social/peer pressure, extended to 24/7. What helps a lot is a moderating influence, a reminder that it is OK to be just normal. I am also very, very glad I grew up when I did. All my early teenage years were free of any of this - we had MSN and texting and all the usual teenage angst, but you never had mobile doom-scrolling late at night - at best, you could text until you ran out of credit. I feel sorry for young girls particularly growing up with Instagram. However, I agree that social media is just one factor. Pushy parenting, or pushy schooling, is also a huge risk, as are all the traditional risks like teenagers being horrible bullies to each other. Addendum: the net impact of pushing me to go to a top university so hard was that I did not go to a top university, and dropped out of a pretty good university officially at the end of the first year, but unofficially I was "done" 6 months in anyway. Absolutely none of this career advice and "enrichment" activity helped me achieve any kind of potential, it just made me miserable and blow up with the stress of it.
weatherlite 5y ago
But what changed since 2009 to make what you say worse? Why 2009? (or whatever year the research says this all became worse in). It makes the case for social media = bad much stronger.
dtjb 5y ago
This sounds like how a bunch of old dudes on HN see the "teenager world," with very adult interpretations. I also have teenagers and have worked in schools. I think there are two truths that this comment overlooks; 1) today's youth, generally speaking, are pretty impressive and resourceful, and 2) being a teenager has always sucked. Just because their experience is different doesn't mean it's worse. Every generation of teenagers has known awkwardness, stress, and confusion. All of these studies about how x is a million times worse these days often can be attributed to more accurate data and measurements.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Fully wrong, which you would have known had you bothered to read it. Additional data does NOT account for the increase in mental health issues.
  - t-3 5y ago
    Mental health being a thing probably does though. I'm 31, and even when I was a kid, mental health issues were very stigmatized. Nowadays, they're not. Why wouldn't you expect more mental health issues?
    - fleddr 5y ago
      The point is not that there isn't more willingness to report mental health issues, the point is that the research already accounted for that effect, and it doesn't change the conclusion.
  - dtjb 5y ago
    I read the posted paper. Please point out where the authors factor in improvements to how we elicit, diagnose, and catalog mental health problems today. I was specifically looking for it and couldn't find it. The paper mentions the historical increase in 1.2 and 1.3 but offers no context or mitigation for long-term improvements in mental health reporting. Their NYTimes source in that section only goes back one decade and starts right off with an exploding upward trend. That could absolutely be attributed to improved reporting standards when the problem got attention, but the authors don't acknowledge any impact of reporting improvements. My parent comment was based on my experience as a teenager, compared to the very different way my teenage children are monitored and evaluated for mental health. It's night and day.
formerkrogemp 5y ago
> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. People whose livelihood depends on social media don't want the culpability of their company's work. C'est le monde.
- indymike 5y ago
  I don't work for a social media company. I do see my kids using social media with other kids to communicate and cope.
TomSwirly 5y ago
And don't forget the climate emergency.
wanda 5y ago
1. So drop the sports and volunteer work. Let them do schoolwork, homework and then free time. It is a myth that kids have to do all of these things. Sports should be extracurricular activity, i.e. outside education. You don't need to do sports to be healthy or to learn about team work. And volunteering? Volunteering is called community service if you're a criminal. Why punish kids like that? They will soon have to be grown ups, let them have some years to remember positively. 2. applies to adults too, and has always been true. 3. has always been true. Social media maybe somewhere frustrated kids go, but it is also a place where the shit starts or festers. If you think it's a fault of the society and parenting, hey everyone, stop making your kids suffer. Work ethic doesn't come with being overworked as a kid, work ethic is something you can rationally explain as being beneficial for the individual and the group, and I would dare say that work ethic is strongly correlated with physical health. You have to remember that the teens going on social media now are meeting a cesspool of nonsense that has been there for over a decade. The cesspool was long in the making before they showed up, and by older individuals, themselves arguably a product of our messed up society. Capitalism, marketing, fanning the flames of consumerism, maximising profitability — these things feed down into society and create bad parenting habits and bad habits in individual measures of self esteem as well. I happened to look at Instagram the other day someone was showing me their account on their phone, and the sheer amount of commercialisation was horrifying to behold. People of all ages will eventually be quite unable to determine art from advertisement, because they will have been bombarded with so much kitsch advertising that they'll equate the two. People are more or less just turning themselves into adverts as well. And those that pay attention to it feed into a sort of tribalism. Each brand forms a tribe of supporters. I've noticed this with fashion, food, music, and more. And if people are being pushed into social media, it still occurs to me that social media is pretty much the last place I would want kids to end up. People are impressionable and naive, and for them to end up somewhere where blatant falsities and conspiracies are viral just can't be good. I'm not suggesting free speech be stopped, but the problem is that journalism used to be profitable because it was a source of truth or at the very least a source of feasible opinions. But it has turned out to be more profitable to instead churn out bullshit, and profitability is all anyone cares about. And this is to say nothing of the implications of having all this data about people and what they do, flying around between tech-marketing giants that could probably afford to buy countries if there were an appropriate mechanism... Social media is nothing but bad news. It's not confined to kids either, you may have noticed my use of the word "people" not "kids". Many adults are just as impressionable and easily taken in by the same bullshit. They're just as glued to their mobile devices. They're just as dysfunctional. And they will go on to raise kids. Dysfunctional parents raising kids in a dysfunctional society results in what? Probably dysfunctional kids. Some will prove resistant and able to carve themselves their own identity and think critically in the face of it all, but they will probably be vilified or at least ignored or considered crazy.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Also, kids are smart and they can see what's going on. They compare notes on Facebook and realize that everything is pretty shitty. They see the memes put together by people who have and have not done the research that decry the condition of the environment, the condition of employment, the condition of their fellow man. And honestly, a lot of the negativity is simply true. There's a huge risk that we confuse the medium for the message... If people who watch television at the same rate that young people consume social media are more optimistic, it may not be because things aren't actually so bad... It may merely be that bad news drives away television advertising dollars and viewers. And not to inject too much of my own pessimism, but I'm not sure a governing body whose membership has a mean age of 64 (!) Is constitutionally ready to wrestle with the notion that long after they're dead, the legacy they will have left the younger generation is a very depressing one.
spamizbad 5y ago
The sort of environment you're describing only applies to a certain socio-economic strata of the United States; specifically upper and upper-middle class suburban America. Most children do not have that experience. I'm sure depression is more acute in that population but even poor teens are growing up with social media.
Karawebnetwork 5y ago
> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It's the War On Drugs all over again. We understand addiction enough to be able to say that a person's mental, emotional, and psychosocial states are the greatest causes of addiction and not the drug itself. Social media leads to an increase in a cortisol and dopamine. It also increased oxytocin by a large margin. Behaviors linked to its use are similar to that of other substances that increase those hormones directly.
- naravara 5y ago
  Social media also impacts people's mental, emotional, and psychosocial states as well as their relationships to many of the people in their communities. So it both hits the hormonal triggers AND the social support systems.
- avisser 5y ago
  I think I know what you are saying, but I think you're misusing the war on drugs as a rhetorical device. I think you're just talking about treating the symptoms of addicts rather than looking at the causes. The phrase "war on drugs," at least to me, is about all the collateral damage caused by criminalizing drugs. No one is criminalizing Facebook usage.
giarc 5y ago
But which of those things has changed over the past 30-40 years? All things being equal, it seems like social media has amplified the problems. Kids were always bullied, but they could escape it when they went home or left school. Now it follows them 24/7 from a device in their pocket.
Aunche 5y ago
> Kids are targeted. Sexual predators, gangs, fringe and mainstream ideologues looking to recruit followers, sports agents and talent scouts all have one thing in common: they want to exploit kids or sell them something. This was the same for a long time. The main difference now is that they are also very targeted by ads on social media.
fleddr 5y ago
How can you confidently say social media is not the source of the problem when the author of the PDF has researched it for as long as it exists and makes strong evidence-based claims? With his key point being the change being sudden and dramatic, which exactly aligns with the rise of social media in the timeline. He's one of the leading authorities on the matter, and your take is...nah, not true.
- glitcher 5y ago
  I wouldn't say OP's take is not true, but simply based on anecdotal evidence from a very small sample size. However, I still disagree with that take personally.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Agree. I didn't necessarily mean to attack those points, rather I'm annoyed by this entire discussion on HN. Clearly, most people didn't bother to read the PDF, check additional sources or do a basic background check on the author, whom is a well known authority on the matter. With just a headline as input, people confidently disagree with the conclusion. Completely dismissing the research. And by posting such disagreement in a way that is relatable to all parents and by wording it in a fancy way, it seems an insightful comment, so it gets traction. Superficially, it looks a healthy and intelligent discussion. In reality, almost all of it is way off and baseless. There's no truth finding. It's just Reddit with more steps and fancier language. The other half of comments is people projecting, with random thoughts on housing and inflation, as if a 12 y/o gives a shit about that.
- indymike 5y ago
  > He's one of the leading authorities on the matter, and your take is...nah, not true. My take is that social media is often a coping mechanism for mental health issues, and therefore in reports like this, correlates with mental health issues.
deleted 5y ago
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randomsearch 5y ago
> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, On HN that's likely to be a popular opinion, given how many members here probably work in social media corporations. I have lots of experience looking after relatives' kids in the UK and your points don't apply at all to them. It's anecdata vs anecdata, but yours doesn't refute the article, and given your opinion may well suit HN biases well (we don't want to think of our work as causing mental illness) then I think the top voted comment needs a stronger counter argument than "my kids are like this". It's not certain, but it looks pretty damn likely that social media has caused a dramatic increase in mental health problems amongst kids. Maybe teachers could contribute something here with their experience? Parents see such a tiny sample size but teachers see 1000s of kids over a few years.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  I'm surprised there's little discussion of how it affects people who aren't legal minors
  - theonlybutlet 5y ago
    Yeah, every now and then my wife takes a break when she starts getting this overriding feeling of being inadequate. Maybe it's a placebo or maybe not,but atleast it works.
  - spacechild1 5y ago
    My wife had to stop Facebook because it made her feel aweful.
    - tsol 5y ago
      I had to stop and I still gave a hard time. I can only imagine how hard it is for kids with poor impulse control
- ampear 5y ago
  Yeah, used to be a high school teacher until pretty recently. A lot of what OP says about stakes (or perceived stakes) is on point, but social media amplifies all of those stressors; I'm sure it's a recuperative outlet for some, but I don't think that's the average experience. My teacherly anecdata (from about a decade of teaching) led me to think (in no particular order): * Anxiety is way more prevalent and central to teen experience than most people realize. Definitely more so than I saw when I was a kid. You could say we use the language of mental health and anxiety to conceptualize experience more these days, and that's true to a degree, but it doesn't fully account for the prevalence or centrality. * Social media is absolutely an amplifier of the problem. You can really just ask a kid -- they're often very self-aware about it. Many will say something like, "Yeah, I hate it, but you have to be there" or "I hate it but I'm obsessed with it." * Further to the last point, kids are often a lot smarter about social media than we tend to give them credit for (and often a lot smarter about it than adults). Many are good at compartmentalizing online experience onto different platforms and different public or private or anonymous or real-name accounts -- since they've grown up with it, they've had more impetus to develop adaptive mechanisms. A lot of them create relatively private or close-knit digital spaces to retreat to when the big screaming public square gets overwhelming. My own kid's a toddler, and I definitely worry about what all of this will look like for him. I want to expose him to technology and teach him to use and understand it, but at this point I'm super leery of exposing him to YouTube/anything with a whiff of social media any time in the foreseeable future.
JPKab 5y ago
"1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work things out mentally. School, practice, volunteer, homework, bed, do it all again. This builds up to a very difficult to unwind ball of stress, anger, fear and despair." By "kids" you mean upper middle class suburban kids. Working class kids aren't overscheduled in this way. The bulk of kids in the US don't live the life you describe, and for the most part are under supervised. Your anecdotal information is tainted by the bubble you live in.
option 5y ago
That is a great summary. Social media isn’t the source but it is a multiplier of mental issues for kids. They are also manipulated purposely by our enemies. Take TikTok (owned by China). In China it promotes being a scientist and athlete to kids, off at 10pm. In USA it promotes how to set your farts on fire and drink your own piss.
pier25 5y ago
I'm not from the US and I've never lived there, but from what you're describing (except point 4) it seems like stress is one of the fundamental values in the US society. Stuff like not having public healthcare, exorbitant college costs, being fired at any moment, etc. It seems like kids are taught that early on with the stuff you're mentioning through the imposition of cultural values, rules, etc. I'm from Europe but I grew up and have lived in different cultures/countries which have a much more relaxed attitude towards life. Reading your comment actually made me anxious.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  A lot of these anxieties are psychologically self imposed and a cultural failing that focuses on materialism. In the US, you are considered a failure if you don't own your own mansion by European standards and achieve a high degree of professional success. Essentially being compared to a standard that only 1% of people will ever achieve.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    1 in 5 American children are food insecure. I think the problem is bigger than materialism.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      This number looks a lot scarier than it is. Food "insecurity" is an arbitrary threshold based largely on how people feel. Based on the same data, children very rarely go hungry in America. 0.6% of children skipped a single meal in a 12 month period. 0.9% of children got hungry at least once in a 12 month period. alternatively, you and your children are considered insecure if in a 12 month period they answer yes to the following: A parent lost weight Adult(s) cut size or skipped meals in 3 or more months Relied on few kinds of low-cost food to feed child(ren) Here is the actual USDA survey data that supports that fact: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-021-03320-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-021-03320-2 more background: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/measurement/#measurement https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/313486/ https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/313486/
listless 5y ago
I both agree and disagree here. My qualification is 3 teenage boys. 1. My kids have slack in their schedule. No, they aren't going to Ivy League schools. That's OK. They will survive somehow. 2. This is certainly true, but it's a complete joke to my kids. They aren't confused. They just wonder why all the adults are. Teenagers already think adults are incompetent. 3. This isn't true at my school. My kids have made egregious errors and the school takes it in stride. They know they are kids. They understand kids make mistakes. It's OK. We work through it and move on. The cops are not called and nothing is escalated. At most, the send us an email and we talk to our kids and that's the end of it. 3. I have no idea on this one. My children don't have social media accounts and never will on my watch. Even as teenagers they don't because they are not allowed. They could, yes, but they don't. However, I have boys, not girls. Perhaps that would be a non-starter if I had daughters.
- bmj 5y ago
  To add to your response to #2: kids are watching their parents behave poorly on social media, and spend their time with their noses in devices. When parents of older kids still have trouble "adulting," that is bound to trickle down to the kids. Certainly, I don't look like my dad did in his late 40s, but I also have a pretty firm grasp of the responsibilities I have. My kids also must avoid social media until they are 18. Heck, my older son had a feature phone until just two years ago, when he absolutely needed a smartphone for tools required for his position as a coxswain on his rowing team. Even then, he couldn't install apps, couldn't use a web browser. Since he turned 18, he's tried out some social media and other things, but mostly avoids them.
  - listless 5y ago
    We also held out on smart phones until our kids were 15 / 17 respectively. You held out even longer, so kudos for being able to do that. Our kids weren't mocked. They didn't feel left out. They didn't even complain because they had never had a smart phone so they literally had no idea what they were missing out on - which is nothing. They missed out on nothing. In the end, we wanted a way to keep in touch with them and see where they were as they began driving and working. That's NOT a healthy reason to get a kid a smartphone, BTW. That's just a reflection of my fear and insecurity.
meristohm 5y ago
I don't think it's the source of the problem either. Social media exacerbates the symptoms, like firearms (technology to kill things easily at a distance) make it easier to do serious harm, intentionally or accidentally.
Helitio 5y ago
I'm an adult and played around with TikTok half a year ago. It is shocking ly addictive without any real benefit. Watching funny or weird stuff for 2h or seeing opinions from some weird people did not add anything to my life I deleted the app to get out of it.
zionic 5y ago
Does anyone else feel like homework is stupid? They have your kid for the majority of the working day, that's more than enough time for work. When they're home the last thing they should be doing is school.
- Xamayon 5y ago
  Very. I only ever did the most important graded assignments when I was in school in early 00s and I came out fine(ish)! I hope it's similarly easy to get by with the minimum required these days. If nothing else, learning how and when to skip homework is good practice for future work/life balance~ ;)
- dotnet00 5y ago
  I don't think it's entirely stupid. Eg math problems solved in class would be solved as a group so everyone learns the process, and homework is for problems which use those same concepts, but require more careful thought. Most of my math skills were solidified by solving challenging problems like that at home. Simply learning the concepts in school was not enough to build a deep enough understanding, but adding in a good homework component took me from having trouble handling basic algebra to unwittingly deriving basic calculus in an exam when faced with problems I didn't realize weren't intended for me. Homework as just mechanical work intended only to take several hours per day is pretty stupid though. As another point, how many of us truly shut out work when at home? Many of us still end up spending a few off hours a week programming personal projects or just reading up on and learning new technologies. I think homework serves a similar function for kids.
marcosdumay 5y ago
About your #2, adults always lied about everything. School staff doubly so. And about your second #3, do you think it's more because of the media (including social one) or is it actually more? (Either one is a problem, but those are different problems.)
trasz 5y ago
Tolerance doesn’t mean tolerance towards everything. Some ideas - like flat earthism - are just stupid, but other - like Christian fundamentalism, the associated ideas about woman being not quite human (ie calling for abortion ban) are not only stupid, they are dangerous to society.
rendang 5y ago
(1) is an upper-middle class kid problem, I don't think your average public school B- student is dealing with that level of stress, so if that class stratum is also seeing plummeting mental health, I would look elsewhere for an explanation.
themitigating 5y ago
" Schools teach cultural tolerance while enforcing zero tolerance" The zero tolerance you mention refers to the punishment of a particular situation not that the school doesn't tolerate anything. It's not a contradiction just another use of the word As for diversity is good but blank, what blank?
rmbyrro 5y ago
No wonder home education (or homeschooling) is on the rise.
carabiner 5y ago
Your post refers to upper middle class kids in progressive schools, with dare I say helicopter parents, aiming for 4-year universities. I grew up like that. Your average hispanic kid in east LA has a very different life. You have to remember 99% of students are not heading to elite colleges, and even a majority aren't going to a 4-year university. Most are headed to 2-year programs, vocational schools, or trades.
gsibble 5y ago
That sounds accurate but truly horrible.
leksak 5y ago
Can't social media have played a part in 1-4 developing?
minusSeven 5y ago
All your arguments are very specific to yourself and is not necessarily indicative of "All teens". 20 years ago we didn't have the so called social media we have today. And back then we didn't have that problem atleast not to the extent we have today.
stef25 5y ago
#2 and #3.1 are quite specific to the US, afaik those don't really apply here in Europe. So it would be interesting to see a similar study done over here or indeed any other part of the world. #1 - don't have a say in this as a parent, like don't enroll your kid in those things if you / they don't like it? Or is there a lot of pressure? Personally I do think social media is more to blame than we realise. As a parent of toddlers I'm a bit worried about what the future will hold for them.
tekknik 5y ago
All of this except number 3 applied to adults as well, which means a couple things here. 1) How come adults don’t have the same issues with mental health? (I think we do) 2) If adults face the same issues, is this not life preparation? I’ll grab the lowest hanging fruit, cancel culture. How many careers were ruined because of this? Is all this control on speech causing damage we’re not even aware of yet?
thawaya3113 5y ago
None of this explains the global prevalence of this phenomenon. Everything you’ve mentioned is highly limited to the US. Asian countries, for example, have been reducing pressure on kids in terms of schooling and exams over the past decade or so.
stevofolife 5y ago
That's what happens when you allow adults and kids to play together in a highly unregulated environment, cough social media platforms cough. Please just build a social media platform just for kids. We don't need weird adults playing in the same sandbox as little kids. We also don't need helpless adults dancing in the same recreational teen dance. I'm surprised we even allow this to happen in the first place. Go figures.
zack-m 5y ago
I like idea (1), where kids don’t have mental space to sort thoughts out. Although I disagree that most kids are too busy for it. It may be that habitual social media use decreases kids’ free time, as they use social media/their phone as soon as they’re free, rather than sit, think, and process thoughts. I think this is also applicable to adults, although it’s effects could be less since smartphones weren’t prevalent when current adults were children.

hef19898 5y ago

I have to agree with most of your points, even if they seem to be US problems to a large extent. What social media does, so, IMHO is enabling and aggrevating those problems.

jliptzin 5y ago

Seems very plausible to me, I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion

dash2 5y ago

The article makes a strong claim, based on evidence, that social media and not anything else is the real culprit. Why is it wrong? What evidence supports your alternative proposed causes?

WithinReason 5y ago
The article points out correlation, which would be also explained by GP's comment
- treis 5y ago
  It's not even really correlated. The timing is off. Teen Social Media usage exploded in the early to mid 2000s and all the bad trends started 2010 or later. Plus, it was a seismic event. We went from little social media in 2000 to ubiquity by 2010. We should have seen one big rise to a new steady state not a continually increasing problem.
  - looknee 5y ago
    Social media definitely picked up 2000-2010, but the current manifestation of it didn't really lock in until ~2010 with the advent of the iPhone, instagram, snapchat, and all the other social media mobile apps that compelled people to constantly be sucked into it throughout the day rather than just whenever they were on or near a PC or laptop.
  - dash2 5y ago
    The graph here shows social media exploding from 2008, not before. https://www.worldline.technology/post/over-2-5-billion-people-use-social-media-this-is-how-it-has-changed-the-world https://www.worldline.technology/post/over-2-5-billion-peopl...
    - zeroonetwothree 5y ago
      This is showing all users worldwide. Surely US teens were ahead of the curve.

deleted 5y ago

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api 5y ago

I'll add one more that IMHO is huge: Youth culture seems dead. I remember being a teen and early-20 in the 90s-2000s and there were things like a hippie festival circuit, raves, goth culture, club culture, and so on. I keep hoping I'm just old and don't see it, but I remember back then it would seep out and get covered by the media and get chatted about on the nascent Internet. I see nothing like it today. Sure there are concerts and IDM shows and the like, but they don't have a mystique. It's just entertainment, not a coming of age subculture. Subculture is dead. I think this is a factor from personal experience. If I hadn't gotten into the rave/club culture in the late 90s I'd probably be dead from suicide. These cultures were where kids that did not exactly fit the popular mold would be able to go out, make friends, have experiences, and have a sense of belonging. I still miss it to this day.

BlargMcLarg 5y ago
Youth culture is still very much alive. It is primarily online or in school, and kept into circles largely out of sight of adults. You wouldn't come across them unless you happened to pass by, actively seek it out or cultures cross over. The above is further amplified by communication between children and adult strangers being seen as a big no-no.
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Genuinely and speaking in the kindest way: I think what you consider culture has aged out. Youth culture does exist, but has simply changed in a way that no longer appeals to your definition of culture. It’s also covered in the news, see: the Astroworld crowd crush. There’s new terminology (bussin, deadass, bet, etc.), new aesthetics (cottagecore), and new music consumption (the rise of kpop). And my knowledge is likely a older now (the teenagers I know are aging out into college).
- api 5y ago
  Is/was there a sense of being part of something special and exclusive in those scenes or was it just something fun to do? I didn’t say it in my OP above but I have heard young people bemoan a lack of interesting culture that is “theirs.” Hip hop, IDM, etc are all things from GenX or earlier, though obviously with a fresh coat of paint.

radarsat1 5y ago

> Diversity is good, but being ____ is bad. Can you fill in the blank? I actually have no idea what you are referring to here.

seydor 5y ago
any term taken from the 50% of diversity can fill that blank. i think they are referring to the cancellous but ostensibly tolerant culture
- radarsat1 5y ago
  Sorry, still lost. What is "the 50% of diversity"? Are you trying to say "white"? (Not sure that's 50%...) Not judging, literally just trying to understand the semantics here. This is some kind of code that I'm not getting.
  - seydor 5y ago
    yes that s a good example. "being proud to be black" is diverse, being proud to be white is not. There is definitely a level of doublespeak here, although i'm not sure if teens are really annoyed by it
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      That’s because we have a history of white supremacy in that country though. Similar to how in Germany you’ll get weird looks if you’re echoing nazi talking points; there’s an existing history and cultural context to that sort of thing in that country that the country now wants to not repeat.
      - usrn 5y ago
        There are effectively no Nazis in Germany but there are still ethnostates and genocide in Africa. I really don't see how White people are special here. EDIT: As usual with the social justice crowd: no discussion just downvotes. It makes a lot of us feel like there legitimately is no argument for your position.

throwaway787544 5y ago

It's not the only source of the problem, but social media is certainly a big one. Back in the day you didn't get rape threats from 50 anonymous accounts, or see pictures of you photoshopped sucking dicks, or feel like even more of a loser because you see in 4K detail how everybody else in class is having more fun outside of school. The internet is a threat and embarrassment and envy machine. You feel like you're constantly losing a battle to be relevant and have a good time, and you pathologically monitor feeds of other people's lives to try to stay ahead. When that doesn't work you lose yourself in mindless entertainment to avoid mental stress, also avoiding processing hard emotions. That's not all new, but it's at a level higher than ever before.

sharemywin 5y ago
Don't forget the 24/7 of it. No escape from bullies
roland35 5y ago
The internet was certainly a lot lower stakes and fun in the 90s and early 2000s. We had fun taking over the mic and singing karaoke in Yahoo chatrooms, watching albino black sheep, and playing flash games on kongregator. Even early Facebook was just making funny groups and posting in each other's walls. None of those activities really had me envying anyone else. I remember the first thing that made me feel worthless and unaccomplished was TED talks! I agree the problem is that it's hard to separate our online life from our offline life now.
- theclansman 5y ago
  Yeah same, the internet of early 2000s was a super cozy place for me, I remember everyone at first was like "wow it's so amazing how you can be someone else online," now the internet is just a giant window to your life. I remember my mom telling me to never share any info about me online, now everyone has their entire lives uploaded, full name, face picture, phone number, it's all there. Funny thing is it didn't actually get any less dangerous, people just decided that if everyone did it then there's no problem.

Spooky23 5y ago

I’ll counter that with the caveat that my kids are grade 5 and younger. We’re very involved in school and other activities - my wife is a PTO president and long time member, I coach youth sports and other community type programs. The kids we have seen mostly don’t engage with social media directly. But the ones who transition from cute 5-6 year olds to problematic 10-12 year olds have a key common factor. Tablets. You see kids as young as 2-3 hiding under a table engaged in some awful kiddie YouTube trash or a game. It ends up being a pacifier that induces anxiety, and I think that effect combined with social media is powerful and difficult for kids to manage. In terms of targeting, i actually think that things are better today. Through lawsuits and reporting, I learned that my childhood Boy Scout Troop and church was infested with pedophiles. The Boy Scout leader basically roamed the country and landed in NYC where he was eventually arrested for an unrelated rape. Today, there’s extensive background checking everywhere and it’s more difficult for a known offender to be in that position of trust. Sports and the college recruitment funnel are another thing hurting kids. I had a kid drop out of little league because his soccer academy coach flipped out that he, as a 10 year old, isn’t fully committed to soccer. So he’s playing “elite” soccer, at a cost of almost $4k, because that’s how you make the high school team.

gilbetron 5y ago
So you don't have a teen yet, then. Let me know how it goes when you have teens - the transition is crazy! (or for some kids, not)
trey-jones 5y ago
I think there are probably a multitude of factors, and both social media and too much generic screen time both are unhealthy in quantity. Many things are unhealthy in quantity after all. My oldest is 12, for context. Another factor that I think is really important is that I observe a lot of kids aren't given any responsibility at all. A lot of parents are control freaks. After all, it's easier for me to just do it myself than clean up the mess you make when you do it. 100 years ago you sent your 10 year old out to plow the field because that was the only way the family survived winter. I'm not saying those were better times, but those kids might have had the satisfaction of a job well done, and that's definitely good for mental health. What's also interesting is that many of the kids that do get responsibility are the ones in really crappy situations. That is, responsibility is forced on them because of circumstances. So these kids might do poorly in school, but end up with a better work ethic than rich kids with education. Or they end up dead or in jail. It's all messed up and there are no easy solutions. We all just need to do better.

raxxorraxor 5y ago

> The stakes are too high. View the wrong website on your chromebook and get referred to law enforcement Whoever implemented the surveillance of children should burn in hell. Since that probably doesn't exist the next prison with strong similarities should be chosen. You teach them that this kind of 24/7 surveillance is normal and I think they have enough problems with peer pressure through social media. You also teach a zero trust behavior. That can be good in a context and it can be really bad if it becomes learned cynicism. I could understand it until age 10 perhaps but at some point you want your kids to be independent. If they aren't bots by that age.

rapind 5y ago
> I could understand it until age 10 perhaps but at some point you want your kids to be independent. There's surveillance (parental supervision) and then there's "surveillance" (corporate psycos / overbearing governments). You want your kids to learn independence in a gradual and some what safe / controlled way (not too safe of course). There are still some things I don't want them exposed to at age 10. Unfortunately unsupervised internet isn't the best option here. Outsourcing it to tech is a really bad choice for sure. You need to be present as a parent to help them navigate and answer questions. If you aren't, then some youtuber (or worse) will do it for you. There's also an argument that being present as a parent has become harder than ever on average for economic reasons (double income, wage stagnation, inflation, etc.), and also the problem that many parents have no clue how to navigate the internet responsibly themselves.
- raxxorraxor 5y ago
  I agree completely, but blocking access is something different than surveilling their every click. At some point children will look at content the parents don't approve off and for many that can be important. You probably just have to remind yourself of your own childhood. Perhaps a few years longer than 10 stronger supervision is needed, granted, but at some point children profit from a little distance from their parents.
  - rapind 5y ago

dc-programmer 5y ago

I’m led to believe from my experience that social media and anxiety are two dark stars in a system spiraling into collapse. Social media causes anxiety; and anxiety increases social media use because we’ve been conditioned to dissociate negative thoughts by looking down into our screens. Engaging in one initiates a self perpetuating loop. When I have no stress (on rare occasions I’m able to detach from my problems), my desire to use my phone at all is non-existent. So I think you are right that’s it’s difficult to attribute causality when kids are constantly under stress. This study, in fact, appears to only assess correlation. Haidt also strikes me as someone guided by a maverick worldview (he’s a serious thinker usually and I’ll read anything he writes)

bdefore 5y ago

While the risks you bring up are valid, many of them are not new but amplifications of preexisting ones. In the past, children have largely managed to navigate these on their journey to adulthood. An unsolved problem with social media: it's an amplification of parking lot scuttlebutt. It will entice you to see catastrophe and share it with others. Perhaps despite your position on this, you are being affected more than you realize.

rapind 5y ago
Another amplification is that many many parents haven't even solved this problem for themselves. How are they going to help their kids navigate social media use when they're pissing about on Instagram, and retweeting outrage garbage, etc.
- bdefore 5y ago
  Indeed, one generation breaking the loop can support the next. Perhaps the antidote to social media is regularly sharing with your children: it doesn't matter what Alice or Bob think of you, ignore them and do what you enjoy most with this gift of life.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    I appreciate the sentiment, but question how realistic this is. Social media is where my kids interact with their peer group. By the time they hit their teens "sharing with dad" can't compete with that. I still try but I don't expect to have the power to break the cycle.
    - bdefore 5y ago
      I'm not a dad, so these are but grains of salt. What I meant was not that you have the power to force your children out of social media - they're gonna do what they want. More a lead-by-example life where you present an example to them of a life (a social one) that is enhanced by not reacting to what Alice and Bob think. They may see it as out-of-touch. They may change their minds years later. Or not. So you can break yourself out of the loop. And maybe your kids will be inspired by it. Or maybe it skips a generation.

scythe 5y ago

How do you reconcile (1,2) with the observation that similar health problems are occurring in other countries? Isn't (3) now heavily mediated by social media?

deleted 5y ago
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webmobdev 5y ago

> Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It is where they go to communicate and cope. I am sorry, that's an absolutely naive way to look at it. The fact is that it is being increasingly recognized that current Social Media networks are a stress inducers in kids and thus causing mental health issues in them. It is in fact not a great medium to communicate with someone too - if any kid prefers to talk to a friend through social media, than in person, it indicates social anxiety issues that need to be addressed, as otherwise the dependence on SM will actually aggravate the symptom. Not to mention parents should be teaching their kids not to share personal and private feelings on SM with questionable privacy policies (and lack of laws) that will one day be used against them publicly, directly or indirectly. > School, practice, volunteer, homework, bed, do it all again. This builds up to a very difficult to unwind ball of stress, anger, fear and despair. Sounds like all our childhood (with slight variations) before social media. Now add social media to this mix as one of the daily rituals / chores and you will begin to partly see how it can add to the stress in teens.

thenerdhead 5y ago

Your argument seems more positioned around public education than it does social media. This seems to be the same problem, new generation. TV in the 50s. Video games in the 90s. Now smartphones.

naravara 5y ago
Arguably TV was actually bad for kids. (And adults too, considering what kind of brain poisoning seems to accompany overconsumption of cable news).
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  That’s what I meant. Screen time in general. Suggestive screen time even more so.

zahllos 5y ago

I kinda agree and kinda disagree. My context is that I was youngish (late teens) when Facebook first arrived in force, and we'd had MySpace/MSN before that. My other context is that I have had an anxiety disorder for a while and was diagnosed with asperger's (we still say that in Europe) not long before I turned 30. I think I would always have had an issue, but I can quite directly point to the pressure cooker environment of getting into University. It is "not enough" simply to be good academically (which I was), you also needed to be a well rounded person, so you better use all your spare time doing activities to signal your well-roundedness! I don't feel I was explicitly trying to do this, but I also, being 17, didn't really say no - I mean how do you say no to a bunch of career advisors telling you "you have a chance to go to the top university!!!" etc. In such an environment, there's little respite, because there's always some kids telling you what they are doing. I don't think social media in and of itself is to blame, but what it does, in concert with phones, is remove any and all "downtime" from this messaging. There's an encouraged perfectionism, so young people are bombarded with images of how _great_ everyone else's life is. Not only are kids pushy/perfect in the canteen, but now they're pushy/perfect at 10pm on your mobile too. I struggled very badly with this at university. By that time I was a guy with panic attacks trying to keep up with a course, and I wanted to do all the normal stuff too like party. Of course since I _couldn't_ always do this it ended up being interpreted by most people as "let's not invite him". Social media wasn't directly responsible for this situation, but it is definitely a negative contributing factor. When you're far from home doom-scrolling facebook and all the stuff you missed that you're being left out of, this is really not helpful. So what I think is that social media will reinforce people who are naturally self-confident, but it will not help people who have issues. I suspect every experience is slightly different, but the inability to escape constant reminders of your own inadequacy, if interpreted that way, is a problem. Or if I can sum it up, it is simply the same old social/peer pressure, extended to 24/7. What helps a lot is a moderating influence, a reminder that it is OK to be just normal. I am also very, very glad I grew up when I did. All my early teenage years were free of any of this - we had MSN and texting and all the usual teenage angst, but you never had mobile doom-scrolling late at night - at best, you could text until you ran out of credit. I feel sorry for young girls particularly growing up with Instagram. However, I agree that social media is just one factor. Pushy parenting, or pushy schooling, is also a huge risk, as are all the traditional risks like teenagers being horrible bullies to each other. Addendum: the net impact of pushing me to go to a top university so hard was that I did not go to a top university, and dropped out of a pretty good university officially at the end of the first year, but unofficially I was "done" 6 months in anyway. Absolutely none of this career advice and "enrichment" activity helped me achieve any kind of potential, it just made me miserable and blow up with the stress of it.

weatherlite 5y ago

But what changed since 2009 to make what you say worse? Why 2009? (or whatever year the research says this all became worse in). It makes the case for social media = bad much stronger.

dtjb 5y ago

This sounds like how a bunch of old dudes on HN see the "teenager world," with very adult interpretations. I also have teenagers and have worked in schools. I think there are two truths that this comment overlooks; 1) today's youth, generally speaking, are pretty impressive and resourceful, and 2) being a teenager has always sucked. Just because their experience is different doesn't mean it's worse. Every generation of teenagers has known awkwardness, stress, and confusion. All of these studies about how x is a million times worse these days often can be attributed to more accurate data and measurements.

fleddr 5y ago
Fully wrong, which you would have known had you bothered to read it. Additional data does NOT account for the increase in mental health issues.
- t-3 5y ago
  Mental health being a thing probably does though. I'm 31, and even when I was a kid, mental health issues were very stigmatized. Nowadays, they're not. Why wouldn't you expect more mental health issues?
  - fleddr 5y ago
    The point is not that there isn't more willingness to report mental health issues, the point is that the research already accounted for that effect, and it doesn't change the conclusion.
- dtjb 5y ago
  I read the posted paper. Please point out where the authors factor in improvements to how we elicit, diagnose, and catalog mental health problems today. I was specifically looking for it and couldn't find it. The paper mentions the historical increase in 1.2 and 1.3 but offers no context or mitigation for long-term improvements in mental health reporting. Their NYTimes source in that section only goes back one decade and starts right off with an exploding upward trend. That could absolutely be attributed to improved reporting standards when the problem got attention, but the authors don't acknowledge any impact of reporting improvements. My parent comment was based on my experience as a teenager, compared to the very different way my teenage children are monitored and evaluated for mental health. It's night and day.

formerkrogemp 5y ago

> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. People whose livelihood depends on social media don't want the culpability of their company's work. C'est le monde.

indymike 5y ago
I don't work for a social media company. I do see my kids using social media with other kids to communicate and cope.

TomSwirly 5y ago

And don't forget the climate emergency.

wanda 5y ago

1. So drop the sports and volunteer work. Let them do schoolwork, homework and then free time. It is a myth that kids have to do all of these things. Sports should be extracurricular activity, i.e. outside education. You don't need to do sports to be healthy or to learn about team work. And volunteering? Volunteering is called community service if you're a criminal. Why punish kids like that? They will soon have to be grown ups, let them have some years to remember positively. 2. applies to adults too, and has always been true. 3. has always been true. Social media maybe somewhere frustrated kids go, but it is also a place where the shit starts or festers. If you think it's a fault of the society and parenting, hey everyone, stop making your kids suffer. Work ethic doesn't come with being overworked as a kid, work ethic is something you can rationally explain as being beneficial for the individual and the group, and I would dare say that work ethic is strongly correlated with physical health. You have to remember that the teens going on social media now are meeting a cesspool of nonsense that has been there for over a decade. The cesspool was long in the making before they showed up, and by older individuals, themselves arguably a product of our messed up society. Capitalism, marketing, fanning the flames of consumerism, maximising profitability — these things feed down into society and create bad parenting habits and bad habits in individual measures of self esteem as well. I happened to look at Instagram the other day someone was showing me their account on their phone, and the sheer amount of commercialisation was horrifying to behold. People of all ages will eventually be quite unable to determine art from advertisement, because they will have been bombarded with so much kitsch advertising that they'll equate the two. People are more or less just turning themselves into adverts as well. And those that pay attention to it feed into a sort of tribalism. Each brand forms a tribe of supporters. I've noticed this with fashion, food, music, and more. And if people are being pushed into social media, it still occurs to me that social media is pretty much the last place I would want kids to end up. People are impressionable and naive, and for them to end up somewhere where blatant falsities and conspiracies are viral just can't be good. I'm not suggesting free speech be stopped, but the problem is that journalism used to be profitable because it was a source of truth or at the very least a source of feasible opinions. But it has turned out to be more profitable to instead churn out bullshit, and profitability is all anyone cares about. And this is to say nothing of the implications of having all this data about people and what they do, flying around between tech-marketing giants that could probably afford to buy countries if there were an appropriate mechanism... Social media is nothing but bad news. It's not confined to kids either, you may have noticed my use of the word "people" not "kids". Many adults are just as impressionable and easily taken in by the same bullshit. They're just as glued to their mobile devices. They're just as dysfunctional. And they will go on to raise kids. Dysfunctional parents raising kids in a dysfunctional society results in what? Probably dysfunctional kids. Some will prove resistant and able to carve themselves their own identity and think critically in the face of it all, but they will probably be vilified or at least ignored or considered crazy.

shadowgovt 5y ago

Also, kids are smart and they can see what's going on. They compare notes on Facebook and realize that everything is pretty shitty. They see the memes put together by people who have and have not done the research that decry the condition of the environment, the condition of employment, the condition of their fellow man. And honestly, a lot of the negativity is simply true. There's a huge risk that we confuse the medium for the message... If people who watch television at the same rate that young people consume social media are more optimistic, it may not be because things aren't actually so bad... It may merely be that bad news drives away television advertising dollars and viewers. And not to inject too much of my own pessimism, but I'm not sure a governing body whose membership has a mean age of 64 (!) Is constitutionally ready to wrestle with the notion that long after they're dead, the legacy they will have left the younger generation is a very depressing one.

spamizbad 5y ago

The sort of environment you're describing only applies to a certain socio-economic strata of the United States; specifically upper and upper-middle class suburban America. Most children do not have that experience. I'm sure depression is more acute in that population but even poor teens are growing up with social media.

Karawebnetwork 5y ago

> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem. It's the War On Drugs all over again. We understand addiction enough to be able to say that a person's mental, emotional, and psychosocial states are the greatest causes of addiction and not the drug itself. Social media leads to an increase in a cortisol and dopamine. It also increased oxytocin by a large margin. Behaviors linked to its use are similar to that of other substances that increase those hormones directly.

naravara 5y ago
Social media also impacts people's mental, emotional, and psychosocial states as well as their relationships to many of the people in their communities. So it both hits the hormonal triggers AND the social support systems.
avisser 5y ago
I think I know what you are saying, but I think you're misusing the war on drugs as a rhetorical device. I think you're just talking about treating the symptoms of addicts rather than looking at the causes. The phrase "war on drugs," at least to me, is about all the collateral damage caused by criminalizing drugs. No one is criminalizing Facebook usage.

giarc 5y ago

But which of those things has changed over the past 30-40 years? All things being equal, it seems like social media has amplified the problems. Kids were always bullied, but they could escape it when they went home or left school. Now it follows them 24/7 from a device in their pocket.

Aunche 5y ago

> Kids are targeted. Sexual predators, gangs, fringe and mainstream ideologues looking to recruit followers, sports agents and talent scouts all have one thing in common: they want to exploit kids or sell them something. This was the same for a long time. The main difference now is that they are also very targeted by ads on social media.

fleddr 5y ago

How can you confidently say social media is not the source of the problem when the author of the PDF has researched it for as long as it exists and makes strong evidence-based claims? With his key point being the change being sudden and dramatic, which exactly aligns with the rise of social media in the timeline. He's one of the leading authorities on the matter, and your take is...nah, not true.

glitcher 5y ago
I wouldn't say OP's take is not true, but simply based on anecdotal evidence from a very small sample size. However, I still disagree with that take personally.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Agree. I didn't necessarily mean to attack those points, rather I'm annoyed by this entire discussion on HN. Clearly, most people didn't bother to read the PDF, check additional sources or do a basic background check on the author, whom is a well known authority on the matter. With just a headline as input, people confidently disagree with the conclusion. Completely dismissing the research. And by posting such disagreement in a way that is relatable to all parents and by wording it in a fancy way, it seems an insightful comment, so it gets traction. Superficially, it looks a healthy and intelligent discussion. In reality, almost all of it is way off and baseless. There's no truth finding. It's just Reddit with more steps and fancier language. The other half of comments is people projecting, with random thoughts on housing and inflation, as if a 12 y/o gives a shit about that.
indymike 5y ago
> He's one of the leading authorities on the matter, and your take is...nah, not true. My take is that social media is often a coping mechanism for mental health issues, and therefore in reports like this, correlates with mental health issues.

deleted 5y ago

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randomsearch 5y ago

> Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, On HN that's likely to be a popular opinion, given how many members here probably work in social media corporations. I have lots of experience looking after relatives' kids in the UK and your points don't apply at all to them. It's anecdata vs anecdata, but yours doesn't refute the article, and given your opinion may well suit HN biases well (we don't want to think of our work as causing mental illness) then I think the top voted comment needs a stronger counter argument than "my kids are like this". It's not certain, but it looks pretty damn likely that social media has caused a dramatic increase in mental health problems amongst kids. Maybe teachers could contribute something here with their experience? Parents see such a tiny sample size but teachers see 1000s of kids over a few years.

imbnwa 5y ago
I'm surprised there's little discussion of how it affects people who aren't legal minors
- theonlybutlet 5y ago
  Yeah, every now and then my wife takes a break when she starts getting this overriding feeling of being inadequate. Maybe it's a placebo or maybe not,but atleast it works.
- spacechild1 5y ago
  My wife had to stop Facebook because it made her feel aweful.
  - tsol 5y ago
    I had to stop and I still gave a hard time. I can only imagine how hard it is for kids with poor impulse control
ampear 5y ago
Yeah, used to be a high school teacher until pretty recently. A lot of what OP says about stakes (or perceived stakes) is on point, but social media amplifies all of those stressors; I'm sure it's a recuperative outlet for some, but I don't think that's the average experience. My teacherly anecdata (from about a decade of teaching) led me to think (in no particular order): * Anxiety is way more prevalent and central to teen experience than most people realize. Definitely more so than I saw when I was a kid. You could say we use the language of mental health and anxiety to conceptualize experience more these days, and that's true to a degree, but it doesn't fully account for the prevalence or centrality. * Social media is absolutely an amplifier of the problem. You can really just ask a kid -- they're often very self-aware about it. Many will say something like, "Yeah, I hate it, but you have to be there" or "I hate it but I'm obsessed with it." * Further to the last point, kids are often a lot smarter about social media than we tend to give them credit for (and often a lot smarter about it than adults). Many are good at compartmentalizing online experience onto different platforms and different public or private or anonymous or real-name accounts -- since they've grown up with it, they've had more impetus to develop adaptive mechanisms. A lot of them create relatively private or close-knit digital spaces to retreat to when the big screaming public square gets overwhelming. My own kid's a toddler, and I definitely worry about what all of this will look like for him. I want to expose him to technology and teach him to use and understand it, but at this point I'm super leery of exposing him to YouTube/anything with a whiff of social media any time in the foreseeable future.

JPKab 5y ago

"1. Kids have little or no slack in their schedule. This means very little freedom, and very little time to work things out mentally. School, practice, volunteer, homework, bed, do it all again. This builds up to a very difficult to unwind ball of stress, anger, fear and despair." By "kids" you mean upper middle class suburban kids. Working class kids aren't overscheduled in this way. The bulk of kids in the US don't live the life you describe, and for the most part are under supervised. Your anecdotal information is tainted by the bubble you live in.

option 5y ago

That is a great summary. Social media isn’t the source but it is a multiplier of mental issues for kids. They are also manipulated purposely by our enemies. Take TikTok (owned by China). In China it promotes being a scientist and athlete to kids, off at 10pm. In USA it promotes how to set your farts on fire and drink your own piss.

pier25 5y ago

I'm not from the US and I've never lived there, but from what you're describing (except point 4) it seems like stress is one of the fundamental values in the US society. Stuff like not having public healthcare, exorbitant college costs, being fired at any moment, etc. It seems like kids are taught that early on with the stuff you're mentioning through the imposition of cultural values, rules, etc. I'm from Europe but I grew up and have lived in different cultures/countries which have a much more relaxed attitude towards life. Reading your comment actually made me anxious.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
A lot of these anxieties are psychologically self imposed and a cultural failing that focuses on materialism. In the US, you are considered a failure if you don't own your own mansion by European standards and achieve a high degree of professional success. Essentially being compared to a standard that only 1% of people will ever achieve.
- diordiderot 5y ago
  1 in 5 American children are food insecure. I think the problem is bigger than materialism.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    This number looks a lot scarier than it is. Food "insecurity" is an arbitrary threshold based largely on how people feel. Based on the same data, children very rarely go hungry in America. 0.6% of children skipped a single meal in a 12 month period. 0.9% of children got hungry at least once in a 12 month period. alternatively, you and your children are considered insecure if in a 12 month period they answer yes to the following: A parent lost weight Adult(s) cut size or skipped meals in 3 or more months Relied on few kinds of low-cost food to feed child(ren) Here is the actual USDA survey data that supports that fact: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-021-03320-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-021-03320-2 more background: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/measurement/#measurement https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/313486/ https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/313486/

listless 5y ago

I both agree and disagree here. My qualification is 3 teenage boys. 1. My kids have slack in their schedule. No, they aren't going to Ivy League schools. That's OK. They will survive somehow. 2. This is certainly true, but it's a complete joke to my kids. They aren't confused. They just wonder why all the adults are. Teenagers already think adults are incompetent. 3. This isn't true at my school. My kids have made egregious errors and the school takes it in stride. They know they are kids. They understand kids make mistakes. It's OK. We work through it and move on. The cops are not called and nothing is escalated. At most, the send us an email and we talk to our kids and that's the end of it. 3. I have no idea on this one. My children don't have social media accounts and never will on my watch. Even as teenagers they don't because they are not allowed. They could, yes, but they don't. However, I have boys, not girls. Perhaps that would be a non-starter if I had daughters.

bmj 5y ago
To add to your response to #2: kids are watching their parents behave poorly on social media, and spend their time with their noses in devices. When parents of older kids still have trouble "adulting," that is bound to trickle down to the kids. Certainly, I don't look like my dad did in his late 40s, but I also have a pretty firm grasp of the responsibilities I have. My kids also must avoid social media until they are 18. Heck, my older son had a feature phone until just two years ago, when he absolutely needed a smartphone for tools required for his position as a coxswain on his rowing team. Even then, he couldn't install apps, couldn't use a web browser. Since he turned 18, he's tried out some social media and other things, but mostly avoids them.
- listless 5y ago
  We also held out on smart phones until our kids were 15 / 17 respectively. You held out even longer, so kudos for being able to do that. Our kids weren't mocked. They didn't feel left out. They didn't even complain because they had never had a smart phone so they literally had no idea what they were missing out on - which is nothing. They missed out on nothing. In the end, we wanted a way to keep in touch with them and see where they were as they began driving and working. That's NOT a healthy reason to get a kid a smartphone, BTW. That's just a reflection of my fear and insecurity.

meristohm 5y ago

I don't think it's the source of the problem either. Social media exacerbates the symptoms, like firearms (technology to kill things easily at a distance) make it easier to do serious harm, intentionally or accidentally.

Helitio 5y ago

I'm an adult and played around with TikTok half a year ago. It is shocking ly addictive without any real benefit. Watching funny or weird stuff for 2h or seeing opinions from some weird people did not add anything to my life I deleted the app to get out of it.

zionic 5y ago

Does anyone else feel like homework is stupid? They have your kid for the majority of the working day, that's more than enough time for work. When they're home the last thing they should be doing is school.

Xamayon 5y ago
Very. I only ever did the most important graded assignments when I was in school in early 00s and I came out fine(ish)! I hope it's similarly easy to get by with the minimum required these days. If nothing else, learning how and when to skip homework is good practice for future work/life balance~ ;)
dotnet00 5y ago
I don't think it's entirely stupid. Eg math problems solved in class would be solved as a group so everyone learns the process, and homework is for problems which use those same concepts, but require more careful thought. Most of my math skills were solidified by solving challenging problems like that at home. Simply learning the concepts in school was not enough to build a deep enough understanding, but adding in a good homework component took me from having trouble handling basic algebra to unwittingly deriving basic calculus in an exam when faced with problems I didn't realize weren't intended for me. Homework as just mechanical work intended only to take several hours per day is pretty stupid though. As another point, how many of us truly shut out work when at home? Many of us still end up spending a few off hours a week programming personal projects or just reading up on and learning new technologies. I think homework serves a similar function for kids.

marcosdumay 5y ago

About your #2, adults always lied about everything. School staff doubly so. And about your second #3, do you think it's more because of the media (including social one) or is it actually more? (Either one is a problem, but those are different problems.)

trasz 5y ago

Tolerance doesn’t mean tolerance towards everything. Some ideas - like flat earthism - are just stupid, but other - like Christian fundamentalism, the associated ideas about woman being not quite human (ie calling for abortion ban) are not only stupid, they are dangerous to society.

rendang 5y ago

(1) is an upper-middle class kid problem, I don't think your average public school B- student is dealing with that level of stress, so if that class stratum is also seeing plummeting mental health, I would look elsewhere for an explanation.

themitigating 5y ago

" Schools teach cultural tolerance while enforcing zero tolerance" The zero tolerance you mention refers to the punishment of a particular situation not that the school doesn't tolerate anything. It's not a contradiction just another use of the word As for diversity is good but blank, what blank?

rmbyrro 5y ago

No wonder home education (or homeschooling) is on the rise.

carabiner 5y ago

Your post refers to upper middle class kids in progressive schools, with dare I say helicopter parents, aiming for 4-year universities. I grew up like that. Your average hispanic kid in east LA has a very different life. You have to remember 99% of students are not heading to elite colleges, and even a majority aren't going to a 4-year university. Most are headed to 2-year programs, vocational schools, or trades.

gsibble 5y ago

That sounds accurate but truly horrible.

leksak 5y ago

Can't social media have played a part in 1-4 developing?

minusSeven 5y ago

All your arguments are very specific to yourself and is not necessarily indicative of "All teens". 20 years ago we didn't have the so called social media we have today. And back then we didn't have that problem atleast not to the extent we have today.

stef25 5y ago

#2 and #3.1 are quite specific to the US, afaik those don't really apply here in Europe. So it would be interesting to see a similar study done over here or indeed any other part of the world. #1 - don't have a say in this as a parent, like don't enroll your kid in those things if you / they don't like it? Or is there a lot of pressure? Personally I do think social media is more to blame than we realise. As a parent of toddlers I'm a bit worried about what the future will hold for them.

tekknik 5y ago

All of this except number 3 applied to adults as well, which means a couple things here. 1) How come adults don’t have the same issues with mental health? (I think we do) 2) If adults face the same issues, is this not life preparation? I’ll grab the lowest hanging fruit, cancel culture. How many careers were ruined because of this? Is all this control on speech causing damage we’re not even aware of yet?

thawaya3113 5y ago

None of this explains the global prevalence of this phenomenon. Everything you’ve mentioned is highly limited to the US. Asian countries, for example, have been reducing pressure on kids in terms of schooling and exams over the past decade or so.

stevofolife 5y ago

That's what happens when you allow adults and kids to play together in a highly unregulated environment, cough social media platforms cough. Please just build a social media platform just for kids. We don't need weird adults playing in the same sandbox as little kids. We also don't need helpless adults dancing in the same recreational teen dance. I'm surprised we even allow this to happen in the first place. Go figures.

zack-m 5y ago

I like idea (1), where kids don’t have mental space to sort thoughts out. Although I disagree that most kids are too busy for it. It may be that habitual social media use decreases kids’ free time, as they use social media/their phone as soon as they’re free, rather than sit, think, and process thoughts. I think this is also applicable to adults, although it’s effects could be less since smartphones weren’t prevalent when current adults were children.