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Is social media behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rqtwteye 3y agoI always wonder when an "epidemic" gets reported if things really have changed or if we just recognize it better. When I grew up, we had a lot of kids (including myself) with problems like depression or not fitting in in other ways. Back then they were just labeled as "slow", "stupid" or "difficult". Nobody thought about mental illness or ways for addressing these issues.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- astrea 3y agoActually glad you said that. One of my recent shower thoughts that I was sure no one would understand. I distinctly remember growing up, people being "slow" or "different" or "<something now consider offensive>". Gender identity and mental health issues have been around forever, they're just now actually getting brought to the forefront.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoAlso it used to be the case that beating your own kids was normal. Of course now we got studies about how that screws kids up, but it was ubiquitous in my generation. And now that we can identify that children can be harmed from physical violence, we actually have ways to diagnose that sort of thing in teenagers. I wonder what our baseline trauma is supposed to be!
- Spivak 3y agoAnd it's such a good thing that we're finally paying attention to this stuff and treating it (insert graph of left-handedness over time). But then everyone is out here trying to figure out what must be wrong with the world today when Boomers and Gen X are traumatized as hell and full of undiagnosed mental illness. But they grew up in a culture where unless it was life-debilitating or presented in exactly the stereotypical manner it was ignored and pushed down.
- brnaftr361 3y agoConversely, were over-diagnosing and now everyone is ill. Which necessarily follows because the closer you look the fewer people are "normal". In fact I'd go so far as to posit that everyone is aberrant, to nobody's surprise. And of course this is all derivated from a basis of largely qualitative soft-science which had ought be treated as an art than it is a science, however there are pressures which force both practitioners and researchers to justify it as a science. I'm sure there's some "law of self-awareness" as well. The closest analogy I have is the January Effect which describes an even in the market, a pattern of sell-off in the later year to mark a loss, and subsequent repurchase in January. Upon this pattern being disclosed, the market adapted strategies to exploit it which ultimately resulted in a complete silencing of the effect. In a sense more applicable to this, being diagnosed with some mental illness can also be leveraged to gain favor, I mean I can get a prescription for pharmaceutical grade amphetamines for fidgeting for instance; or excuse my bad behavior with some other diagnosis. My position is that it's all very unclear. I'm lazy and don't care to dig it up but there was a study from the UK that observed the measurable effects from school based, non-individual interventions and it found their effects to be significantly detrimental for some students - to the extent that they negated the aggregate benefits - which I think supports this position because treatment can exacerbate things. And that's without mentioning pharmacological interventions which are... Interesting.
- Spivak 3y agoOkay so to summarize, casual dismissal of an entire field of medicine, insinuation that patients are faking mental illness to "look cool," justify their selfish behaviors, or get access to drugs, and that interventions for severe symptoms of mental illness either don't work or make things worse. It really does feel like I was bred in a lab to exist as the counterexample for all this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school and my parents thought exactly as you did and refused treatment. For a long time I held this as a point of pride and thought of my parents as saving me from those cruel teachers that just wanted to keep me down, any why would I question them? I have no other frame of reference and was marked "different" by my teachers and other kids so all of my struggles were just framed in terms of that. And so it went with my anxiety and depression, I didn't have an illness, I was a worrier that just needed to calm down. I didn't have depression I was lazy, angsty, and logical -- that's why I didn't get out of bed all day, thought everything sucked and existence was pain, and so numb I could give Spock a run for his money. Fast forward to college where I was getting my annual checkup and flu shot and I got my first ever mental health questionnaire. I answered honestly because at the time I genuinely thought that my experience wasn't unusual -- "Doesn't everyone think about killing themselves all the time?" I got referred to a therapist and eventually a psychiatrist for confirmation (because teaching hospital) who both didn't even take an hour to be clock me with all three. I got put on an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety, and a stimulant over the course of about a year and a half and I felt something and then cried for the first time since sixth grade, realized what not having anxiety feels like, and what life is like when you're not constantly in pain from under-stimulation. I just can't bring myself to think it's all quack science when I was so thoroughly dressed down by these two guys so fast and who took a little less than two years to get them all sorted. It was surreal when the psychiatrist just described my whole life experience without even missing a beat. Life changing undersells it so much and it came out of literally nowhere for me.
- anon291 3y agoNot fitting in is not a mental illness. And this attitude is behind the prevalence of many mental illnesses today. We've gone from a society that embraced difference to one that claims to embrace difference while mandating sameness. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc, are all toxic for this reason.
- fennecs 3y agoWhen did society previously embrace difference?
- anon291 3y agoMaybe embrace is the wrong word. Rather, it was hard for your left hand to know what your right was doing so to speak. So you could easily separate parts of your life. Maybe you were totally normal but had some weird hobby that you engaged in with a group of people every third Saturday. You could successfully construct alternate personae for different groups. Nowadays, your entire life has to be bared out for everyone, and this means that everyone wants to do the same things.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rqtwteye 3y ago"Not fitting in is not a mental illness. " It causes mental illness like depression and also stunts social development.
- levocardia 3y ago>I always wonder when an "epidemic" gets reported if things really have changed or if we just recognize it better. Suicide and emergency room visits for suicide attempts among teenagers are also up, and also on exactly the same post-2010ish timeline.
- jowea 3y agoYouth suicide rates are going up, I think that's quite objectively measurable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf Not proof that social media is behind it of course.
- abirch 3y agoThere seems to be a lot of pressure on the youth today. Growing up I had a lot of unscheduled time but now kids can't play multiple sports due to games, practices, and expectations.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoDrastically reduced economic opportunities, housing affordability, and political disenfranchisement seem more proximate causes.
- bitzun 3y agoI think both you and sibling abirch are right in different contexts and I love the contrast in what issues you identify.
- jeffbee 3y agoThe same agency publishes this other chart that adds quite a bit of context IMHO. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm
- xg15 3y agoinsert skinner meme here
- datascienced 3y agoNot just social media but more broadly highly connected online environments like certain games, discord etc. You may cpunt these as social media already but I think most think of Insta, X, FB etc.
- diddypiddy 3y agoThe trends in increased mental illness, suicide and the unraveling social fabric pre-date social media. Bowling Alone was written in 2000. These are mostly economic issues manifesting itself in all sorts of negative social ways.
- williamcotton 3y agoBut they don’t predate the mass electronic media that began with the radio, television, and into many-to-many computer information systems.
- throwaway22032 3y agoThe definitions, and diagnoses, of mental illnesses have been significantly redefined in the last few decades which is a significant confounding factor that I'm not sure can be corrected for.
- grzeshru 3y agoFor anyone who reads the comments before TFA: yes, it’s just more Haidt.
- defrost 3y agoNo, it's not just "more Haidt", it's a decidedly anti-Haidt article. the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Being Nature the calling Haidt out for bupkis part is buried amid a lot of Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoIt would help if the author provided a definition of what it means to "rewire" the brain, or what it means to "drive" an epidemic of mental illness.
- astrea 3y agoCouldn't possibly be the political turmoil, the daily mass shootings, 2 years of lockdown, poor healthcare resources, etc.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoMaybe? Possibly? You know how many nerds didn't know they had any sort of issue other than being antisocial and lonely, and then someone made Slashdot aware of Asperger's and suddenly 90% of the site was self-diagnosed?
- dustedcodes 3y ago[flagged]
- kelseyfrog 3y agoJust to make sure I understand what you're saying, someone who identifies outside of the gender binary has a mental disorder?
- huytersd 3y ago[flagged]
- datascienced 3y agoFeels like 1952 again. When Alan Turing was jailed for homosexuality. To be generous I would say maybe some people have a disorder and that causes them to state they are non binary, but the implication isn’t the other way. Similarly a mental disorder may make someone obsessed with levels and coding 80hrs a week!
- dadrian 3y agoAll this article says is that Haidt's analysis is just correlation, and then cites a single metastudy from 2019, and doesn't go on to explain what Haidt did wrong. This is despite extensive writing from Haidt that deconstructs that specific metastudy.
- pama 3y agoOnly correlation can never explain something. A bomb will tear a building into bricks, but finding bricks every time after a building explodes does not help identify the cause. Suppose it ended up eventually that the causal source was a novel virus epidemic, say N1H1, instead of social media or the post-2008 economic mess: it wouldn’t help much if people stopped using their social media. I don’t support social media usage for other reasons that are easier to quantify and assign causality, including the waste of time, but I understand the severe limitations of correlations and the differences to causality. Medical research has suffered greatly from errors in causality occasionally dismissing partial self-therapies due to observed correlations, whereas the careful delineation of causation is one of the key ingredients of what made physics such a mature science over the centuries. It is of course hard to try causal experiments for understanding the root of epidemics, and in this case any attempts for causality in therapies are also challenging.
- password54321 3y agoHere is a simple experiment. Spend the same amount of time on social media as your average teen for a month, and report your mental health before and after assuming you use it less. 'correlation does not imply causation' has become the most overused lazy argument to dismiss so many problems.
- imbnwa 3y agoFor some reason I’m a reminded of David Hume’s argument about causation
- silverquiet 3y agoIf HN counts as social media, then I'm probably in the ballpark already. But also I was an anxious kid back before the Internet was even really widely available. I guess I was mentally unwell before it was cool.
- twelfthnight 3y agoSeems more plausible to me that young people are just realizing they will be inheriting the consequences of decades of selfish leadership and they are reasonably worried about the future. The narrative that social media is the cause and not the obvious looming climate change, war and wealth inequality is frustrating.
- andy99 3y agoThe world had much bigger and more imminent problems in the past. People didn't dwell on them collectively in the same way.
- twelfthnight 3y agoI don't mean to be glib, but you are in denial. Nuclear war is more likely now than since the early cold war, China is ready to invade Taiwan, climate change is poised to weaken or complete disrupt the Gulf Stream, America is months away from electing an insurrectionist as president, buying a house is a pipe dream for most Americans... How could you see that as a young person and not feel at least a little hopeless?
- password54321 3y agoWe are talking about data that spans over a decade, not a year. Look at figure 1: https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/05/31/reducing-the-economic-burden-of-unmet-mental-health-needs/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/05/31/...
- twelfthnight 3y agoI'm being admittedly a little polemical, personally I'm freaked out by the future. But that aside, I'm curious to hear more about your argument. Are you saying worry about the future can't be causing this issue because scary stuff only started recently?
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- mrkramer 3y agoI think capitalism is. Social media companies are driven by profit and not by well-being of their users.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mavili 3y agoThe answer is YES, and you dont need any research to prove that. We can see it ourselves. We live it. It's not rocket science.
- ToucanLoucan 3y agoThe way in which this topic is discussed is endlessly infuriating because: While indeed, social media and specifically content algorithms (both in the present where they decide which content people see, and in the future where they may indeed create it entirely) are certainly worthy of scrutiny with regard to many mental illnesses, and the ongoing exploitation of the attention of young people especially by figures such as Andrew Tate are doing demonstrable, objective harm to tons and tons of young kids, and the entire notion that simply by virtue of making an account a child can, by default, access the entire breadth of content available on any of these sites, for zero money, with zero notification of their parents, etc., is certainly one that IMO doesn't get nearly enough time in popular discussions as to how we've simply shotgunned all of this into the faces of kids for decades now, with precious little data about what it does to them and it's only accelerating... THEN, when that conversation happens, it's to explain of all fucking things, anxiety and depression. Not body image issues, not rampant misogyny in young boys, not the growing slice of the crowd that "fails to launch" and remain stuck with mom and dad long after it's traditional to do so, no, none of those things, just anxiety. Anxiety which is a perfectly normal and understandable thing, IMO, to experience in a period of history that's got, in a non-exhaustive list: - A biosphere on the brink of collapse, and no one in power taking it seriously - War in Europe involving multiple international powers and one of the larger nations on the planet, which seems like it could incredibly easily boil over into World War III - Multiple ongoing ethnic cleansings and/or genocides - The rise of authoritarian fascist movements in several countries - The rise of unchangeable super-corporations that run more of our lives than ever with zero oversight Like, as an adult, who has SEEN some shit, I have to meter my intake of world news to avoid entering a depressive state in which I cannot function. I have already had a vasectomy because this world is not one I want to bring children into, and my wife got her tubes tied, because there is a non-trivial chance that she won't have the ability in a few years to do so and feels similarly. And it's all well and good to say "well the 24 hour news cycle is probably behind that," maybe? But maybe if said news cycle ever had anything but the worst shit you've ever heard of to report, maybe that would be less of a contributing factor? I dunno, this just sucks. This incurious response by the dominant media of "well it can't be that the world we're leaving them is fucking awful, it's gotta be those pesky iPhones" is so dismissive and shitty.
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- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI think it's the worst for teenagers and kids, but what about everyone else! The famous quote "comparison is the thief of joy" is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, and social media is essentially about constantly comparing yourself to others. I have yet to meet a single person who has taken an extended social media break (or given it up altogether) who hasn't reported a substantial improvement in their mental state and wellbeing.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoRelated: The Smartphone Kids Are Not All Right https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39812623
- Funes- 3y agoThe coupling of social media and smartphones has made parental negligence, laziness, emotional distress, and plain stupidity a hundred times more harmful. That's the gist of it.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoAbsolutely coupled with excessive cell phone use, seed oils, and mineral / vitamin deficient vegetables. The pandemic did nothing to help this.
- _hcuq 3y agoDon't know about teenagers, but quite a few people close to me, 50 to 60 yrs old have have gone more than a little mad due to social media. Paranoia, conspiracy, and chronic anxiety. They were all quite sane 10 years ago.
- 77pt77 3y agoThey were not sane. You just had no way to know, and now you do.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoThe problem with social media is it is a paralysis engine. It drives the most seemingly credible, brain-wormy and engagement-driving discourse to the top, promoting the most violent, exclusionary and aggressively undertoned rallying cries of trending angst-fueled ideologies. As a consequence, whatever your opinion, identity, or circumstances, you will surely encounter the echo chambers of people who want you dead or removed from society: calculated, memetically selected hatred that sows fear, uncertainty, and doubt in anything more that complete surrender and inaction.
- mistermann 3y agoThe causality here (and the fact of the matter) is far more complex than it seems though - for example, each person's perception of what is going on is to a large degree a function of their culture and education, and those two attributes tend to get a free pass at least when it comes to oneself or the members of one's ingroups in all such discussions. Our wonderful, purely well-intentioned politicians could do something about this dire "need for more critical thinking", and yet what do they do to fulfill that need, despite it being literally their responsibility. https://search.usa.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=ed.gov&query=curriculum https://search.usa.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=ed.go... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_cow_(idiom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_cow_(idiom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation (what my comment "is") For example: these terrible people you are referring to out there....are you sure they are as they seem (where did you learn these facts about their intentions from, etc), and that they are enemy number 1?
- gwervc 3y agoI don't agree. As far as I remember somewhat extreme opinions were present in the public discourse (for instance far left positions on university campus, far right ones at the local pub). Moreover, people who want me dead or removed from society because of my political views are in my immediate social or professional circle, no need for social media to meet them.
- atleastoptimal 3y ago
- tbrooks 3y agoYes.
- looknee 3y agoI always see discussions on this topic online immediately start discussing how the content of social media is the driver of the mental health issues (comparison to others, everyone projecting their best selves etc). My own experiences with social media and phone addiction leads me to believe its not JUST the content, but also (equally, perhaps moreso) the fact that teenagers AND adults with social media and phone addiction are just spending so much of their time absorbed into a screen scrolling and getting quick dopamine hits for hours and hours. When that is your default that you revert to to distract yourself at almost any point of discomfort, slight boredom, lapse in focus, anxiety or feelings of sadness, all it does is just dampen those feelings momentarily. You live in almost a fugue state where those things just fester as you avoid them instead of learning to cope with them or respond to them in an agentic or healthy manner. Working to cut out social media, reddit, youtube etc on my phone, leave my phone by our front door while at home, never have my phone in bed, and spend time writing/journaling my thoughts and actually engaging with my feelings of anxiety or depression or stress instead of avoiding them has been by far the most significant improvement on my mental health compared to many other things I've worked out. This is definitely anecdotal, and its definitely my experience, but after the time i've spent working on these things and with what I see in the teenagers, young people, and friends in my life I feel very strongly about it.
- canadiantim 3y agoVery on point
- DavidPiper 3y agoI'm in the same boat as you, and feel equally strongly about it, despite being in a bit of a relapse period at the moment. "The medium is the message" never stops being relevant. The 'content' of social media is just the 'reward' mechanism for your engagement. This is the fourth (?) time on HN I've recommended "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. If you're a reader, I think you might enjoy it. It is both descriptive of its time in the age of Television, and incredibly prescient. It has aged flawlessly, you can draw a straight line from it to our modern, socially mediated world.
- crotchfire 3y ago
- longdog 3y agoThe author is way overselling how controversial Haidt's claim is. - The effect of social media at a societal level isn't something that can tested experimentally. And like all non-experimental research, results depend heavily on modeling methodology (for example, the meta-analysis linked by the author is literally just a regression of facebook DAU on life satisfaction polls [1]). As a result there will NEVER a universal consensus, same as with most "macro" level studies in social sciences. If you wait for researchers to reach an agreement, you will wait forever. - The most credible research I've seen on this is this quasi-experimental paper [2]. Since the timing of Facebook's rollout was staggered across schools, it can be used as a natural experiment. Schools should've seen declines in student mental health that correspond with the date of Facebook's rollout on their campus, which is indeed what happened. - The effect of using social media at an individual level (as opposed to a societal level) IS known and it is very clearly negative. See [3] for an example. - Most importantly, the fact is that mental health and suicide rates have been rising significantly since exactly when social media gained popularity (mid-to-late 2000s). The effect is global so you can't blame country-specfic policies. And the rise is most significant with demographics most exposed to social media (young people, especially girls). There's not a single other explanation that makes sense. Frankly, I think people are afraid to admit that social media is the problem because so many people are tech addicts and don't want to admit that their own addiction is part of the problem. [1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.221451 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.221451 [2] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20211218 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20211218 [3] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658
- publius_0xf3 3y agoI'm guessing not just teenagers. Every day on Twitter, I see posts like [this](https://twitter.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1774195693323792556 https://twitter.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/17741956933237925...) by accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that are indistinguishable from schizophrenic ideation. These consist of extremely idiosyncratic delusions that, thanks purely to social media, find a community of believers who can reassure each other that no, they're not crazy, they're not alone, they're just the fortunate ones who've escaped the Matrix, etc. whereas in the past, their beliefs would have been penalized by the sane peers around them.
- mistermann 3y agoDo you ever read the newspaper or watch TV (or US State Department announcements about "what is going on")? If so, do you have similarly negative reactions to the horrible logic and epistemology on show there (not to mention the scope of influence)?
- 77pt77 3y agoLey lines, 2024 style. Humans really are mentally defective in very predictable ways.
- ta1243 3y agoI see that post, on its own (I don't do twitter), and think it's just a clever satirical post. Something above the stage of "John Wilkes Booth drank water, and so did Joe Biden. Coincidence?"
- publius_0xf3 3y agoThat might be plausible if you consider the post in isolation, but the account that posted it does nothing but post paranoid ragebait of a similar flavor a dozen times a day and racked up an enormous following doing so. They're not making fun of their own audience.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago>> the fact that teenagers AND adults with social media and phone addiction are just spending so much of their time absorbed into a screen scrolling and getting quick dopamine hits for hours and hours If everybody does it why are teenage girls most affected?
- matrix87 3y agoThe way they use it is so stupid. It's this constant game of trying to one-up each other and create a "personal brand" I really don't get it, people can't just sit and do shit in the moment, everything has to be for status. This trend of injecting marketing into literally everything needs to stop, that's no way to live
- pedalpete 3y agoWhen I was a kid, it was video games that were ruining a generation, in my parents generation it was "the devils music" that was turning them into a bunch of degenerates. I wonder what the issues where when Galileo was a kid? They title says "epidemic of teenage mental illness", but do we not discriminate between mental illness and mental health? Where is that line? I'm not suggesting social media doesn't have it's challenges, but it is the tool. We need to take responsibility for what we view/engage with, just like diet, we now must understand we have a mental diet and we need to treat our digital tools as the kitchen.
- scld 3y agoIf teens were playing games in front of the TV as much as people look at their phones today, they'd probably have actual ruined a generation.
- t888 3y agoIt’s a tool the way cigarettes are a tool. Taking responsibility means cutting it out of your life.
- djaro 3y agoPeople also said cigarettes were bad, or lead pipes. "People say [thing] is bad, but completely different people 50 years ago said [other thing] was bad" is not really an argument
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ldehaan 3y ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoWonder if she has considered that social media, e.g., its effects on peoples' ability to critically evaluate information, is a factor with respect to why people might believe Haidt's theory instead of [she offers readers no alternatives]. If really want to end the existence of a theory then find evidence that _disproves_ it. Simply stating there is no evidence to support will not stop a theory from persisting. Nor stop people from looking for evidence to support.
- zrn900 3y agoBefore social media and the internet, this kind of 'keeping up' and 'comparing self to others' thing that afflicts the youth existed through fashion, celebrity, youth magazines. Its not new.
- kkoste 3y agoFor f*cks sake. YES!