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Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

• throwitaway222 3y ago
  It is also not just teenagers. Its effects are extremely broad.
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    I agree, I think the vast majority of us are affected, we just don't have anyone watching. for example, I had found the antsiness I was reading amongst children in classrooms about to be ridiculous. younger people having fidget spinners to pay attention. then I took a class at community college, I've been out of school for a long time, and I experienced the same thing the first couple of sessions. then I realized that not only was I having the same traits, my ability to adapt was probably due to knowing it was not normal. in another anecdote, when I go see even older people, baby boomers, their phone etiquette and attentiveness is waaay off. like, the more disconnected someone is, the more these new things adversely affect them. I see this as akin to the opium dens. Popular at one point, and a smaller privileged group of people creating a social circle that opted out. We'll probably look back at this dopamine addiction pretty badly.
• cyanydeez 3y ago
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  • cyanydeez 3y ago
    Which is basically a mental illness.
    • gotoeleven 3y ago
      https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand...
      • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
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        • gotoeleven 3y ago
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    • satellite2 3y ago
      Exactly, I just saw a post today about someone's grandpa barricading himself in his house and fearing the eclipse would kill him. On the comments section everyone was insulting him, treating him like an idiot. I couldn't help but feeling this was not a result of poor media choice as everyone was suggesting but an underlying medical illness. I really hope mental illnesses would be better treated and that people in very edge cases would spend more time in counseling and maybe less time on the internet.
      • maxcoder4 3y ago
        Also, in general, people are quick to insult others online. Somehow it's easier to degrade someone online than I'm person, and there's less incentive to look for the common ground. That also can't be healthy.
  • eBombzor 3y ago
    Or any ultra radical movement. The internet promotes extreme ideologies, as seen through hyperbolic, overly dramatic headlines and videos that make the front page of Tiktok, YT, news everyday.
    • andrepd 3y ago
      Anger and the basest, most thoughtless of emotional responses are those that drive the most """engagement""". Fuck whomever invented and promoted this crap.
    • cyanydeez 3y ago
      Yeah, I recall my friend helping start the ironic flat earth society 20 years ago. Kooks reinforcing kooks.
  • amelius 3y ago
    Democracy was a nice idea until the internet came into existence.
    • komodus 3y ago
      It was never a nice idea, but there is nothing better for the moment
  • maxcoder4 3y ago
    Just like in 1939, ...wait. Maybe blaming social media for fascism is a step too far. But I'm interested to hear what you have to say about that. Why did social media enable fascism now, and why did fascism exist before it?
    • cyanydeez 3y ago
      India, Brazil, Russia, China...globally, fascism is some how rising in all these countries.
    • panarky 3y ago
      PFAS chemicals have been used in various industries and products since the 1940s and 1950s. We now know that PFAS chemicals cause cancer in humans. Humans have suffered from cancer since ancient times even though PFAS chemicals are a modern invention. How can that be?
    • ergl 3y ago
      There are actually a bunch of studies that explore the role of mass media, in particular the radio, in the spread of Nazi propaganda in the years before Hitler came to power.
      • hackerlight 3y ago
        The radio played a big role in the Rwandan genocide as well. Mass media was central to fascism because fascism requires the ability to build collective consensus over a broad geography that wasn't easy before mass media. It's hard to otherwise align the morality of millions of people. I share the concern that social media will be like this, but more potent. And it won't just be a distribution channel, it'll be a breeding ground for the ideas that create extremist ideologies in the first place. It's like the wuhan wet market, but for ideas. The ideas that come from this breeding ground are not necessarily good ideas, just popular ones. And fascism is one subset of bad ideas that have been historically popular.
• hot_gril 3y ago
  It's electronics in general. I was in 7th grade at the inflection point, when the iPhone 3G first widely popularized having a pocket computer. Facebook went mainstream around the same time. Suddenly kids became a lot less social, and that never flipped back.
  • mrob 3y ago
    It's mobile devices, not electronics in general. Social networking was around before widespread mobile computing, e.g. MySpace, but it was a supplement to offline social interaction, not a replacement. Back then, you had to make a conscious decision to use the computer and log in. Having the device in your pocket at all times drastically changes how it's used.
    • hot_gril 3y ago
      I mean how much time is spent on electronics and away from people overall. Mobile devices increased that a lot, but they aren't the only part. There are way more PC gamers than before, for example. My classmates also used early Facebook more on PCs, maybe because some features didn't work on iPhones (Flash content?). They'd just sit at home on the PC all night. I'd even count remote classrooms/work. In 2020, people didn't need phones to be always-online, they were at home anyway.
      • still_grokking 3y ago
        Thirty years earlier people were also "always at home". Watching TV, or playing console games… The big difference was: At least the youth was at home together with others doing so. You went over to your neighbor to watch some TV show for example. What changed quite lately are indeed the always online smartphones. You don't need to go to your neighbor, even if you want to "do something together" (of course online, like everything nowadays). Also people don't even call each other. The default is chat, or very often voice messages. But no real talking. So no, media and electronics aren't the main driver here. It's the always online devices everybody uses everywhere the whole time. Human minds likely aren't constructed to be always connected (or one could argue, actually disconnected) in such a way. It's not primary the quantity, it's the quality of media consumption that significantly changed. Also the media is the first time completely interactive and personalized. Compare to for example TV (which was back than "the devil who destroys the morale of our youth" according to some elder people). You didn't get targeted personalized ads the whole day on your TV… The psychological manipulation that the pre-smartphone media could possibly exercise on individuals was much more constrained compared to what's possible (and actually gets executed) today. Smartphone apps are a great example as they're now mostly constructed to induced addiction (the companies selling ads call it "engagement").
• atleastoptimal 3y ago
  The solution is unironically just to do what China does. Create restrictions on how long kids can use the web and what they can use. It won't be perfect but it will be the biggest influence towards better habits and cultural norms.
  • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Jonathan Haidt, the author of this article, was on Real Time w Bill Maher recently, and has some simple recommendations with respect to phones and social media: 1. No smartphones for kids before high school — give them only flip phones in middle school. 2. No social media before age 16. 3. Make schools phone-free, by putting devices in phone lockers or Yondr pouches. 4. Give kids far more free play and independence, including more and better recess. I can't argue with any of the above.
    • cedws 3y ago
      Why 16 specifically? Apparently the brain doesn't stop developing until much later, around 25.
      • verall 3y ago
        The brain never stops developing, why 25? Where does everyone get this darn 25 is when you're grown number from?
        • cedws 3y ago
          The commonly cited number refers to when the brain structures stop/slow development, not the halting of skills or knowledge growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain_development_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain_development_timeli...
          • verall 3y ago
            Literally from that wiki article: > There is no actual evidence suggesting that impulse control only finishes developing in humans in the twenties. It is a common misconception in popular psychology that the brain only fully develops by 25.[13] This may stem from a misinterpretation or oversimplification of studies which determined that development of the prefrontal cortex continues into the mid-twenties
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I feel so bad for teenagers/kids who we essentially screwed over with this tech experience. That said, I don't feel great for the rest of us either! I feel like my phone has become a significant negative in my life. And in general, I'm quite scared because we have put things in place that we know are bad for mental health: 1. Even if we may not like it all the time, there is tons of data that show that personal interactions and relationships are good for mental health. With so much technology and so many things going remote (I'm not just talking jobs, but I'm talking about the fact that it's very easy, for example, to never need to walk into a store anymore. I recently went to a fast food restaurant and there were no customers inside at lunchtime, normally a busy time, and I ordered on a kiosk and everyone else just ordered at the drivethrough) it's harder and harder to just see random people and our friends without explicit planning. 2. As someone who recently got over a severe episode of depression, I strongly believe time spent in nature and just outside in general is really good for the mental health of humans. With so much tech it's easier and easier to basically never go outside unless you make it a point to do so.
  • brailsafe 3y ago
    Your points here are worth more emphasis. As a chronically unemployed software dev who's burnt out and crashed at least 3 times, I've spent a hell of a lot of time reflecting, and try my best to communicate these ideas to people who have the opposite problem; lots of work, but no new friends since highschool, and desperately single. People tend to rely far too heavily on the easiest way to convince themselves they're having valuable social interactions, whether it's social media or betting that their work friends will still be there when they get laid off. They'll rely on Tinder for sex and try to bridge that to something more meaningful out of thin air, or they'll buy a dog and hope that solves the problem. Some of these are uniquely millenial and onward, some others carry over from Gen X and boomer culture imo, whereby you isolate yourself from the rest of society in the suburbs or wherever and count on personal relationships you acquired for free. Along with this, in many places we've let the catalysts for social growth get stripped away by commodity bullshit and simulated interaction. Costco is probably the closest thing many people have to bumping into someone, no shot are they going to do it at the adult version of the playground, because there often isn't one and they won't go. (obviously this is more true in some places and for some people than it is for people who've realized this or who innately direct their life this way). My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness. You don't become a pro anything spending 30 min a week on it, and no valuable personal relationships come about that way either. That's how you met people in Uni, that's how you met people at work, you gotta branch off of those places and ya gotta keep it going gradually. If you don't live in a place that facilitates that, vote with your wallet and try to find a new one. This goes for nature too, if you're only exposure is 2 days of hiking once a year when you travel, and the rest is spent in an office, it's not something you can remedy any other way. If you drive to work 1 hour each way, and work 8 hours, you're probably doomed, unless you've already done all that and can keep your existing things going. It's just not enough margin, be real about what you're sacrificing and why.
• lurking15 3y ago
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• pressCreatacct 3y ago
  Why is this true and not just more elder moral panic like Seduction of the Innocent[1], outrage at books, DnD, comics, etc? Different context but why is this not just driven by generational fear of change? It’s trivial to pick a data set that supports a conclusion. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent
• deleted 3y ago
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• ryandrake 3y ago
  If parents really want to set a good example, they ought to also quit their smartphones and Social Media--or at least hide it better. Kids are really good at identifying hypocrisy. When they see their parents glued to their phones and scrolling Instagram all day, after being told "Oh, don't do that, it's not good for you" they know their parents are full of shit. And, the trouble is: Most of these adults are addicted to their smartphones and social media, too. Everyone is. I go to birthday parties with my kid, and sporting events, indoors and outdoors, and other kid activities, and the kids are for the most part jumping around having a ball, while the adults are huddled up by themselves, bathed in smartphone light, scrolling through their feeds getting their fix. Don't think this doesn't leave an impression on kids--it does.
  • v-erne 3y ago
    I partially understand sporting events if people does not know each other, but birthdays? Which country is this and what kind of people do you meet in this events? I ask because here in Poland behaving like this still would be seen as major insult and such people would be marked as outsiders. And this label comes with social stigma that can be transferred to child (you can forget about ever being invited to other people homes for children meetups).
  • musicale 3y ago
    > When they see their parents glued to their phones and scrolling Instagram all day, after being told "Oh, don't do that, it's not good for you" they know their parents are full of shit. Watching your parents turn into smartphone zombies should be a warning sign, maybe even something to rebel against. Unfortunately children do tend to pick up their parents' behaviors, bad and good.
    • mcmoor 3y ago
      I'm not surprised that some children do becomes Luddite, just like some becomes teetotaler because of drunkard parents. Unfortunately most of them also become drunkards.
  • enasterosophes 3y ago
• jauntywundrkind 3y ago
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• _greim_ 3y ago
  Phone-free schools seem like an obvious way to fight this, but supposedly modern parents need constant access to their kids and tend to oppose the idea.
  • tiznow 3y ago
    You don't get phone-free schools in a post-Uvalde world.
    • xeromal 3y ago
      There's always a market for dumb phones.
    • NeutralCrane 3y ago
      Indiana literally just banned phones from schools state-wide this month.
      • markus92 3y ago
        Same with The Netherlands (not legally, but all schools have agreed to implement these rules).
    • vaylian 3y ago
      I skimmed the wikipedia article on the event[1] but I don't see anything that explains the role of kid's phones in the event. Can you elaborate? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_school_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_school_shooting
      • wildrhythms 3y ago
        In short, the police department's involvement (or lack thereof) has made parents feel that they can't rely on the police to communicate or coordinate during a mass shooting.
    • Teever 3y ago
      https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-education-minister-clarifies-directive-to-ban-cellphones-in-classrooms-1.6589572 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-education-minister-clarif... https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/europe/netherlands-school-phone-ban-scli-intl-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/europe/netherlands-school-pho... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-restrict-cellphones-schools-1.7096155 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-restrict-... Americans might not get phone-free schools but others in places that have their shit together on gun regulations and police corruption/incompetence will.
• kypro 3y ago
  I'm sceptical of the claim that social media is causing teen mental illness. I've thought about this quite a bit, but never wrote my thoughts anywhere so I guess here and now is as a good time as any. I think Haidt's assertion that social media is to blame for the rise in teen mental illness is likely indirectly true, but from what I've observed personally even kids that don't frequently use social networking apps still seem to have much higher rates of mental illness than I recall when I was younger. My bet is that social media use itself isn't that harmful (I understand this is a radical position), and that it's actually far more related to the pathologisation of normal emotional states as mental illness which social media has exacerbated. In recent years I've occasionally spoken about my own negative thoughts and struggles with depression, and almost without fail someone will try to encourage me to seek help, and more worryingly they will often recommend medicating. This has even been true when I've visited doctors in recent years where a couple of times now I've been asked if I'd like help for depression and anxiety after making passing comments. Furthermore, in recent years whenever I have tried to suggest that someone probably isn't mentally ill, but just a little more anxious / depressive than the average person I've been attacked and told I'm causing harm by questioning their need to be on medication. I'm writing this because just today an 8 year old boy in my family was put on ADHD medication. The school told his mum that he was struggling to remain quiet in class and has been distracting children at his table, so recommended he see a doctor. The mum took him to the doctor and within a single meeting the boy was put on ADHD medication. Notably, this mum has 3 children and all 3 are now on medication (the other 2 are being treated with anxiety and depression, both at a similar age). The truth is I'm not convinced any of these children even have mental illnesses. I'm not a doctor, but they seem extremely similar to me and many of my friends growing up. But when I was growing up I didn't know anyone on medication for anxiety or depression – certainly not any children. The only evidence good evidence to suggest that there's some difference between my generation and teens today seems to be the suicide rate. But I think we need to be careful here also. Something that has concerned me is how powerful some of these drugs we're prescribing children are. I don't know how common this is on SSRIs, but one boy in my family seems to have lost his ability to feel normal emotions after being prescribed what I understand to be a high dose of SSRIs. Shortly after starting medication he started to become increasingly physically violent and started to self-harm. Absurdly in light of this when taken back to the doctor they decided increase his SSRI dose because the kid said that he was still feeling unhappy. When I spoke to him to try to understand why he was being violent his answer was basically that he just didn't care, which struck me as strange to hear from someone who was if anything an overly emotional and overly affectionate boy. I'm bringing this up because teen suicide trends also seem to track very well with the increased prescription of SSRIs like Sertraline to children, and my understanding is that there is good evidence that these drugs can increase risk of suicide. So with more children taking these drugs we should assume that one of the outcomes of this will be increased teen suicide. Finally, I'd also be interested in better understanding the role loneliness has on children and whether this is more likely to be part of the explanation. Children today are less likely to play outside with friends, and declining birth rates mean children also less likely to have siblings and cousins of a similar age and gender to play with. Even if they're not on social media children today are far more likely to stay at home watching YouTube or playing XBox on their own, which probably doesn't help with their mental health and their ability to deal with the real world and the social conflicts it brings their way. It would be silly of me to suggest social media plays no role of course, but my guess is that the role it plays is more indirect and more related to the over-diagnosis and hyperawareness of mental illness. And also in its contribution to children spending too much time inside on their own. That's just my thoughts on this anyway. I'm obviously not a NYU professor who's studied this in great detail so I'm probably talking nonsense. All I can say is that in my anecdotal experience doesn't really align with this idea that social media is causing these problems. worry those like Haidt who are quick blame social media are primarily getting attention not because they're pointing to the correct cause, but because blaming social media for all societal problems is in fashion right now, while people like me suggest that we may be over-diagnosing mental illness in children attracts a lot of negativity in a world that increasingly wants to destigmatise mental illness.
• DueDilligence 3y ago
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• bobbyjoseph 3y ago
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  • lxgr 3y ago
    Are Instagram reels really any better in terms of mental health? Besides, Bitcoin miners don’t find anything noteworthy in that sense.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  No SNI: https://web.archive.org/web/20240410001306if_/https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic https://web.archive.org/web/20240410001306if_/https://www.af...
• jameslevy 3y ago
  It's surprising how many parents I know who are in denial about this. It must be because they themselves are constantly using social media and don't want to accept what it is doing to their own mental health.
  • logicchains 3y ago
    Or maybe their mental health is just fine? Who are you to believe you know their mental health better than they do; very presumptuous of you.
    • xandrius 3y ago
      Hey logicchains, being a little bit aggressive today, aren't we? Is everything ok?
  • ZaoLahma 3y ago
    I, Millennial, am seeing a huge decline in social media usage among my peers. It's reached the point where I didn't even bother to install any of the apps when I got a new phone last year, other than Facebook Messenger which we still use for planning activities. The vast majority of my friends and "friends" on social media haven't posted anything for years. I think my last contribution was back in 2017. I thought social media in general is boomer / gen X town nowadays.
    • Springtime 3y ago
      Just to clarify, is the scope of social media being referred to here particular, typical apps (eg: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), or any app/service that has interactive social and media elements (eg: Discord, Reddit)?
      • ZaoLahma 3y ago
        I really think we need to make a (large) difference between platforms focused on user interaction and discussion (Discord, Reddit, old school forums, ...) and platforms where the person behind the user is the focus and placed in front of the entire world to be judged (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, ...). The former is not focused on you as a person and you are judged by the discussion that you participate in, while the latter is focused on you as a person and you are judged by how interesting you are or can appear to be. My peers are disappearing from the latter category (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, ...) I don't think I know the user name of any of my friends on Reddit even, or who are active there, which is exactly the point - nobody cares about the connection to the real life person.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  I find sadly amusing the argument that kids need their phones in school in case of emergency. If the kid has an emergency, the teacher can call the parents. If the parents are having an emergency, the can call the school.
  • _heimdall 3y ago
    From what I've seen, parents have been made extremely fearful of a mass shooter type of incident. The "need" for smartphones in school is seen as a way to get in touch with a child when the absolute worst has happened. Ironically, the same logic often isn't appreciated for those who choose to legally carry a gun.
    • seattle_spring 3y ago
      Give the kid a LifeAlert. If it works for gram grams falling down the front stoop, it'll work for little Billy when he's dodging lead from the bullied kid who couldn't take it anymore.
      • zigman1 3y ago
        or give them a flip phone
  • logicchains 3y ago
    >If the kid has an emergency, the teacher can call the parents. If the parents are having an emergency, the can call the school. What about if the kid's being bullied? Half the time the teacher will side with the bully, especially if the bully's a more popular kid.
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      Have cell phones ever stopped bullying?
      • nicolas_t 3y ago
• spxneo 3y ago
  When we was teenagers we had unrestricted broadband access to the internet but what was missing was the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. WaReZ, KaZaA, Ogrish, CD-Keys, drugs, weapon making tutorials, Mail-order-drugs. This was the wild west days of the internet. You could literally put up anything you could sell anything and everything. Classmates were downloading roms, porn, warez, emulators and selling it on CDs. One kid would hack for hire. A black market of sorts was born out of the basketball court. No verification and adults didnt know how to handle it other than installing spyware which we quickly knew how to disable at school. We would play basketball after middle school and talk about all the crazy stuff we found on the internet. The most disturbing memories were of my classmates talking about snuff films coming out of the second Chechen War (1999), beheadings, crazy stuff . We would always try to out do one another. Some of us even successfully manipulated our parents to watch porn ("dad i think i like boys i think i need to watch straight porn") I turned out just fi
  • idle_zealot 3y ago
    What you're describing sounds more socially healthy than modern usage. It was kids exploring the world digitally. Now that's been captured by digital fiefdoms actively manipulating their users into unhealthy levels of engagement by any means necessary.
    • spxneo 3y ago
      Internet before 9/11 and after 9/11 basically. What the Patriot Act did was eat at the foundations of freedom that American founders set out to create and the internet became public enemy #1 overnight, something that had to be controlled, regulated, and monopolized by American corporations in the form of social media, search engines, youtube etc. Like the rebellious soviet youths finding itself through Viktor Tsoi, the pre-911 internet offered us Western kids a brief moment of true freedom, we didn't need heroes, because our minds were free from algorithms designed to sap every bit of happiness.
    • drkleiner 3y ago
      Internet used to be a village, with nice cozy places and communities but also shady weird individuals and houses you're not supposed to enter Now it is a shopping mall, sanitized, organized, brands and ads plastered all around, not really for socializing and community but more for products and marketing, you can still find a bookstore or a cafe but in the end, shopping mall is there to make you shop
• burningChrome 3y ago
  I will attempt to at least inject some hope into this discussion. My formative years from ages 15-25 were spent in the 80's and 90's. It was the apex of the mall experience. We saw the mall as a place to get away from our parents, hang out with our buds, run into other classmates and feel some sense of freedom while running amok playing video games in the arcade and chowing down tacos in the food court. Then smartphones and the internet came and all the malls started closing up, dying off and there was an entire generation that just ignored or forgot about them. Most of the malls around where I live have all but closed. There are still a few open and now? They're thriving. My family now goes together on the weekends and its amazing. All the teenagers are in the food court, in their groups, talking, eating and socializing. You see groups of teens wondering in and out of the stores. I see a very similar cultural revolution happening and its really refreshing. The mall is truly a phoenix rising from its once former ashes. The major anchor stores are constantly busy no matter what night you go there. The movie theater is busy almost every night and its packed on the weekends. Its like an entire generation has re-discovered the mall again and its refreshing to see. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a dream because so many other malls just north or south of us have either died and been leveled, or are in various forms of trying to reinvent themselves as something else before its too late. Either way, what I saw in my experiences at our local mall gave me hope that the Zoomers are in some ways, taking a break from their phones and going out and having a different experience and returning to socializing with their friends and creating a new way of connecting with people they're close to. My son said he still uses his phone when he's at the mall, but just to make plans to meet his other buddies and coordinate where they're all going to meet up. For the most part, once they meet up, they all stop using their phones. So yes, there is hope yet.
  • rsoto2 3y ago
    idk if I feel that relieved that malls are our only hope
  • edg5000 3y ago
    Interesting point you bring up. With e-commerce, I am surprised that malls can work at all. There is a brand new, massive and beautifully designed mall in The Netherlands called Westfield Mall of the Netherlands. I went there once to quickly grab something and I got hopelessly lost, even while my phone navigation actually was able to display and navigate the layout of the mall, due to the sheer size I underestimated the navigational challenge my little trip would pose. The mall really blew me away with its beauty and I am still completely flabbergasted how this can work financially, I perhaps incorrectly assumedthat everybody is like me, ordering everything online. Although hard to believe, your argument may actually have a lot of thruth in it.
• miki123211 3y ago
  This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for all users to do age verification, you create a privacy nightmare for the adults. Meanwhile, children will circumvent the restrictions with VPNs, so you need to ban VPNs too. Foreign companies, who have no incentive to play by the rules, will surely capitalize on this, so you also need a comprehensive website blocking system. As they say, there's nothing more dangerous than a teenager with very little money and a lot of time on their hands, so a simple DNS-based block definitely won't suffice, you probably need Chinese-style deep packet inspection and such. The only middle ground I see here is enforcing this through the App Stores, perhaps with an extra ban on sideloading without a developer certificate, guarded byID checks. Losing the ability to sideload would be a shame, but this is the "worst solution, except for all the others" kind of situation. Sure, this is trivial to circumvent by using the web, but the extra friction required due to web apps being worse than native might be a good enough deterrent.
  • hollerith 3y ago
    >that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity I am skeptical of this push to elevate internet anonymity to a new fundamental principle for organizing society.
    • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
      I would not feel safe painting a target on my back if I was required to attach my legal name to my comments, especially the ones advocating for queer rights.
      • hackerlight 3y ago
        Have a government agency do the age verification, then it tells FB your age but no other information. Maybe the agency gives you a unique token that it also gives to FB, and you can use it to make a unique account.
• akomtu 3y ago
  One thing that social media does to young minds is it shatters their attention into pieces, with all those flashing and moving rectangles on phone screens, and squeezes all the value it can from each piece. What's left is a mind unable to focus, that passively floats from one distraction to another.
  • improv 3y ago
    Couldn't think of a more efficient way to manufacture ADHD
• _def 3y ago
  How is the author not seeing that both sides of this debate are right and connected to each other? I guess the will to be right enables this
• bigbacaloa 3y ago
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• bigbacaloa 3y ago
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• rgbrenner 3y ago
  The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very different today. But the Supreme Court got it right when they said it would squelch free speech. You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don't care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences... from the development of critical thinking skills; development of technical skills; and limiting of educational information. Being exposed to shit on the internet teaches you there's bullshit on the internet, and not to believe everything you see. And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Restrict your children's access to these platforms. I certainly dont believe anyone should be forced to use these platforms. I don't use any of these products, and havent since they launched. That's a freedom you and everyone else can take advantage of also. But those who advocate censorship aren't advocating for freedom... they're advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.
  • hackerlight 3y ago
    > if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Relevant bit from the essay: "But much of my book is about the collective action traps that entire communities of adolescents fall into when they move their social lives onto these platforms, such that it becomes costly to abstain. It is at that point that collective mental health declines most sharply, and the individuals who try to quit find that they are socially isolated. The skeptics do not consider the ways that these network or group-level effects may obscure individual-level effects, and may be much larger than the individual-level effects."
    • lvoudour 3y ago
      An excellent point. Abstention = social isolation, which for young people is far worse than exposure. Restricting your children's access is not an option (lets' be real, they'll find a way to circumvent your efforts anyway) and moving the burden of restriction from society to individuals is not fair. So as a society do we let unrestrained exposure or do we take collective action? I lean on the second option, but I'm not sure what this action might be. I'm on the internet ~30 years, I loved the total anarchy of the early web, the unrestrained access to all kinds of information - good, bad and evil. It's very hard for me to get behind heavy-handed regulation. But honestly, I feel oversaturated by the modern cataclysm of information. My bullshit filters are clogged, my defense mechanisms are failing to the point I let information flow through me without an ounce of critical thinking. I can't imagine what the effect is on young untrained minds.
• Buttons840 3y ago
  The charts in this article are deceptive and cause me to not trust the author. Look at long term teen suicide rates and you will see that suicide rates were quite high around 1990, and then rates dropped until about 2005, and are now on the rise again but have not yet reached 1990 levels (I think). So, the author of this piece wants to make it look like suicides and self harm are on the rise because of social media, so where does he choose to start the charts? 2005.
  • logicchains 3y ago
    They also don't compare with other countries. Social media use isn't unique to America; if it's responsible for teen suicide rates, we'd expect to see similar rises across the globe, but that's not the case.
    • ergl 3y ago
      > They also don't compare with other countries Did you miss the graphs showing the same trend in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Nordic countries?
    • drawkward 3y ago
      Obviously, you did not read this article.
  • tokai 3y ago
    This. If you go even further back like 1890-1920s today numbers are also looking very good. This whole mental health pandemic is over blown. People had it even worse just recently - and they didn't get much help outside of drinking.
    • 10xDev 3y ago
      So our bar of what is considered acceptable is now anything above the levels it was during a period that include the first world war and the 19th century?
  • DHPersonal 3y ago
• pompino 3y ago
  Conversations around new regulations on the internet are eerily similar to conversations about regulations on firearms in the US. "It won't fix anything or address the issue" "The cure is worse than the disease" "Doing it half-assed is worse" "Its not even possible to implement ___" "The real cause is something else" "Its against freedom" "Its too late to do anything because ___" etc.
• qwery 3y ago
  As many point out every time this comes up, regulating access to social media products by requiring ID checks and age gating will almost certainly not work effectively, will harm the web overall and that's if its not implemented in a half-arsed way. It's a bad idea. You want people to stop buying cigarettes? Don't let the cigarette companies advertise. Require warning labels, plain packaging, increase tariffs, etc. The society doesn't exist to support the businesses poisoning it.
  • manmal 3y ago
    I mean how would you bypass an ID check? Parents can’t share a FB account with their kids.
    • qwery 3y ago
      Sorry, I was trying to summarise there because the points get repeated a lot. I'm not saying that all ID checks are easy to bypass, but that: - a lot of people do not want effective ID checks, for a lot of reasons - effective ID checks are not necessarily easy or even feasible to implement (this may vary depending on your region/government) - there's a fair chance (some would say high likelihood) that any implemented ID checks are not effective - ineffective ID checks can fail to do what they were supposed to do (age gating) while still having negative impacts (reduced privacy, more data to the datalords, lower barriers to law enforcement access to your activity, connecting government ID with day-to-day identity, etc.)
  • xandrius 3y ago
    I think if social media were required to have a subscription (even $1/month), they're usage would go down overnight. Of course, how can anyone force them (as then they could argue that a platform is social media vs online forum or else) but that could be interesting. Also it would prevent having to be on all the platforms, since you have to pay, one would choose the one(s) they strictly prefer/need, not literally all of them.
• INTPenis 3y ago
  We as a society need to adapt to this new wave of influence on kids. I think it goes without saying in this forum that if we try to ban children from using social media they will simply make their own. Any ban will only drive them into using it illegally or on a sort of underground scene.
• stahorn 3y ago
  I grew up in Sweden, where strong alcohol is only sold in a state owned company and the same for gambling, so this probably make me have another view of this than people from other countries. I do believe that there has to be some sort of laws around how social media, or really "endless scrolling of content" is done. It's seriously addictive, I feel it myself, and just letting people "be free and choose what to do" results in addicts in real life. If people and society is hurting because of this, it would be good to fix it. I think that an easy start is to require every platform that has addictive endless scrolling, or endless suggestions for what to watch next, to have a soft limit. After some regular time, information is shown that "you are on an addictive platform and taking breaks from it is good for your mental health". "Algorithms are made to keep your attention, often by making you angry and upset. Remember that this is easily fixed by stepping off this platform". It is basically a version of "smoking kills", or "don't drink and drive", but for the digital age. I think it is an easy thing to legislate (as easy as those things get), still allows people to be "free", and that could actually have a positive effect on the world.
  • fransje26 3y ago
    > I grew up in Sweden, where strong alcohol is only sold in a state owned company It worked so well, that alcoholism rates in Sweden are higher than in some countries where the sales of strong alcohol are not a state monopoly. A closer look shows that even the neighboring Scandinavian countries are doing better.. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholis...
    • abigail95 3y ago
      if you're implying causality by saying it worked well, that's probably backwards. a country with no problems with alcohol consumption won't have any need to create strong regulations. the implication that deregulating alcohol in sweden would decrease consumption seems bizarre.
      • fransje26 3y ago
• dt3ft 3y ago
  Can a 13 year old buy a gun? No. Can a 13 year old create a social media account (by entering a fake birth date)? Yes. Since we know there are minors on social media (parents can be blamed to an extent), should there not be a fool-proof way of determining the age of the user before allowing them in?
• edg5000 3y ago
  The way I see it, it is about vendor lock-in; this is what's causing the constant irritation with EU and US regulators. With phones, email and physicial mail there are different autonomous suppliers that have to work together and integrate their systems. You can use any supplier and contact any subscriber worldwide. However with some of these new online platforms, it is essentially a walled garden ran by one company. You are either in or out.
• rsolva 3y ago
  We cannot just ban social media platforms that we don't like for one reason or the other. What we can do is regulate products and markets. Consumer rights is one of the things governments should really care about. Make sure our food is safe, our water clean and that our cars and bikes are reasonably safe to use. The same goes for products distributed online. The governments around the world has been dragging their feet for decades (probably in no small part to bigtech lobbyist doing a good job) and we are now suffering the consequences. The European Union has been upping their game recently, with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), which are regulatory frameworks meant to curb the dominance of large tech companies (gatekeepers) and their malpractices. Instead of outright banning a specific platform or app, they ask companies to adhere to some sensible (from the consumers perspective) standards: - Provide data access and portability - Require interoperability to facilitate competition and innovation - Transparency of algorithms, moderation, advertising etc. On top of that, big actors have to ensure protection of consumers data (GDPR) and are required not to store more data than necessary. Having these, and more, frameworks in place, makes it possible to crack down on harmful actors from a more principled place. Most of these regulatory components are quite new and barely implemented, but I look forward to seeing them being used more over the next few years.
• astro- 3y ago
  > girls who spend five hours or more on social media per day are three times as likely to be depressed as girls who use social media only a little or not at all I mean, I can't possibly imagine the state I would be in if I spent 5 hours on Instagram every day for extended periods. But the same applies to watching reality TV or reading tabloid newspapers. Social media clearly affects young people — some of them negatively. That said, it's not 100% negative all the time. Maybe it's just changing the structure of society. In the same way that computers gave nerds the option to be the cool hacker kids and highly-paid FAANG engineers later, some skills/traits/behaviours are becoming more valuable while others are losing their usefulness. Things won't be the same, just like things aren't the same as they were 200 years ago. People will adapt and learn to deal with the new challenges.
  • justanotherjoe 3y ago
    I view it the same way. It's evolution. How it plays out is usually too complex to understand. Trying to avoid making decision for yourself (because everyone is different), by making it explicit for all people, is just running away. Also whatever we have now, a worse thing is coming yet. Or at least, a newer stranger one.
• eviks 3y ago
  > First, if the skeptics were right and the null hypothesis were true (i.e., social media does not cause harm to teen mental health), then the published studies would just reflect random noise2 and Type I errors (believing something that is false). In that case, we’d see experimental studies producing a wide range of findings, including many that showed benefits to mental health from using social media No? What's the connection? No harm doesn't mean health benefits, just... no harm
• fungiblecog 3y ago
  Social media just projects our toxic culture back at us. It a symptom not a cause. Until we address the reasons why our culture is toxic, mental health will continue to be a problem. Blaming social media, or any other easy target, just distracts from asking difficult questions and looking for real answers.
  • c048 3y ago
    This has little to do with "how toxic our culture is", but more "how social media is engineered to enable toxicity". We see the problems with large scale social media in every culture, and the issues are the same everywhere. The question should be raised if humans can actually deal with large scale social media. Perhaps, just like gambling, it should be outright banned or strictly enforced to comply with heavy restrictions
  • wildrhythms 3y ago
    No. Social media algorithmically creates bubbles that isolate people into certain interests. It's a 'culture' manufactured by an algorithm to drive engagement i.e. ad buys. If anything it's a gross manipulation of culture.
  • throw_m239339 3y ago
    > Social media just projects our toxic culture back at us. When I see Youtube trying to bait me into clicking on videos with disturbing, egregious, disgusting or sexualized thumbnails even though they have nothing to do with the keywords I entered in the search box, I fully disagree. There are also algorithms at play in order to maximise social media site bottom lines. Some social media do promote and amplify some forms of content, in spite of the user, because it's lucrative to do so for them, otherwise they would not do it. If you browse the internet without an ad blocker, you'll see these ads on mainstream websites that are optimized for clicks the exact same way.
• taurath 3y ago
  > I think it is a very good thing that alarms were rung about teen smoking, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and the exposure of children to sex and violence on TV Excuse me? I remember sitting thru Nancy Reagan’s “good morals” which were mandated to be in kids shoes, abstinence only sex education, DARE, and the ridiculousness of not being able to buy a music album with songs they played on the radio. Teen pregnancy peaked in the 1950s and has been on a steady downswing since, with a small blip on the 90s. Kids went through covid for goodness sake. That our society has almost no way to respond to that is probably the biggest cause of teenage mental illness - shit was awful and they’re expected to keep going on as if it wasn’t! I’m also not even going to bother going into the authors willful downplaying of the arguments and evidence of his detractors, which he kindly and blithely links before avoiding any argument of substance leveled against him. This is the author of the book “The Coddling of the American Mind”. It’s deeply right wing and deeply wrong in the worst way because there is some insight to be had, but the conclusions of the authors are quite ideologically driven.
  • luqtas 3y ago
    what pregnancy & violence has to do with mental disease? sure some correlation but it's not the staple in many cases... depression & suicide among kids/teens ARE increasing over time. now if that's ONLY because social media is another mild take, too https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/
    • taurath 3y ago
      I was responding to the second paragraph in the original article, in which the author gives opinions on the success of other initiatives based around moral panics. If you wanna know what’s going on with kids and mental illness and suicide, ask almost any social worker and they will straight up tell you how kids don’t have any hope and often have extremely minimal support. My generation is depressed and anxious for completely reasonable reasons. It’s a rational response.
      • luqtas 3y ago
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• skilled 3y ago
  I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves the house, other than to go to work. She doesn't share her actual thoughts and gets angry when asked about it. You might be reading this and thinking that there's more to it, but sadly there isn't. It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either. But it's crazy that a person can get this lost in life and become completely devoid of purpose and meaning. It's one thing to have an issue and work through it slowly, but it's something else to isolate yourself and live your life through others - while those "others" prosper from your own ignorance. I'm sure her past experiences are playing a role in this behavior, but the whole cosmetics things - I know for a fact there are a lot of influencers who peddle this crap, and if you lack self-awareness then I can see how easy it is to get stuck in this cycle. I just wish there was an easy way out of it.
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  • gambiting 3y ago
    >>But it's crazy that a person can get this lost in life and become completely devoid of purpose and meaning. The thing is, I'm sure for her it doesn't feel that way. She probably feels a lot of purpose and meaning in following all these people online and participating in social activities around them. That's part of the addiction too - it can feel meaningful for a long time.
    • fisf 3y ago
      > That's part of the addiction too - it can feel meaningful for a long time. That's obviously true of meth,etc. as well. The first step is always to realize you have a problem that's negatively impacting your life.
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• casey2 3y ago
  I still don't see any actual casual link. Nor do I see any evidence given that the situation would improve if social media was banned or restricted, the few he does give don't talk about mental illness, but rather general wellness and add in more variables like exercise. There were other problems like "fake" data or non-significant changes labeled as significant. I haven't even seen enough evidence to show correlation, for example a few of the attempted suicide graphs would have peaks if they went back further, or show no reaction to social media like youtube and myspace, wouldn't you expect the same group of girls who use social media 5+ hours a day to have used myspace at it's peak, and for them to have some negative reaction if social media was inherently harmful? Maybe you could draw a correlation with smartphones or smartphone+social media? But the unspecificity of the claim is a red flag. There is also the general principle that social science simply isn't advanced enough to make these kinds of predictions yet, so the discussion really is moot. In my opinion this is just the typical modern overreaction to regression to the mean. He goes on to say "what is the harm" in restricting children's access to communication. Other than the mass economic, educational and social harm none. Just because you as an old man view the younger generations social interactions as trite, nonsensical and worthless doesn't mean it is. I guess if you view education as the top down passage of knowledge then the idea that students use their phone in class must be horrifying. "Children educating eachother over the internet? Do you want society to collapse? Society needs doctors, layers and computer scientists, not dancers and memes" To me this seems like you are forcing your personal values onto students and their parents have already rejected them.
  • tgv 3y ago
    > Other than the mass economic, educational and social harm none. That argument is taken from thin air. There's nothing to substantiate it. > Just because you as an old man view the younger generations social interactions It's not about their social interactions, it's about the addictive properties of mobile phones in combination with social media. > To me this seems like ... And to me, you sound like an addict defending his addiction.
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• camgunz 3y ago
  I have two big points here: governments should ban social media, and to save its reputation, the tech industry must pull the plug on those services before that happens. Social media is the new smoking, and Meta, ByteDance, and X are the new Philip Morris. Their products are services that feed you addictive content in an addictive way, such that you spend hours and hours using the service, during which they show you as many ads as possible. That's the money firehose. There's no question it's very bad for kids, and we should ban the shit out of it. We shouldn't do it immediately, we shouldn't do it in a draconian way, but we should slowly chisel away at these services with regulations until we've transformed them from addictive mind manipulation apps to chill forums and blogs. What does regulation like that look like? "Hey it looks like you've got > 10m MAUs, please make your default algorithm recency and not engagement, please restrict users to 1 hour of total use of your feed a day, please only show users 1 ad every 5 minutes, welcome to a consent decree where we monitor all your content moderation choices, also here's the framework you'll be using." Does that sound nuts? It's actually what we want: we don't want our kids using social media more than an hour a day, we don't want them served tons of mindbending ads, we don't want some asleep-at-the-switch content moderation crew letting ISIS recruit on these services or weirdos spam our kids with pro-ana content. True to nerd form, we've really lost the plot on this one. We're arguing like, "kids can use VPNs" or "there's no difference between Instagram and Wikipedia" (lol) and blah blah. Laws and regulations aren't airtight. Kids can still pay people to buy booze for them! We still don't let them buy it themselves because that's way worse! Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. --- Importantly, the debate is basically over. In this poll [0]: - Americans overwhelmingly are concerned about kids' social media use - Only 51% think it's primarily up to parents to prevent harms This poll was conducted over a year ago, so I'm sure even more Americans are concerned and even fewer think it's solely up to parents to prevent harm. Regulation is coming. Tech is at a crossroads right now. It's been on a downward slide for over a decade. No one thinks tech is on their side anymore. It's very close to being just the latest soulless, corrupt business empire in a long line of soulless, corrupt business empires (tobacco, mining, trains, energy, pharmaceuticals, etc). If social media platforms go down kicking and screaming, it will cement this reputation. Maybe this is fine! Energy companies are doing pretty well! But I don't imagine the people at these companies think they're working at big oil or big tobacco. If you don't relish the prospect of defending your career at every social gathering you go to for the rest of your life, tech needs to pull itself back from the brink before it's forced to. It's the only way to save its reputation and actually be the positive force for good it thinks it is. [0]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/americans-are-greatly-concerned-about-social-medias-impact-children https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/americans-are-greatly-concerned-...
• protontypes 3y ago
  I use Feedblocker for all social media and have to say it is a real relief. I can still participate when I'm mentioned, but I can now focus on what I think is relevant to me instead of letting big companies decide what might be relevant to me or how best to capture my attention span. This is how I was able to finally finish my PhD.
• thih9 3y ago
  About disproving correlation, the article cites: > college students who were asked to reduce their social media use for three weeks generally experienced mental health benefits compared to the control group But that's still correlation. Maybe it was the change, the extra attention, or some other factor that caused their mental health to improve? The linked study was short term and lasted three weeks - if they spent more time without social media then perhaps their mental health would get even worse than at the start?
  • drawkward 3y ago
    >But that's still correlation. Depends on the experimental design. If it was an RCT with sufficient sample size, it would be causal.
    • thih9 3y ago
      Casual, if your goal is to prove benefits for short term withdrawal. Not so if you want to extrapolate to social media usage in general.
      • drawkward 3y ago
        That's called moving the goalposts.
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• gigatexal 3y ago
  The claim of direct causal claim is bold and probably more likely a contributing factor but can it really be the singular or even most impactful cause?
  • B56c 3y ago
    I think Haidt would certainly say this is the most impactful cause, but specifically his research has shown a causal relationship for this factor, not that it is the only factor. It's quite likely there are other factors that have some impact, but so far no one has made a compelling case for any other major factor.
• egberts1 3y ago
  Video games are a cause of teenage violence. Well, Iam going to say that what kids see in real life is the cause of their formative views, like stomping on lying victim's head. Nothing virtual.
  • dimgl 3y ago
    > Video games are a cause of teenage violence. Literally no one believes this. I grew up playing Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto.
    • egberts1 3y ago
      Agreed. Too bad that my sarcasm went in too thickly.
• 0dayz 3y ago
  The issue isn't social media in itself, it's how social media has become this absurd commercialized parody of what social media should be about. Back in the day Facebook was actually decently good social life because it augmented it with helping you easily connect with others and get to know events happening (and other stuff too). Instead everything has turned into some bizarre race to the bottom where communities are slowly becoming glorified cult of personalities, social engagement doesn't mean people socially interacting but instead it's a statistical term now, etc. Instead of connecting us it's gamed to exploit us and there's plenty of people willing to be 1 step above the exploitation (influencers). Just looking at how different twitch. tv is now compared to how it used to be, it used to be that pretty much everyone watched streamers just to see someone play something or do something extraordinary, now while it still is a bit true, there's a growing shift that people don't watch for any other reason than the influencer the self.
  • YurgenJurgensen 3y ago
    Social media becoming an absurd commercialised parody of itself was inevitable. They're for-profit companies and that's where the financial incentives are. If there was a period when you thought social media was 'good', it's because the operators hadn't yet optimised their corporate mind-control machine.
  • me_me_me 3y ago
    Social media probably has some share, but look at the world those people grow up in. Some of them only remember thing being bad and getting worse. A 20 years old with basic education is fucked. They will be surviving not living the life. Then social media reinforces the idea of being destined for failure with all of those 'successful' 'people'
• Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
  Ban smartphones. It really is that simple. Children and adults alike will benefit.
  • YurgenJurgensen 3y ago
    Banning things is rarely 'simple'. What is a smartphone? Any computer capable of connecting to a cellular network? Is an iPod touch a smartphone? Would forcing everyone onto WiFi really change much? Is an iPod touch with a Bluetooth 5G modem a smartphone? Then what? Banning battery-powered computers? You've basically destroyed the economy with how many businesses rely on laptops and tablets these days. Ban the form-factor? Is the PS Vita a smartphone? Ban the operating systems? The architectures? Is a cellular Windows x86 Microsoft Surface a smartphone? Is an Apple Watch a smartphone?
    • Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
      Lets play some yes/no "is it a smartphone" games. Computer with cell modem: no. iPod touch: yes (AFAIK). Changing cell to wifi: no change. iPod touch with modem: yes (AFAIK). Battery powered computers: no. Vita: no (AFAIK). Operating systems: yes. CPU arches: no. x86 Surface: yes (AFAIK). Smartwatch: do they have their own networking? It is a smartphone if it has wireless networking and is battery powered. A desktop on wifi or cell is not. A laptop on ethernet is not. A laptop on wifi or cell is. It is the combination of portability and networking that is the problem. Cyberspace is supposed to be separate from meatspace not something that follows you around in your pocket and constantly cries for attention. Unfortunately too many normies have eroded that boundary through the use of the smartphone. That shitty device is the cause or amplifier of many societal ills. I know that isn't quite good enough to be law. USB cell modems wouldn't be banned neither would laptops with USB ports but if you plug one into the other does it become a banned device? I don't have an answer for that. I cannot picture someone using a laptop for many of the ills I see coming from smartphones but they only need to be made smaller and smaller until they are. Possibly the cellphone might be just as bad, due to its constant connectivity, but we progressed too quickly from cheap devices available to nearly everyone to the smartphone. Perhaps some form of user interface is needed too because a sensing device plugged into a battery powered SBC transmitting data over some sort of wireless network is not a smartphone.
• exebook 3y ago
  I'd guess these poor teenagers were mentally sick of something else before the social networks thing came to be. And they will be sick of another thing after social networks get replaced. Important thing is that we have developed rules that parents teach to kids in regards to many things, but we've developed those rules for centuries, now with internet we need generations before kids will be ready to dangers of internet as good as they are prepared for the dangers of the street for example. Damn we still have bullying in schools, because schools are around just recently, like 100+ years, we have not adapted yet.
• vjk800 3y ago
  > From novels in the 18th century to the bicycle in the 19th and through comic books, rock and roll, marijuana, and violent video games in the 20th century, there are always those who ring alarms, and there are always those who are skeptics of those alarms. So far, the skeptics have been right more often than not Do we really know that, though? Maybe teens actually were better off before novels and bicycles and rock and roll in some ways? You know, spending more time outdoors, with their families, etc. Or maybe it's just about time scales. When a new, socially disruptive invention arrives, and it does not fit in the structures of the society, it causes mental illness. But as time goes on and the cultural norms adapt to the new invention, it stops causing mental illnesses. Alcohol is almost universally available, but it causes different amount of problems (both mental and physical) in different social contexts. In communities where it was recently introduced, it often causes loads of damage since the culture doesn't have rules and norms to prevent overuse of it. As a culture gets more used to alcohol, rules and norms (such as "don't drink alcohol before noon" or "don't go to work drunk") are developed and the harms are reined in. One thing I think that can be said for sure is that we shouldn't fuck with extremely complex systems like our society just for fun. All changes should be phased in gradually rather than suddenly released into the wild.
• hzay 3y ago
  Any parents here who have successfully managed this with their kids? Please share resources or ideas for newer parents.
• kiurious 3y ago
  I think the real issue is what causes social media to be this way? We have the world's top engineers working in ways to gamify and create addiction to these apps because the more people use it, the higher the ad revenue and higher the performance in the stock market. Kids are totally addicted to it, many see their self-worth based on how many likes or comments to their posts they get. So they portray this fake lifestyle, and everything they see is a fake lifestyle, together with mind-numbing content that is only entertaining in small amounts but yet tricks your brain into thinking its educational, and makes you watch 20 more in a row. Social media doesn't have to be this way and it actually shouldn't. But it is going to be very difficult to convince people in power who make tons of money this way to change this into a healthier more sane approach. Even the people living it will probably fight it as they prefer this fake life they live in without realizing that it is destroying their real one. The less attention you give to yourself and the more you constantly seek a distraction in your daily life whenever you find yourself bored or alone, the more you will lose control of it and you will want to be distant from it. So yeah we can blame social media, but I think we should look at the root cause.
• ponorin 3y ago
  > And what if it turns out that I am wrong? What if, in reality, the multinational collapse of adolescent mental health in the early 2010s was not caused by the arrival of phone-based childhood; it was just a big coincidence. Will kids be damaged by these four norms? I don’t think so. What irreversible harm will be done to children who spend more time listening to their teachers during class, more time playing and exploring together outdoors, and less time sitting alone hunched over a device? I lived in a twilight zone where smartphone became available to masses right during middle school, and I can attest that if smartphones are banned kids will simply move on to computers or other networked handheld devices. Kids are more knowledgeable than adults give credit for and know how they are being manipulated, as well as workarounds. No phone policy in schools were routinely violated; for example, they carry multiple phones and hand out only one of them. There are guides available online how to break parental control (with varying effectiveness ofc). Trying to weed out the outliers just makes the experience worse for everyone. Also I would be remiss if I don't highlight the upsides from social media, even for kids and adolescents: It's arguably the only safe haven for minorities. Imagine you're the only LGBTQ+ student in your school (probably not, but when nobody speaks up it's as good as none). Teachers won't tell, parents won't tell, then all you have left is the internet, on which there are plethora of such communities. Blocking access to such knowledge, the community and make them "spend more time listening to teachers" is exactly the recipe for mental illness/self harm, especially considering current trends.
• deleted 3y ago
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• boesboes 3y ago
  My personal believe is that the problem is not social media in itself, it is the endless feed that changes interactions from deliberate choice and discovery to drinking from a firehose. Honestly, we just stop calling this influencer marketing and algorithmic feeds 'social media' and call it what it is: commercials and propaganda that is intermingled into our social fabric. And I can believe that that is damaging..
• deleted 3y ago
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• uconnectlol 3y ago
  > We are now 12 years into a public health emergency that began around 2012 yes, yes, and porn is also a health epidemic, and so was covid (yes it was, only technically). so what? until you roll out new laws in reaction to this "problem", it doesn't exist as far as i'm concerned. i don't care that you have a large body of proof for it, i don't have time to read that. and when you make the laws they will be bullshit and not even solve the problem which may or may not exist. you are all redditors.
• dartos 3y ago
  So nothing has changed since 2008?
• non-entity 3y ago
  [dead]
• incomingpain 3y ago
  This is cherry picked data trying to cut off at 2001 or later. Go look at self-harm data which included the 1980s and 1990s. Self-harm has been climbing since the late 1990s. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3428496/figure/F2/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3428496/figure/... Haidt is cherry picking his data because if you point to late 1990s, there was no social media and therefore the crisis cannot be put on social media. In my opinion, social media is helping this situation, not causing the situation.
• throwaway458864 3y ago
  The big mental illness crisis of the 21st century is really the same one from the 20th: mass media consumerism. Social media is literally just mass media consumerism in a more efficient, evolved form. It's the car compared to the bicycle: more advanced, with more bad outcomes than before. If you want to cure social media mental illness you'll have to wrestle with the fundamental addiction all humans now have to mass media, which has a symbiotic relationship with consumerism. Since the global economy depends on consumerism, it's not going to be easy to dismantle.
• genrilz 3y ago
  This is a post in a debate between Jonathan Haidt and Candice Odgers. If you look at the meta-analysis cited by both, Haidt cites one which does seem to show a high effect size correlational link between screen time and depression. Odgers cites 4 meta analyses, one of which is actually a meta-meta analysis, which all claim that the effect size on depression and other measures of well-being are small. I'm not quite sure what to make of Haidt's cited analysis, but it seems like there has been quite a bit of research on the effects of social media, and the majority of the evidence seems to point towards it not causing large well-being problems.
  • giacovecci 3y ago
    Yeah, Haidt's is a compelling entry but sounds too good to be true. I haven't been following this discussion or the studies, but just a quick check of one of the two studies he uses as examples of evidence for harm caused by social media (and benefits of withdrawal) shows that a) he misquoted the protocol (daily usage reduction to 30 minutes instead of by 30 minutes a day) b) the study is hardly conclusive due to major methodological weaknesses (homogeneous sample, self-reporting of both protocol compliance and results).
    • deleted 3y ago
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  • giarc 3y ago
    "the majority of the evidence seems to point towards it not causing large well-being problems." I can't see how this is true. Anecdotally, everyone I talk to, and you most comments in this thread (and any other thread) is full of people admitting that they A. use their phone too much B. wish they didn't and C. it makes them feel bad. Again, n of 1, but I've never met someone that openly wants to use their phone more or will say that social media has been great for them. Admittedly I haven't read the research, but how does it come to the conclusion that social media isn't causing problems?
    • saulrh 3y ago
      Probably that there's an underlying common cause that means the effect disappears when you analyze the data properly. For example, if screen time is caused by lack of parental presence and lack of parental presence is caused by poverty and poverty also causes depression, then a naive analysis would find a correlation but a proper analysis or meta-analysis would subtract out the common causes of poverty and parental absence and find no effect.
• ck2 3y ago
  I'm old enough to have experienced the invention of cellphones and then smartphones and then "social media" I am also on the roads every single day on foot or bike all those years. People have absolutely lost all self-control and are absolutely addicted to connectivity and media, not a little bit, overwhelmingly toxic levels. Everyone is constantly holding and looking down at their phone, no matter at a bus stop or driving. Even walking and I've seen people biking while constantly looking down at their phones. We need to start treating it like alcohol or drug addiction, it's the exact same thing.
• Funes- 3y ago
  Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing because "past a certain point" you can't do shit about it, and God forbid they try to develop themselves into a worthwhile adult without using any of those time-sinking, mindless apps, because then they will be "left out". Left out of what? A vile cesspool of shit in which everyone seems to bathe nowadays, at the expense of their potential? Lack of impulse control, no critical thinking, laziness and general negligence have always been at the root cause of many of societal ailments like this one, and until a large enough group of people chooses to come up with healthier alternatives and sacrificing hedonistic and mindless tendencies, they will keep festering across the globe. In the meantime, I absolutely prefer to be "left out" and interacting solely with similar minded people.
  • hatenberg 3y ago
    Guns kill people but that’s only because the vulnerability of the flesh has always been a problem. Like guns, we have a hard time coming to the right conclusions
    • BadHumans 3y ago
      What's the right conclusion?
    • dylan604 3y ago
      It seems only Americans are struggling with the guns issue, so your conclusion falls very flat
      • commandlinefan 3y ago
        That's true. America is the only country where people are killed by guns in the entire world.
        • dylan604 3y ago
• HAL9OOO 3y ago
  Does anyone have any ideas on how to cure human loneliness?
  • jksflkjl3jk3 3y ago
    Make single adult life economically infeasible for the masses, as it was for most of human history.
• klabb3 3y ago
  Instagram is a social posturing platform. Kids compare themselves. We already acknowledge that kids have not yet developed a strong sense of protecting themselves. Including against soft influence, which is why advertising for children is highly regulated in most countries. “Social” platforms are next level and much better at exploiting attention than classical advertising. I feel like in lieu of hard evidence, which naturally comes with a very high bar in social science, the safest path is to stay the hell away from excessive social comparison 24/7. This is, in my experience, medium-to-very unhealthy even for most adults (see exhibit A - LinkedIn). When you have an adversary that openly deploys recommendation systems optimized for engagement, it’s not rocket science to connect the dots. Sure, I guess there’s a theoretical chance it’s correlation. But as a parent today, are you gonna take that risk with your child’s childhood? I would definitely do everything I can to guide my children away from social comparison. I stopped using people-oriented social media years ago, for my own sake. Most of the SV elite keeps their children off that crap, even though they are have high-status potential in “succeeding” in this mindless game.
• jononomo 3y ago
  My workout buddy at the Y related the following story to me this morning: Yesterday his 11-year-old daughter was without her phone because she was being punished for something or other. They did various activities throughout the day and my buddy noticed that his daughter was noticeably happier and more engaged than she usually was -- he mentioned looking at ferrets at the mall and playing a card game, etc. He said that had she had her phone with her then there is no way she would have been as interested and engaged in the world as she was that day and that she would have been smiling and laughing less and just been generally less happy overall. But, nevertheless, she continually begged for her phone back throughout the day. He had noticed this pattern over time, my buddy said, and it was like you could just give her the phone and then watch her become withdrawn, sad, and angry, or you could take the phone away and watch her become smiling, happy, and engaged but then also beg to have her phone back so that she could be withdrawn, sad and angry. Just for more context, she was adopted out of the foster care system about five years ago and she seems to need to create a lot of drama at school for some reason.
• fcantournet 3y ago
  Your goal using a social media platform is to get the most usefulness out of it in the least amount of time. Their goal (with very large $$$ incentive) is that you spend the maximum amount of time on the platform (so that they can show you the maximum amount of ads) Those 2 goals are at odds, in a relationship where the balance of power is very much in favour of the platforms, who deploy adversarial methods to maximise "engagement". At some point, something has to give. Namely our collective mental health.
• 10xDev 3y ago
  The recent Twitter drama over a use of a word is all you need to see how bad things are. It takes nothing to get a mob of mentally ill people on your case which can have a psychological toll on anyone especially teenagers. And if you try to reason with such people you just get sent down a rabbit hole. We need to have limits on what we allow our brain to process the same way we do for our body with ultra-processed foods by avoiding fast food restaurants as nothing is totally erased and everything nudges your mood and beliefs whether you feel it or don't.
  • makeitdouble 3y ago
    Is X/Twitter the barometer of how good social media is for us ? Otherwise I find it interesting how people attribute toxic discussions to online media, when the wisdom of our elders were to never talk politics at dinners to avoid having people literally beating each other. We can't be focusing on the absolute worse with the illest use cases, and make it into a societal problem. Looking at our world today, I genuinely think we're in a better place than three decades ago when we had absolutely none of our online networks.
    • 10xDev 3y ago
      I only highlighted the tip of the iceberg where the behaviour is not limited to Twitter and wasn't even political. And whether the world is better or not than 3 decades ago is not really the topic here, it is about mental health and how it has become worse over the past decade and whether that can be attributed to social media.
      • makeitdouble 3y ago
        But social media is part of our life as a whole, we are a social species. If our mental health had a net decrease as a whole on the whole society, yes, we could throw stones as social media as the author wants. But for that we'd need to first include assesment of absolutely everything touching social media and look at the net result. Doee it improve family communication? Does it help or hurt social discourse ? Does it help or hurt minorities ? What's the impact on social mobility ? IMHO social media is just a catalyst of our social trends and while the lows are really low, the highs can also be incredibly high. I'd be more sympathetic to an argument about raising the floor to cut te more toxic behaviors than just try to isolate it in an "adult only" corner and pretending the situation got better.
• nojvek 3y ago
  In 2023, I would glue my self to the phone after reading book to our kid. But then our 5 year old would want to see what I am doing on my phone. One day I was reading a reddit thread while she wanted to tell me something that happened in school. Someone told her her school lunch stinks because it is vegetarian and I brushed it aside. That moment was a wake up call. I was addicted to a stupid reddit thread ignoring a real issue. Now I don't use the phone around sleep time. We read books, talk about the day, get bored and tell imaginative stories but no phones. The nice effect of that is I sleep earlier and have much better quality of sleep. Less baggy eyes. Not using phone before sleep has increased quality of life significantly. I have longer attention spans during the day as well. Infinite scroll is the new sugar addiction.
  • jmathai 3y ago
    > get bored We really underestimate how negatively it's impacting our quality of life that we don't let ourselves get bored anymore. My kids liked to listen to the radio while in the car. We stopped doing that - they fight it but we have conversations we otherwise wouldn't. Oh, and less Doja Cat in our lives isn't such a bad thing either.
• deleted 3y ago
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• renegade-otter 3y ago
  This is real. Those of us who remember pre-social-meeds Internet know. I am no longer able to read books. If the book is a long Twitter thread - I will read more of it.
• 2devnull 3y ago
  Usenet didn’t have this problem. It’s not being online and interacting with others that’s the problem. It’s the money. And we’ve known that forever.
  • tithe 3y ago
    I wonder how Usenet would have been different if it had supported profile pictures.
• lykahb 3y ago
  With the amount of data that the social networks syphon, they surely know the age. Banning the underage users does not need any more compromise of anonymity than what already exists.
• pksebben 3y ago
  I'm all about most of this. I disconnected from facestagramitter a while ago, and it was the best thing I've ever done for myself bar none. Got a change of career out of it and a vast improvement in my personal life. But... > Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama’s second term, as the economy was steadily improving? Yes. Yes it did. The bank bailout was one of the worst things to come out of the oval office in my lifetime - a significant portion of the middle class just dried up and financial security for everyone but the wealthiest was all of a sudden a pipe dream. "The economy was steadily improving" is an incredibly ignorant and narrow take. The numbers for GDP looked good, but that doesn't account for distribution. Social media in the form it has now is toxic. But it's not outlandish to think that a whole generation watching their parents lose homes and having what meager inheritance they might have relied on evaporate would be a little depressed about it.
  • kbrackbill 3y ago
    I'm curious, how did disconnecting lead to a career change?
    • pksebben 3y ago
      Was bartender, always liked computers and wanted to work with 'em. Self-taught my way into the field (which is a gross simplification but broadly gets at the meat of it). Disconnecting from social media was part of a larger effort to remove distractions - around the same time I also deleted steam and cancelled my netflix account. The wealth of time this left me to focus on self-development was absolutely critical to figuring out how to 'take my computer hobby pro'. My guess as to 'why it worked' is this; in those moments when I'm sitting around with nothing to do, there are no easy outs (facebook/insta having been the easiest and lowest-drag options for spending time, they were the biggest offenders) so you sit with your discomfort at being underoccupied for a moment, get frustrated, and pick up a tutorial, technical manual, or start googling around for answers to a question you have. By no means was it "deleted facebook and productivity gods smiled upon me, bestowing me with champion focus and a fulfilling career", but without the disconnect, I'm confident I would have failed. The times when I would be doomscrolling also turned out to be the times I had the best bursts of inspiration, besides being the entry point for more focused bouts of actual, real work.
• iancmceachern 3y ago
  Of course, it was deliberately designed to be that way. Just like tobacco, sugary beverages, etc. Before
• seydor 3y ago
  I think we should start calling them "social comparison engines". From day 0 they were all about gossip but we pretended they are the 'new media' that will change the world. Now we are back to square 1 , with a few trusted media and a sea of scammers peppered in vacation selfies and baby pics. It's like everyone has become a Sim in the largest game of Sims.
• ein0p 3y ago
  Not just teenagers. A lot of adults are severely affected too. A good percentage of those billions of DAUs got their lives destroyed by FB/Instagram/Youtube/Twitter algorithms I bet.
• sedawkWard 3y ago
  [dead]
• EchoReflection 3y ago
  Haidt is also co-author of the extremely relevant, data-rich, and well-researched book "The Coddling of the American Mind", which is definitely worth every modern human's time/money/attention. In the book he and co-author Greg Lukianoff discuss and provide numerous examples of how modern universities are promoting "three great untruths", namely: 1.You must strive to avoid bad experiences at all costs. 2.You must always trust your emotions over reason. 3.The world is a black-and-white battle between good people and bad people; there is no middle ground. The content of that book made me feel some very visceral contempt (which I realize is not good for ME) tfor the administrators/university bureaucrats that are basically poisoning/corrupting tens of millions of minds every year*. https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-how-good-intentions-and-bad-ideas-are-setting-up-a-generation-for-failure-9780735224919 https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-coddling... https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Coddling-of-the-American-Mind-Audiobook/B079P6VFH1?eac_link=VvBlLcVAPWYg&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B079P6VFH1&qid=42KPRnW03g&eac_id=136-2843054-1070544_42KPRnW03g&sr=1-1 https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Coddling-of-the-American-Mind... --- *I wasn't sure how many people are enrolled in post-secondary educational institutions around the world so I asked chatGPT and it's response was: me: approximately how many humans are enrolled in college or university in any given year chatGPT: As of recent data, there are typically over 19 million students enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States alone. Globally, the number of students enrolled in colleges and universities is much larger, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. These numbers can vary slightly from year to year due to factors like population growth, economic conditions, and educational policies.
• CMYKninja 3y ago
  Simple switch all screens to eink Displays.
• SirMaster 3y ago
  As a 36 year old, I still don't understand what people find so compelling or addicting about social media. OK you can argue that HN is social media, and so I understand the reason why I like to participate in this site. However, I am just a username and comments. I don't understand the (bigger?) social media where you post all the details and photos of your life online like facebook, instagram, and twitter, etc. I never seemed to have a problem keeping in touch with family, friends and making new friends with my hobbies by just using in person meeting, phone calls, and basic text messaging services.
  • patcon 3y ago
    I don't either. But I understand that different brains have different experiences with it, and many many ppl are "having a bad time". Just like how one persons reaction to being surrounded by unhealthy food choices is different than my own.
  • y-c-o-m-b 3y ago
    Did you attend high school in the US? It's basically the online version of high school. They've brought all the popularity contest, show-boating "look at the nice things I do, have, etc", and gossip from high school onto social media. Many people don't grow out of that mindset.
    • SirMaster 3y ago
      Yes, I did go to high school in the US. I didn't really care what people thought of me and my stuff then and so I guess I still don't now. I guess it's not so much that I don't understand why what you are describing would be addictive and compelling if one cared about those things like being popular. It's more of, I don't understand why so many people care so much about being popular haha. I guess I am really that abnormal and just have to accept that I will never understand it. I guess the best I can do is to think of things that I do like and do desire and do care about, and imagine replacing them with the concepts of wanting to be popular or wanting to show off. Or like thinking of the things that make me happy, and imagining instead that if the things on social media were what made me happy. But does social media really make people happy? One of the things that makes me happy for instance is hiking and backpacking. Now I certainly understand that there are plenty of people who have no interest in that and if I had to explain to them why I like it so much, it would probably be hard to get them to truly understand why from my perspective. I mean what really determines our individual interests? I guess I am just always surprised that so many people find social media interesting. Watching sports is another one. I like playing sports, but I don't understand why so many people find sports so interesting to watch.
• jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  From the man who aimed COVID was 100% about leftists control, who says DEI is also about racial hierarchy. Recent thread, https://bsky.app/profile/romancingnope.bsky.social/post/3kpl3ljnnwu24 https://bsky.app/profile/romancingnope.bsky.social/post/3kpl... but one can search his name on any social media to get a taste of what he's about. Haidt is insufferable. Haidt can be right that we need better for our kids. But this satanic panic scapegoating shit is crazy. There's massive economic uncertainty, a crazy world, we are short on worthy role models, the environment is going crazy, capitalism has consolidated enormous power, and much closer to home truths that there are so few shared spaces, 3rd places where one can be a free youth. Social media is portrayed like such a crafty monster, but we rarely delve into the other whys of it, are too busy demonizing convenient to snap at companies to recognize how amazing it is to tour the world & get such a great perch watching humanity. Dragging red meat postings like this into HN greatly lowers the discourse.
• ipaddr 3y ago
  I wonder how many of these teens took the covid vaccine. Big shift since.
• rldjbpin 3y ago
  from most of the discourse here and even recent legislations in the us, it seems that people are taking the same approach for social media as the war on drugs. i feel that we did not learn much from the failures in the latter. take the prawn site checks implemented by some states, which is being countered by use of vpn (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39955148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39955148). the social isolation and other vectors of depression exists in society, whether or not social media exists. we need more discourse for the root causes.
• shymaple 3y ago
  I consider social media to be like a weapon; it is you who should decide what and how to do with it. However, nowadays, social intelligence is reaching a new low level among parents themselves. The person who should guide them in the right way is actually on the wrong path. I have seen my niece and nephew, and it's not their fault. When I visit them and interact with them; I never see them asking for a phone or laptop. However, my brother and sister-in-law are always busy, either with work, household chores, or on their phones, which creates a gap between child and parent. Consequently, I feel they find other ways to fill their time, eventually becoming addicted. Simply put, if we give them time, correct resources, and guidance, I don't think they will use it more than intended.
• limbojunkie 3y ago
  The internet in general should return back to the old days when only somewhat educated and skilled people use it. Since it became mainstream because of smartphones things went downhill.
• muddi900 3y ago
  Jonathan Haidt is the 21st century Paul Ehlric.