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As a parent. It's a hard topic. And not black and white. For the 10+ crowd, the days of kids roaming the streets, finding their friends and playing are gone. I

As a parent. It's a hard topic. And not black and white. For the 10+ crowd, the days of kids roaming the streets, finding their friends and playing are gone. I think the causes for this are complicated, and social media (and screens) are just one part of the puzzle. Consider a few things: 1. The percentage of households with kids has gradually declined over time, while the percentage of retirees has gone up. So you just generally have an older population. Not everyone lives in a neighborhood where kids can roam and likely some other, known, parent will keep an eye on them. 2. Tolerance for children (esp teenagers) IMO has declined. Understandably, they... can be obnoxious :). There used to be more IRL activities for teens. I've seen, however, even movie theaters don't want ANY minors there without a parent. There's not a shopping mall to drop them off at. And the pandemic has REALLY hurt this. 3. The pressure for teenagers to fill their time with activities is very high. The parents feel to perform / get into whatever good college / do well in life, they need to have their time spoken for by a large number of activities. Helicopter parenting has really taken new heights in the last decade. Combining these, society, for a myriad of reasons, doesn't have a lot of opportunities for teenagers to truly be independent. And that too has been cited as a cause of mental health issues (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230309101330.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230309101330.h...). It's a doom spiral too, the fewer kids that are free roaming, the less likely your own kid, when kicked out of the house, will find friends to play with. The less likely other parents will be conducive to your kid knocking on their door, etc etc. So without kids roaming the streets, how do they connect with their friends? They use some kind of screen / video games / social media / etc. And depriving them of this can mean limiting an outlet of some degree of independence. Case in point, my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. This not the same as scrolling TikTok / Instagram. But it's a degree of independence somewhat away from parental eyes. Should I ban them from screens, and send them to ride bikes out in a world with few other kids? Or let them have this niche of a social / independence outlet?

hudsonjr 4y ago
I wonder if some of the lack of teenager tolerance has to do with larger congregations of teens due to social media. When I was young with no cell phone it was a non-trivial exercise to get a few friends to coordinate to meet and go to a movie. Now you can start with 4 or 5 people, and if their friends and friends of friends start to get looped in then you have a larger group. Now instead of 0 or 1 obnoxious kids in a group, you may have 3-4 obnoxious ones and a much larger group.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Before cell phones, we didn't worry about making group plans. Everyone just went to the movies or the mall or the Taco Bell parking lot and everyone else went to.
screye 4y ago
This is the inevitable conclusions of stranger danger and car-based suburbanization. When people only access the world via car and avoid walking around, they never build familiarity with their own neighborhood. All locations worth stepping out of the car for, are miles away and behind security gates. Low density also means that 1 stranger can actually do damage, unlike dense areas where there are at least a few strangers within earshot. Suburbanization inevitably caused stranger danger. Once public trust was eroded, only known parents could be trusted to supervise children. The coldness towards strangers goes both ways. 'Strange children' near you were seen as something between an annoyance and a liability. With multi-income households, the only location where children were safe and tolerated, was friends houses or ones with paid strict supervision. So, the kids retreated into indoor activities or found themselves at mandatory hobbies, a term that sounds dystopian even as I type it out. Social media has virally encroached into every aspect of these children's lives. But, lets not pretend that North American society didn't lay down ground work, fertilizer and all, for this travesty to take place. People are the river and built infrastructure is the path of least resistance. Once built, the river will meander down that path, irrespective of human effort to affect outcomes counter to the built infrastructure. ___ I grew up in a dense Asian city famous for a culture of 'leaving you alone = independence' (in comparison to the rest of the nation). Even then, I knew the faces of every small store owner within 5 minutes of my house and vice-verse, and that's because I walked by them everyday. When everyone leaves home from the same door (the building exit) and walks back in through the same door, you inevitably have small talk and get to know your neighbors. The public ground was nearby, so all parents would swing by to check-in on kids as they passed by during the day. This meant that the older kids were familiar and parents felt confident in leaving their younger children under their supervision, in return for complete freedom in terms of how the kids spent their time. North America has no thirds spaces, thinning mom-n-pops stores and a lack of public shared spaces. North America seems to have completely forgotten that it takes a village to raise a child.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  This doesn't explain why teenage girls are suffering from increased mental health issues not only in the USA, but also in other Anglosphere countries, Nordic countries... (etc. ?)
fsociety 4y ago
Excuse me we came here to use data to dog on social media not solve actual problems. It sounds like you have a very healthy relationship with your son!
max51 4y ago
>Case in point, my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. This not the same as scrolling TikTok / Instagram. But it's a degree of independence somewhat away from parental eyes. I think not enough people here are understanding the distinction between a communication tool (eg. discord), doom-scrolling platform like tiktok, and video games. A discord server can be very beneficial for your kids and allow them to coordinate activities. A lot of cool experiences I had in high school and friendships were a direct result of MSN Messenger. A shared multiplayer server like minecraft is also a great way to make friends and learn some social skills. I don't think it's as good as a physical sport activity, but it's far better than a lot solo hobbies traditionally considered "good" for them.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Yep. Even for video games in my teens I created and led a clan. It was very social and constructive for me.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  The lumping of these together might help explain the gender imbalance in the mental health effect. It's pretty well documented that boys play more videogames, especially going into the later teen years, and that's more conducive to smaller, tight-knit (today, likely discord) communities. If the time being spent on a discord call with your friends playing Minecraft are being counted as social media use the same way doomscrolling Instagram or TikTok is, then that's going to obscure the social media influence on mental health outcomes. It doesn't seem too hard to control for this, but I struggle to find any studies that meaningfully disambiguate the two.
  - max51 4y ago
    >The lumping of these together might help explain the gender imbalance in the mental health effect. I never thought of it that way but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. It would also explain why the only people I know who developed IT skills on their own were boys. Running videos games or trying to create them back in 2004 required you to learn a lot about how computers work and how to use them. There were no free-to-play easy-to-install AAA games like we have today. We didn't learn it because the process was fun, we did it because it was required if we wanted to play games. If all you do is browse the web, you don't need any IT skills. I'm sure there are many security specialists now who started their career by trying to remove the virus that came with a pirated game on their parent's computer in high school. It's crazy how fast kids learn on their own with the right motivation.
codegeek 4y ago
Great points. I was just in Spain (Madrid) and noticed teenagers playing in parks and even on swings etc along with small children. I never see that in American parks, never. I don't know the mental happiness of teenagers in Spain/Madrid in general but my wife and I thought it was interesting.
- bratwurst3000 4y ago
  Reading the posts here I can say this seems to be an American problem. Kids here in Europe are still way more fucked up then in the 90s but still the states seem like a shithole of loneliness for kids.
- mkaic 4y ago
  Not to contradict your point (which I agree with!), but I as someone who was recently an American teenager I think you might be happy to know that me and my friends used to quite enjoy going to the park and playing on the swingsets! Though we were certainly the exception, not the rule.
  - codegeek 4y ago
    Good to hear. I would love to see more of it.
hackerlight 4y ago
> Case in point, my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. This not the same as scrolling TikTok / Instagram. But it's a degree of independence somewhat away from parental eyes. Should I ban them from screens, and send them to ride bikes out in a world with few other kids? Or let them have this niche of a social / independence outlet? Haidt says male use of social media in the form of gaming is categorically different to Instagram/Snapchat/Tiktok-type social media use. Because that social activity is less about performing for the camera and bullying and social comparisons, so he doesn't see it to be a problem in need of a ban.
fnimick 4y ago
> The pressure for teenagers to fill their time with activities is very high. The parents feel to perform / get into whatever good college / do well in life, they need to have their time spoken for by a large number of activities. Helicopter parenting has really taken new heights in the last decade. This is the big one, in conjunction with other comments about how there's "no tolerance for failure" anymore. You have to be on track to be a top tier performer by the time you're 10 or else you will never make it back up (or at least that's how a lot of people feel). Plus there's a sense that either you make it to the top, or you might as well be at the bottom, because the middle class is rapidly vanishing. The pressure is higher, and starts younger, than ever before.
BlueTemplar 4y ago
As already pointed out on the other blog posts, pressure to "get into whatever good college" can't be the explanation when it is only affecting a statistically insignificant minority : even in the USA, roughly half of people don't go to college, and roughly the other half is getting accepted into one that is not hard to get into.
jeremyjh 4y ago
A lot of this rings true but is this a theory that explains a sharp bend in 2012?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  There is no sharp bend in 2012. I can easily interpret it as an gradual increase more from 2010 or so. Eyeballing charts is not science.
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    Call it whatever you like, it still has to be explained for a potential cause to be viable.
    - revelio 4y ago
      Not necessarily. It depends on whether this increase is just natural long term variance. The charts Haidt shows are very truncated. Data about suicides exists for far longer than the lines he shows.
1letterunixname 4y ago
> For the 10+ crowd, the days of kids roaming the streets, finding their friends and playing are gone. I think the causes for this are complicated, and social media (and screens) are just one part of the puzzle. Blood hell. Kids will be like zoo exhibits of the last of their species. Seems in everyone's benefit that they are well-socialized, street smart, well-educated, AND not make virtually the same mistakes everyone else are making. We can rapidly go from the myth of "overpopulation" to population crash in as short as a generation.
nirui 4y ago
> my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. Maybe a little off-topic, but I think both choices made by your kid are good if not the best. Discord is relatively a private place with specific usage (chat and game). The social pressure it creates should be far less than what's been created by a "proper" public-publishing social media network such as TikTok or Instagram. On top of that, a small friend circle might have natural tendency to guard against outsiders. On the Minecraft side, assuming it's just a server where your kid and his friends play on, then it should have the same effect as a small friend circle. Which means far less unexpected attack (less chance of generating hate) while keeping the benefit of sharing their creations/creativity with others. Of course, you still have to know your kid and his friend to ensure the safety of the entire circle. But that's far more controllable than just letting your kid free-playing on TikTok Instagram etc (and get hurt by a total stranger who don't gives a damn care).

hudsonjr 4y ago

I wonder if some of the lack of teenager tolerance has to do with larger congregations of teens due to social media. When I was young with no cell phone it was a non-trivial exercise to get a few friends to coordinate to meet and go to a movie. Now you can start with 4 or 5 people, and if their friends and friends of friends start to get looped in then you have a larger group. Now instead of 0 or 1 obnoxious kids in a group, you may have 3-4 obnoxious ones and a much larger group.

hgsgm 4y ago
Before cell phones, we didn't worry about making group plans. Everyone just went to the movies or the mall or the Taco Bell parking lot and everyone else went to.

screye 4y ago

This is the inevitable conclusions of stranger danger and car-based suburbanization. When people only access the world via car and avoid walking around, they never build familiarity with their own neighborhood. All locations worth stepping out of the car for, are miles away and behind security gates. Low density also means that 1 stranger can actually do damage, unlike dense areas where there are at least a few strangers within earshot. Suburbanization inevitably caused stranger danger. Once public trust was eroded, only known parents could be trusted to supervise children. The coldness towards strangers goes both ways. 'Strange children' near you were seen as something between an annoyance and a liability. With multi-income households, the only location where children were safe and tolerated, was friends houses or ones with paid strict supervision. So, the kids retreated into indoor activities or found themselves at mandatory hobbies, a term that sounds dystopian even as I type it out. Social media has virally encroached into every aspect of these children's lives. But, lets not pretend that North American society didn't lay down ground work, fertilizer and all, for this travesty to take place. People are the river and built infrastructure is the path of least resistance. Once built, the river will meander down that path, irrespective of human effort to affect outcomes counter to the built infrastructure. ___ I grew up in a dense Asian city famous for a culture of 'leaving you alone = independence' (in comparison to the rest of the nation). Even then, I knew the faces of every small store owner within 5 minutes of my house and vice-verse, and that's because I walked by them everyday. When everyone leaves home from the same door (the building exit) and walks back in through the same door, you inevitably have small talk and get to know your neighbors. The public ground was nearby, so all parents would swing by to check-in on kids as they passed by during the day. This meant that the older kids were familiar and parents felt confident in leaving their younger children under their supervision, in return for complete freedom in terms of how the kids spent their time. North America has no thirds spaces, thinning mom-n-pops stores and a lack of public shared spaces. North America seems to have completely forgotten that it takes a village to raise a child.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
This doesn't explain why teenage girls are suffering from increased mental health issues not only in the USA, but also in other Anglosphere countries, Nordic countries... (etc. ?)

fsociety 4y ago

Excuse me we came here to use data to dog on social media not solve actual problems. It sounds like you have a very healthy relationship with your son!

max51 4y ago

>Case in point, my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. This not the same as scrolling TikTok / Instagram. But it's a degree of independence somewhat away from parental eyes. I think not enough people here are understanding the distinction between a communication tool (eg. discord), doom-scrolling platform like tiktok, and video games. A discord server can be very beneficial for your kids and allow them to coordinate activities. A lot of cool experiences I had in high school and friendships were a direct result of MSN Messenger. A shared multiplayer server like minecraft is also a great way to make friends and learn some social skills. I don't think it's as good as a physical sport activity, but it's far better than a lot solo hobbies traditionally considered "good" for them.

therealdrag0 4y ago
Yep. Even for video games in my teens I created and led a clan. It was very social and constructive for me.
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
The lumping of these together might help explain the gender imbalance in the mental health effect. It's pretty well documented that boys play more videogames, especially going into the later teen years, and that's more conducive to smaller, tight-knit (today, likely discord) communities. If the time being spent on a discord call with your friends playing Minecraft are being counted as social media use the same way doomscrolling Instagram or TikTok is, then that's going to obscure the social media influence on mental health outcomes. It doesn't seem too hard to control for this, but I struggle to find any studies that meaningfully disambiguate the two.
- max51 4y ago
  >The lumping of these together might help explain the gender imbalance in the mental health effect. I never thought of it that way but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. It would also explain why the only people I know who developed IT skills on their own were boys. Running videos games or trying to create them back in 2004 required you to learn a lot about how computers work and how to use them. There were no free-to-play easy-to-install AAA games like we have today. We didn't learn it because the process was fun, we did it because it was required if we wanted to play games. If all you do is browse the web, you don't need any IT skills. I'm sure there are many security specialists now who started their career by trying to remove the virus that came with a pirated game on their parent's computer in high school. It's crazy how fast kids learn on their own with the right motivation.

codegeek 4y ago

Great points. I was just in Spain (Madrid) and noticed teenagers playing in parks and even on swings etc along with small children. I never see that in American parks, never. I don't know the mental happiness of teenagers in Spain/Madrid in general but my wife and I thought it was interesting.

bratwurst3000 4y ago
Reading the posts here I can say this seems to be an American problem. Kids here in Europe are still way more fucked up then in the 90s but still the states seem like a shithole of loneliness for kids.
mkaic 4y ago
Not to contradict your point (which I agree with!), but I as someone who was recently an American teenager I think you might be happy to know that me and my friends used to quite enjoy going to the park and playing on the swingsets! Though we were certainly the exception, not the rule.
- codegeek 4y ago
  Good to hear. I would love to see more of it.

hackerlight 4y ago

> Case in point, my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. This not the same as scrolling TikTok / Instagram. But it's a degree of independence somewhat away from parental eyes. Should I ban them from screens, and send them to ride bikes out in a world with few other kids? Or let them have this niche of a social / independence outlet? Haidt says male use of social media in the form of gaming is categorically different to Instagram/Snapchat/Tiktok-type social media use. Because that social activity is less about performing for the camera and bullying and social comparisons, so he doesn't see it to be a problem in need of a ban.

fnimick 4y ago

> The pressure for teenagers to fill their time with activities is very high. The parents feel to perform / get into whatever good college / do well in life, they need to have their time spoken for by a large number of activities. Helicopter parenting has really taken new heights in the last decade. This is the big one, in conjunction with other comments about how there's "no tolerance for failure" anymore. You have to be on track to be a top tier performer by the time you're 10 or else you will never make it back up (or at least that's how a lot of people feel). Plus there's a sense that either you make it to the top, or you might as well be at the bottom, because the middle class is rapidly vanishing. The pressure is higher, and starts younger, than ever before.

BlueTemplar 4y ago

As already pointed out on the other blog posts, pressure to "get into whatever good college" can't be the explanation when it is only affecting a statistically insignificant minority : even in the USA, roughly half of people don't go to college, and roughly the other half is getting accepted into one that is not hard to get into.

jeremyjh 4y ago

A lot of this rings true but is this a theory that explains a sharp bend in 2012?

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
There is no sharp bend in 2012. I can easily interpret it as an gradual increase more from 2010 or so. Eyeballing charts is not science.
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  Call it whatever you like, it still has to be explained for a potential cause to be viable.
  - revelio 4y ago
    Not necessarily. It depends on whether this increase is just natural long term variance. The charts Haidt shows are very truncated. Data about suicides exists for far longer than the lines he shows.

1letterunixname 4y ago

> For the 10+ crowd, the days of kids roaming the streets, finding their friends and playing are gone. I think the causes for this are complicated, and social media (and screens) are just one part of the puzzle. Blood hell. Kids will be like zoo exhibits of the last of their species. Seems in everyone's benefit that they are well-socialized, street smart, well-educated, AND not make virtually the same mistakes everyone else are making. We can rapidly go from the myth of "overpopulation" to population crash in as short as a generation.

nirui 4y ago

> my son and his friends have a small discord server. And they play minecraft on a shared server. Maybe a little off-topic, but I think both choices made by your kid are good if not the best. Discord is relatively a private place with specific usage (chat and game). The social pressure it creates should be far less than what's been created by a "proper" public-publishing social media network such as TikTok or Instagram. On top of that, a small friend circle might have natural tendency to guard against outsiders. On the Minecraft side, assuming it's just a server where your kid and his friends play on, then it should have the same effect as a small friend circle. Which means far less unexpected attack (less chance of generating hate) while keeping the benefit of sharing their creations/creativity with others. Of course, you still have to know your kid and his friend to ensure the safety of the entire circle. But that's far more controllable than just letting your kid free-playing on TikTok Instagram etc (and get hurt by a total stranger who don't gives a damn care).