10 ms·

Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress

32 points by ms7892 3y ago

viraptor 3y ago
I don't get why this is framed as "nowadays". Bad stuff happened all around millennials too. I can has cheeseburger and related sites were huge almost as soon as they launched in 2007. Then the same thing happened with much older generations as well - my parents and a lot of people from that generation repeated lines from old political comedy shows - basically memes before the internet. Kilroy was a WW2 meme. It's more "the same thing that always happened happens now, just increased by the presence of the internet".
- gchamonlive 3y ago
  > I don't get why this is framed as "nowadays". > "the same thing that always happened happens now, just increased by the presence of the internet". Didn't you answer yourself? It's not that teens never had stress before, the article explores how they are coping with stress increase.
  - tmn 3y ago
    Jonathan Haidt would argue that their coping mechanisms are not as well developed due to less unstructured play time (conflict resolution without appealing to an adult).
    - sidlls 3y ago
      I'd agree with that assessment and go further. Their ability to manage basic self-care is impaired. I hesitate to use my generation (Gen X) as an example, because I think we were on an extreme of borderline neglect, but there's something about Gen Z/alpha that just screams borderline abuse on the other end of that spectrum.
bitlax 3y ago
https://imgflip.com/i/8atqoy https://imgflip.com/i/8atqoy
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dekken_ 3y ago
I always thought it (memes) was about identifying your peer group. Comradery can lessen stress I'm sure.
gchamonlive 3y ago
> [...] Gen Z cannot go online or be a part of a social setting without being exposed to the sheer amount of horrors happening around the globe. You can’t turn on the television without being shown the terrors of school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles. Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regarding the pain of others". Basically as soon as we had the means to know what is happening around the world almost instantly (at least as soon as the information is properly formatted) we opened this exposure to the collective suffering of the entirety of the human race. It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. The article goes more into detail of the naturalization of suffering and the ideia that knowing the horrors by recounts and pictures we think we know the horrors themselves. It is very well worth the read.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  > It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors. I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to start pushing propaganda in the Windows start menu and Facebook feed or whatever.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    Agreed. There's a world of emotional difference between being philosophically and abstractly aware that the world has a lot of suffering, and spending each day reading/watching/listening up on the fresh new hell of the hour.
  - gchamonlive 3y ago
    Although I agree the scale in which we are exposed to shit on the internet is unprecedented, I disagree that we can run from it. Just go to a library. Start browsing. Eventually you will stumble upon a book about the Secons World War. Or about Rwanda... In the information era, you will be exposed accidentally to these kinds of stuff, and learning to recognize that and to develop strategies that prevent this exposure to numb us I think is much more effective than trying to run away from it.
switch007 3y ago
[flagged]
- jraph 3y ago
  > Nobody is forcing them Well, yes, the peer pressure and possibly the deep rooted insecurity you are talking about, and FOMO / the fear of isolation / being excluded. That's actually a big part of the issue. (as someone who has always resisted social networks except HN for various reasons, pretty sure it's a net positive, but I've known since the beginning that interactions happened there and I was excluded from these) I know I cut your sentence mid way, but I believe that reacting to stuff you see when you are there is probably only natural.
- safety1st 3y ago
  Early 40s man here who happily admits to indulging in grumpy, get-off-my-lawn rants from time to time. Honestly, you are right on every point, A) you don't need to live your life on social media, B) once you do you get sucked into an increasingly weird and unhealthy point of view & behaviors. The only way to win is not to play. Read books instead of doom scroll. Meet friends in meat space, don't text. If they get all unhinged about transgender Hamas rights or whatever the current Reddit/X tempest in a tea pot is, just go "Oh yeah that sounds serious, tell me more" and then change the topic after 60 seconds - that's going to be the upper limit of their attention span anyway. It can be done, you can unplug, you lose basically nothing by doing so, and you gain the world, life gets better. Unplugging from endless online BS, simply refusing to participate, improved my focus, attention span, made me smarter because I read books instead, freed up time to start hitting the gym which led to a 15 point drop in my blood pressure, the list of positive benefits goes on and on. I once was an optimistic futurist, I now have serious, serious reservations about the impact our industry has had on society in the 21st century. Tell the kids, it was better in the old days before Meta.
  - snats 3y ago
    I am currently in my 20s and decided to basically leave social media when I was 17. It was really difficult for the first couple of months because I was pretty isolated thanks to the pandemic. Now I can tell you that I see the benefits of not being in the loop of local toxic events.
i8comments 3y ago
Memes are the propaganda device of the 21st century. I remember the White House under Obama studied how to instrumentalize them, and their instrumentalization got much worse during Trump. There is quite a bit of persuassive science behind them. Memes do not meme well.
Aerbil313 3y ago
I encourage everyone to take a look at Jonathan Haidt’s blog https://www.afterbabel.com/archive?sort=top https://www.afterbabel.com/archive?sort=top . It’s phones.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
This isn't going to go over well but it needs to be said: The solution is obvious and simple...don't go online so much. It's not nourishment. It's not protection. It's not procreation. It's a fucking slot machine, and the odds will *never* ve in your favor. Succumbing to FOMO is not going to fix and/or change anything. The Truth is: The System is not designed for Us, it's designed for Them. (Note: There is a spectrum of Thems, choose your poison). To say the answer (i.e. memes) is more of the same (i.e., online is the problem) is naive at best. While I appreciate ppl trying to "self medicate" memes are an enabler. They are a beer & a shot sitting in front of an alcoholic. It's the inevidible waiting to happen. (Note: I'm not making light. Not at all. I have friends doing the 12 Steps. But having an internet hangover and going back for more and more...what is that???) The point is, memes as a "cure" will only last so long. Eventually it won't be funny any more. The solution is to realize The System is not looking out fir you, and to overcome the gravity of FOMO.
nonbirithm 3y ago
It's like imagine there's this force of nature that grants people astounding insight on all knowledge of the universe but causes the suicide rate to skyrocket because nobody is meant to handle that much information at once. But when asked what people do about their innate insight they can only respond "Oh, I can only manage my finances telepathically and none of my friends have time to speak mouth to mouth anymore, their mental energy is always focused on something now." And when asked about alternatives, "Oh, we can't just make it go away. We were born with it from the start and everyone relies on it to stay connected. And my children are given assignments where they exercise their PSI so they're obligated to use it. Then they spend a lot of time playing mind games after school with their friends. It will probably never go away, and I accept that." I'm starting to think that successive generations will both live and die by advancing technology. It's a runaway force that no single organization is in control of, and that we cannot study the long-term effects of until everyone relies on it daily. And just think about how many tech dependencies we don't have yet but are itching to give ourselves. A generation from now this could repeat itself when people generally consider LLMs useful enough to integrate into every fridge and ATM. Who will make that decision? It seems like when a few people make that decision for others, an acceptance loop begins where the tech is normalized over years until we stop asking ourselves how we got here at all. It no longer makes sense to wake up and see that you don't have a smartphone sitting on your nightstand anymore.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

32 points by ms7892 3y ago

I don't get why this is framed as "nowadays". Bad stuff happened all around millennials too. I can has cheeseburger and related sites were huge almost as soon as they launched in 2007. Then the same thing happened with much older generations as well - my parents and a lot of people from that generation repeated lines from old political comedy shows - basically memes before the internet. Kilroy was a WW2 meme. It's more "the same thing that always happened happens now, just increased by the presence of the internet".

gchamonlive 3y ago
> I don't get why this is framed as "nowadays". > "the same thing that always happened happens now, just increased by the presence of the internet". Didn't you answer yourself? It's not that teens never had stress before, the article explores how they are coping with stress increase.
- tmn 3y ago
  Jonathan Haidt would argue that their coping mechanisms are not as well developed due to less unstructured play time (conflict resolution without appealing to an adult).
  - sidlls 3y ago
    I'd agree with that assessment and go further. Their ability to manage basic self-care is impaired. I hesitate to use my generation (Gen X) as an example, because I think we were on an extreme of borderline neglect, but there's something about Gen Z/alpha that just screams borderline abuse on the other end of that spectrum.

bitlax 3y ago

https://imgflip.com/i/8atqoy https://imgflip.com/i/8atqoy

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dekken_ 3y ago

I always thought it (memes) was about identifying your peer group. Comradery can lessen stress I'm sure.

gchamonlive 3y ago

> [...] Gen Z cannot go online or be a part of a social setting without being exposed to the sheer amount of horrors happening around the globe. You can’t turn on the television without being shown the terrors of school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles. Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regarding the pain of others". Basically as soon as we had the means to know what is happening around the world almost instantly (at least as soon as the information is properly formatted) we opened this exposure to the collective suffering of the entirety of the human race. It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. The article goes more into detail of the naturalization of suffering and the ideia that knowing the horrors by recounts and pictures we think we know the horrors themselves. It is very well worth the read.

rightbyte 3y ago
> It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors. I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to start pushing propaganda in the Windows start menu and Facebook feed or whatever.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  Agreed. There's a world of emotional difference between being philosophically and abstractly aware that the world has a lot of suffering, and spending each day reading/watching/listening up on the fresh new hell of the hour.
- gchamonlive 3y ago
  Although I agree the scale in which we are exposed to shit on the internet is unprecedented, I disagree that we can run from it. Just go to a library. Start browsing. Eventually you will stumble upon a book about the Secons World War. Or about Rwanda... In the information era, you will be exposed accidentally to these kinds of stuff, and learning to recognize that and to develop strategies that prevent this exposure to numb us I think is much more effective than trying to run away from it.

switch007 3y ago

[flagged]

jraph 3y ago
> Nobody is forcing them Well, yes, the peer pressure and possibly the deep rooted insecurity you are talking about, and FOMO / the fear of isolation / being excluded. That's actually a big part of the issue. (as someone who has always resisted social networks except HN for various reasons, pretty sure it's a net positive, but I've known since the beginning that interactions happened there and I was excluded from these) I know I cut your sentence mid way, but I believe that reacting to stuff you see when you are there is probably only natural.
safety1st 3y ago
Early 40s man here who happily admits to indulging in grumpy, get-off-my-lawn rants from time to time. Honestly, you are right on every point, A) you don't need to live your life on social media, B) once you do you get sucked into an increasingly weird and unhealthy point of view & behaviors. The only way to win is not to play. Read books instead of doom scroll. Meet friends in meat space, don't text. If they get all unhinged about transgender Hamas rights or whatever the current Reddit/X tempest in a tea pot is, just go "Oh yeah that sounds serious, tell me more" and then change the topic after 60 seconds - that's going to be the upper limit of their attention span anyway. It can be done, you can unplug, you lose basically nothing by doing so, and you gain the world, life gets better. Unplugging from endless online BS, simply refusing to participate, improved my focus, attention span, made me smarter because I read books instead, freed up time to start hitting the gym which led to a 15 point drop in my blood pressure, the list of positive benefits goes on and on. I once was an optimistic futurist, I now have serious, serious reservations about the impact our industry has had on society in the 21st century. Tell the kids, it was better in the old days before Meta.
- snats 3y ago
  I am currently in my 20s and decided to basically leave social media when I was 17. It was really difficult for the first couple of months because I was pretty isolated thanks to the pandemic. Now I can tell you that I see the benefits of not being in the loop of local toxic events.

i8comments 3y ago

Memes are the propaganda device of the 21st century. I remember the White House under Obama studied how to instrumentalize them, and their instrumentalization got much worse during Trump. There is quite a bit of persuassive science behind them. Memes do not meme well.

Aerbil313 3y ago

I encourage everyone to take a look at Jonathan Haidt’s blog https://www.afterbabel.com/archive?sort=top https://www.afterbabel.com/archive?sort=top . It’s phones.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

This isn't going to go over well but it needs to be said: The solution is obvious and simple...don't go online so much. It's not nourishment. It's not protection. It's not procreation. It's a fucking slot machine, and the odds will *never* ve in your favor. Succumbing to FOMO is not going to fix and/or change anything. The Truth is: The System is not designed for Us, it's designed for Them. (Note: There is a spectrum of Thems, choose your poison). To say the answer (i.e. memes) is more of the same (i.e., online is the problem) is naive at best. While I appreciate ppl trying to "self medicate" memes are an enabler. They are a beer & a shot sitting in front of an alcoholic. It's the inevidible waiting to happen. (Note: I'm not making light. Not at all. I have friends doing the 12 Steps. But having an internet hangover and going back for more and more...what is that???) The point is, memes as a "cure" will only last so long. Eventually it won't be funny any more. The solution is to realize The System is not looking out fir you, and to overcome the gravity of FOMO.

nonbirithm 3y ago

It's like imagine there's this force of nature that grants people astounding insight on all knowledge of the universe but causes the suicide rate to skyrocket because nobody is meant to handle that much information at once. But when asked what people do about their innate insight they can only respond "Oh, I can only manage my finances telepathically and none of my friends have time to speak mouth to mouth anymore, their mental energy is always focused on something now." And when asked about alternatives, "Oh, we can't just make it go away. We were born with it from the start and everyone relies on it to stay connected. And my children are given assignments where they exercise their PSI so they're obligated to use it. Then they spend a lot of time playing mind games after school with their friends. It will probably never go away, and I accept that." I'm starting to think that successive generations will both live and die by advancing technology. It's a runaway force that no single organization is in control of, and that we cannot study the long-term effects of until everyone relies on it daily. And just think about how many tech dependencies we don't have yet but are itching to give ourselves. A generation from now this could repeat itself when people generally consider LLMs useful enough to integrate into every fridge and ATM. Who will make that decision? It seems like when a few people make that decision for others, an acceptance loop begins where the tech is normalized over years until we stop asking ourselves how we got here at all. It no longer makes sense to wake up and see that you don't have a smartphone sitting on your nightstand anymore.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]