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Almost half of British teens feel addicted to social media – study
- brohoolio 3y agoI’m sure they are. What’s the screentime per day for the cohort? 2 hours? 4 hours? 8 hours?
- aeraea 3y ago[dead]
- TSiege 3y agoShould we have blame the parents for kids smoking cigarettes and juuls when are corporations targeting them as a means to get rich? Obviously parents need to get involved to correct things, but blaming them for the outcomes of another party's schemes is cruel
- taylodl 3y agoIt also encourages helicopter parenting - which has its own downsides.
- aeraea 3y ago[dead]
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoThat seems unreasonable if the parents have made their views on smoking well known to the kids, which then leads to the kids making efforts to hide their habit from their parents. It's fair enough to blame parents for behaviour that they encourage, but not so for behaviour that they are unaware of.
- NickC25 3y agoPartially. There are things we can clearly blame corporations for, and things we can clearly blame parents for. Social media addiction is something parents need to fix, but corporations are not helping. However, it's not inherently the fault of corporations, just like kids smoking cigs. I don't blame parents for being overworked, exhausted, and not having the time to devote to their kids due to the factors I mentioned. When costs of living skyrocket and costs of raising kids becomes completely unaffordable, I don't blame parents for working more and more just to put food on the table. They also need their own time to recharge and be able to breadwinners without completely burning out. They aren't completely aware of everything their kids do, or what the cool kids in school are doing (and why their kids want to copy said cool kids). It is the parent's job to educate their kids, yes, but sometimes parents are too late to the party to actually effect change. I don't blame corporations for acting in their best interests, and the best interests of their shareholders. Businesses have to make money. Not everything in the business world has to be ethical, good for society, or morally just, no matter how much we'd like it to be. There is no magic bullet, but imposing restrictions on corporations seems to be a good start.
- flfdslkfdsla 3y agoIt is troubling just how many intelligent, educated parents I see are perfectly happy to give children and babies a tablet or phone to placate them. On the other hand, have you thought about the difficulties of handling this as a principled parent? You can either turn your child into a social pariah during key developmental years, or spend hours of your and their lives trying to regulate a device that is designed to capture and waste your attention (something I personally rejected as an equal waste of my time and effort, when I took my journey to no smartphone), or do what almost every other parent does, and just give your kids a smartphone.
- jclardy 3y agoI think the problem likely goes deeper - most of the parents are likely smartphone addicted already, so they see no issue with it. Or they may see the issue with their child's usage of a phone, but they justify their own constant need for using a phone with it being "for work" or what have you and the child is just following in their example as they constantly see them pulling out their phone. I'm not a parent yet, and I don't have any answers..but as a 90's kid I can't imagine what it is like now growing up with access to all the world's information in your pocket.
- KineticLensman 3y agoI recently saw my niece with her six month old child. Obviously the baby doesn't have a phone yet, but they seemed fascinated by their mum's obvious interest in her phone.
- arp242 3y ago> I can't imagine what it is like now growing up with access to all the world's information in your pocket. "All the world's information" isn't really the problem; it's having all the world's bullshit, vitriol, manipulation, and general madness in your pocket.
- twiclo 3y agoI agree with your sentiment but at a certain point it's just impossible for a few parents to push back on the behemoth that social media has become with children.
- vidarh 3y agoThey've also not talked to any kids and tried to ascertain which proportion of the kids involved 1) see it as a problem, and/or 2) exhibit behavior that suggests it might be a problem. It's pure speculation until they've actually asked follow-up questions. An article about the results of Dr Rich, quoted towards the end, sounds like it'd have had far more meat on it, but given it's The Guardian they'd lose the hook of it being about "almost half of British teens".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- itslennysfault 3y ago...and the other half lied or are in denial.
- andy_ppp 3y agoCan we switch social media off for 8 hours per day, 9-5pm maybe. I think it would make everyone happier and I bet nobody would miss it.
- tempest_ 3y agoI remember when stores used to be closed on Sundays. We can close social media on Sundays and reopen monday morning aha
- ben_w 3y agoSunday shopping ban was part of my culture shock moving to Berlin. The calmness of the city outweighs the mild and easily planned-around inconvenience.
- saiya-jin 3y agoNot everybody needs to live in big cities, the calm you like so much can be obtained outside instantly, any day, every day. Plus sometimes when actually having a life maybe other days are fully taken doing something important, so its nice to have it as an option. The societies that have Sunday shopping that I ever visited didn't experience any kind of shopping frenzy during it, everything is scaled down, some shops are opened shortly, some are not at all (or some close on Monday instead). That is all said as an European who knows very well what you mean, from various angles
- tempest_ 3y agoThe flip side is retail workers get worked to death. Around here the only day retail is closed is Dec 25, every other day is open. I have not worked in retail for so long, maybe they prefer the opportunity to make more money I don't know. It would not really change anything for me.
- ben_w 3y agoIt would be nice to be rich enough to afford a weekend/sunday house in the countryside at the same time as a house or apartment in the city the other 5/6 days a week. Most people can't afford that.
- reedf1 3y agoWhen did we lose the moral authority to make things illegal for minors? I believe in 50-100 years it will be a worldwide scandal that these skinner boxes were ever given to children let alone adults. AI optimised attention slideshow that likely drains you neurochemically and disrupts your reward circuitry the same way heroin or ecstasy does? On paper this shit should clearly be regulated.
- ethanbond 3y agoOne contributing factor is the surprisingly recent meme that corporations exist solely for the benefit of their shareholders. It’s a totally ahistoric and obviously antisocial meme that gets repeated like it’s gospel, even by otherwise intelligent people. This perspective should be literally laughed at and made fun of as a moral system suitable only for the greediest and most myopic among us.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoIsn't it an inevitable part of Capitalism though? If the directors of a corporation start acting to not maximise the shareholders profits, they'll soon be replaced or the corporation bought out by more ruthless/sociopathic people.
- ethanbond 3y agoThe emergence of this idea definitely is guaranteed, but the dominance of it isn’t. There are many countervailing forces that can and should be used, including regulation. One of the forces that I’m advocating for, as I believe it is undervalued and underutilized, is pushback at the cultural level. It is absolutely possible to build truly thriving businesses that include more stakeholders than just shareholders. Costco is a canonical large cap example, but of course there are millions of small businesses who serve their communities much more holistically.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ImAnAmateur 3y ago> “Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction,” said Turner. Orben’s team and others argue that this is likely to be oversimplistic and are investigating whether the teenagers cluster into groups whose behaviour can be predicted by other personality traits. > It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behavioural addiction, but for others their use could be driven by compulsive checking, others may be relying on it to cope with negative life experiences, and others may simply be responding to negative social perceptions about “wasting time” on social media. Finally! I feel less smart for not having thought of this myself! I was unable to meaningfully change my own phone habits (despite serious effort and roadblocks) until it clicked that I was coping for something. What that was and what I was doing to cope highlighted parts of my life like nothing else. Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities that benefited the withered branches of my life. Old habits still die hard, but knowing that I'm coping as I'm coping helped me separate the good social media use from the bad.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThis is the solution for a lot of behavioral problems. The instinct is to do the bad behavior less, but the solution may instead be to do something else more.
- deemster 3y agoA nail is driven out by another nail, habit is overcome by habit - Erasmus
- jay_kyburz 3y agoI made a browser based strategy game that takes place over weeks. Instead of checking Facebook 3 times a day, I log into Neptune's Pride 3 times a day to chat with the other players and try and conquer the galaxy.
- riffruff24 3y ago
- i_am_jl 3y ago>‘We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,’ said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"? I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findings, and there's obviously a social stigma that exists around admitting to gambling addiction that doesn't seem to exist for social media addiction, but still; it strikes me as unusual to be so openly questioning people about whether or not their perceived addictions are real.
- karaterobot 3y agoSeems reasonable to separate self-identification from a diagnosis. Flip the logic: if someone says they aren't addicted to something, does that make it true?
- megaman821 3y agoWell, yes if the suggestion is some sort of intervention. There are large groups of people that will say they are addicted to coffee, TV, video games, etc. Not a lot of them will meet the medical definition of addiction.
- paxys 3y agoProbably the most obvious example of this is everyone who says "I have OCD!". No, you don't really have OCD.
- vidarh 3y agoIt is both fairly common to say you're addicted to something as a way of saying you're really into something as well as to indicate actual addiction, and you can't expect people asked a question like that without detailed additional guidance to be able to give a clinical assessment of whether they are in fact suffering from an addiction. Unless you probe what the respondents mean by addiction, or provide them a clear definition before asking, there's very little reason to assume they will be using a definition of addiction that justifies assuming anything approaching a clinical definition, or even anything negative. My opinion goes in other direction: I think even with that caveat, what she went on to say suggests she's making assumptions about what people meant - especially given the age of the respondents - that I don't there's basis for unless the survey provided a lot more context than just the question given in the article.
- vidarh 3y ago[EDIT: I'd love to hear what those who've downvoted actually disagree with. The question as stated in the article objectively does not ask whether they see this as a problem or not, nor does it justify why they believe they can assume how respondents have interpreted the question; I very intentionally caveated this to point out that I don't have a problem with the notion that many of them probably did mean it was problematic to them, but if that was not appropriately contextualised to the respondents it is not clear how many did or did not interpret it the same way the researchers do - maybe they did include additional context; if so it's The Guardian leaving out important context. Either way, from this article we can't tell] Overegging the results. This is the statement they were asked to agree or disagree with according to the article. > “I think I am addicted to social media” Note that it does not ask them to answer whether they think they have a problematic relationship with social media. Using the term "addicted" to refer to something you spend a lot of time with is common whether you're happy or unhappy about it. Unless there is significant context around the question that the article left out but that were presented to respondents, making the assumptions they seem to be making in the article seems problematic at best. E.g. if asked if I was dedicated to chocolate, or pistachio ice cream, I'd say yes. If I was asked if I had a problem with it, I'd say no - I enjoy those "addictions". I also enjoy my HN "addiction". I'm sure a portion of those who strongly agreed that they feel addicted also do consider it a negative and maybe a serious problem in some cases, but the question reported on did not ask about that, so all we really know is the upper bound on the subset that may or may not consider their social media use a problem. Maybe it is a genuinely big problem, or maybe it isn't. This data won't tell us. What is worrying, though, is that even though the grad student leading the analysis downplays the "addiction part" (“We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,”) she goes on to overinterpret the data ("But it’s not a nice feeling to feel you don’t have agency over your own behaviour. It’s quite striking that so many people feel like that and it can’t it be that good") - nothing about the question asked about whether people feel they have agency, or that it "can't be that good". Maybe they all meant that, but assuming they all meant that when it was not what they were asked is unprofessional.
- justrealist 3y ago50% feel addicted, and the other 50% are addicted but don't even recognize the feeling (because they've had a smartphone since preschool).
- maven29 3y agoIt would be more productive to stop prodding at the symptoms and instead consider looking into potential root causes like car dependency and commercialization or erosion of third places. Kids aren't just staring at a glowing rectangle due to some unexplainable pharmacological effect it may possess, they just crave human connection and sense of belonging just like everyone else. Using medical terms to dehumanize them is not productive at all.
- rchaud 3y agoThe root cause is that social media apps are designed to be addictive whereas other software is not. This was encouraged by all the SV cheerleaders (remember Nir Eyal's "Hooked" being a must-read for all product bros?), before it was clear that Facebook and others conduct significant levels of experimentation to extend screen use time.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoPlaces with far weaker car culture and world class mass transit and which have stronger "third places" culture are still phone and social media addicted. See Singapore, Japan, or South Korea as an example of this.
- rthkljlkrj 3y ago[dead]
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoQuit social media, you'll feel better.
- LesZedCB 3y agohacker news is social media
- 342534ateraegst 3y agothen we should quit that too. Bye bye!
- righthand 3y ago[dead]
- hinkley 3y agoAnyone heard any compelling conjectures on what the backlash for all of these studies will look like? My own are fairly milquetoast. I just hope they do better than we did with cigarettes, and the boomers did with nature.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoa poor take. cigarette consumption is way, wayyyyyyy down, and is effectively gone in the first world outside of small pockets. compare to the 1950s where everyone smoked, all the time. or think about asbestos, or lead. we figured out those are bad and made drastic changes to start removing those -- and did. nature is a little harder, esp. given that the largest corps in the world + plenty of soverign wealth funds, are trying their hardest to keep people from thinking about it as it collapses.
- WentFullRetard 3y ago[dead]
- jgliajwelirt4j 3y agoOnce again, social media is 21st century cigarettes. Legions of brilliant scientists and engineers have spent cumulative millennia optimizing these products to be as addictive as possible, while simultaneously compiling and burying evidence of the deleterious effects their products have on their customers.
- palemoonale 3y agoColour me surprised. And quite some of you friggen' softies and app devs are resposible for this, this output of yours which is way worse than the perceived impact of carbon dioxide, travel, cars, etc. Fuck you social media devs.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoThey hide behind the "someone else would have done it and the paycheck was nice" defense.
- righthand 3y agoRepost because of HN’s over-aggressive censorship (m-bation is abbreviated no-no word): Social media is just psychological m-bation via marketing tactics. Maybe if we called it m-bation people would stop aggressively ignoring the negative effects from habitual use. On the other hand no one openly discusses physical m-bation, just as no one discusses their online identity they’ve cultivated. Get a hobby, gain a skill.
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoHow many of us reading this title are addicted to this website (which you can argue is a form of social media, is it not?) How many of us read + communicate on this as well as Reddit as well as... Telegram/WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/etc.
- beenBoutIT 3y agoThe first region to somehow effectively ban any access to Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and social media for people under the age of 21 will raise the first generation of young people to rule over the rest of the world's social media addicted hoi polloi. Having a permanent public visual record of "growing up" isn't going to help people as much as their parents seem to think it will and the only viable leaders, politicians, Justices, etc. will come from this hypothetical region.
- SleepilyLimping 3y agoOr they'll find a massive brain drain, unless you find some non-authoritarian way to leave. China probably has a lot of netizens that want to experience the rest of the Internet, or game more than two hours a night, but they won't be able to escape without the CCP threatening their families.