9 ms·

Kids Who Get Smartphones Earlier Become Adults with Worse Mental Health (2023)

132 points by julkali 2y ago

Xen9 2y ago
Mental health research feels silly to me. When humans are put to live in small apartments and pushed their entire lives to obey the BUY and VOTE commands, they will of course go insane. It's questionable whether anything can be done about this but those who live in the illusion that there was no complete behavioural control of the average homo sapiens and use false models of the causes of the mental issue problems, that somehow do not go after the socio-political root causes IE judge the abusers, not only betray themselves but those who they seek to help the most. To englighten: Smartphone could be the most useful cognitively beneficial, amazing tool a children can have. Your own photography, recordings, books, and all your friends available to call on a single device is plain wonderful. But the smartphone, the PDA, has been made a tool of surveillance and manipulation. The average parent does not comprehend the problem or have any technical capability. Children usually are directed to fitting in socially. If nothing else, the children will watch Youtube videos on their friends phone and soon start to idealize them, else you will not know what the other children even speak about, when they have been manipulated to worship a brand or to support some political agenda indirectly. They will not be able to cut all the harms out of it. World has three classes: owners, hermits and pets. Because majority homo sapiens belongs to the lowest class, the species tolerates most animal abuse out of primates.
28304283409234 2y ago
Smartphone "with Internet access that you could carry with you?” I'd say the free and unsupervised internet access is the problem. Not the device.
middlefing 2y ago
[flagged]
brookst 2y ago
It’s interesting but doesn’t seem to address the correlation / causation thing. It may be that other attributes of the kids, parents, family, or socioeconomic context lead to earlier smartphone use and also worse mental health / happiness later in life.
- croemer 2y ago
  Came here to say this. This blog was founded to convince others of the harm of smartphones. It's not unreasonable to imagine that the authors have significant confirmation bias. Everything they claim needs to be taken with a big grain of salt. Haidt is also marketing his book via the blog. It would be much more credible if he designed proper scientific studies and punished them in relevant Journals after peer review. The fact he doesn't publish properly is consistent with my hunch that his claims wouldn't stand up to scientific scrutiny.
- em500 2y ago
  It's kind of addressed in section 5: "We cannot be certain that the correlations shown in the data are evidence of causality, but we think it is appropriate for those who care for children to act on the preponderance of the evidence (which is the standard in a civil trial) rather than waiting for evidence beyond a reasonable doubt (which is the standard used in a criminal trial." It's not that social (or medical) researchers are unaware that observational studies can't establish causation, but in most cases when studying human reactions nothing better is feasible. For a proper randomized controlled trials even voluntary enrollments are problematic: the researcher needs to choose and randomize the treatment. How can that ever be implemented for a sufficiently powered study of smartphones/social media use for children (or adults)?
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    “We can’t do real science because it would be too expensive, so we’ll just assume that what we are trying to prove is true.” I hate it, and we need to figure out something better. We use this same method in diet research, too.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Jonathan Haidt has covered the correlation/ causation question very rigorously. The case that smart phones and social media specifically have an impact is very strong.
hello_kitty2 2y ago
Could it also be sign of unhealthy parenting? Parents who are not good at parenting give a smart phone to kids earlier?
- tetris11 2y ago
  If you don't have time to parent because you're off to your second job, plonking a child in front of a screen is a godsend (for the parent, not for the child, naturally).
- dghughes 2y ago
  It used to be park your kid in front of a TV.
  - barryrandall 2y ago
    Content on TV (for better or worse) is regulated, and those regulations are periodically updated to address the moral outrage of the day.
- RNAlfons 2y ago
  They don't even need "mental health issues" because it just works. Give the toddler an iPad and it'll stop bothering you. Scary stuff...
  - osigurdson 2y ago
    The school my son used to attend wanted to be hi tech (I guess) and gave all kids iPads with all textbooks and assignments provided this way. You don't need a study or aversion to technology to realize how bad they are for this purpose. The screen is small, constrained and low fidelity compared to a paper text book. It also (by default, as provisioned) turns off every ~5s to save battery life which is incredibly annoying. It is just objectively worse than paper.
- faitswulff 2y ago
  Probably just correlated with poverty, as with almost everything else. Only wealthy parents can afford to send their kids to summer camp.
cchi_co 2y ago
The concern about the impact of internet and social media (and consequently smartphones) on children’s safety is well-founded. Increased anxiety and depression, reduced attention span, sleep disruption...
- gtirloni 2y ago
  I don't remember feeling depressed about my Internet usage before social networks existed. Just making a point to try and separate those two, as impossible as it seems these days.
  - ajma 2y ago
    I don't remember feeling negatively affected by social media until politics started to get into my feed.
  - technothrasher 2y ago
    When did you start using the Internet? I was already using social networks (Multi-user BBS's and FidoNet) before I even first got onto the Internet in 1988, and then immediately got on to Usenet and IRC for social networking.
    - dghughes 2y ago
      Yeah late 80s early 90s BBS (terrible name of BATE) was the first thing I ever did on a computer other than my Atary 600XL. Talk to actual people!? Wow! Then onto IRC where "no flaming" (arguing or trolling) was a strict rule. But 90% of it was people wanting to hookup people asking ASL was every second sentence. But whatever modern social media is there is something different about it.
      - technothrasher 2y ago
        I think the biggest differences with modern social media are that 1) it constantly seeks your attention with notifications, and 2) it is trying to make money, so they've spent money on how to keep you addicted.
bdcravens 2y ago
Causation or correlation? Rarely do parents force phones on their kids; they give in to their kids asking. This could say something about those kids, or perhaps about parents who give their kids what they ask.
- liveoneggs 2y ago
  they start asking early
  - blitzar 2y ago
    I really wanted a gun when I was a 3. My parents didnt get me one.
kjksf 2y ago
[flagged]
zx10rse 2y ago
This is well known fact by now I would say. The social dilemma docu shows some pretty interesting data - The Social Dilemma - Influence of Social Media on Teen Depression and Behavior They were showing some pretty concerning data of the first generation that grew up with smartphones in school. I can only imagine in time what will be the picture of the first generation that is growing up now with LLM models everywhere around them. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui0UNXsEGJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui0UNXsEGJ8
Aerroon 2y ago
>The most mentally healthy respondents are those who did not get a phone until their late teens. The first graph also shows that the oldest people score the best on their mental health test in general. --- They note that their Mental Health Quotient figure has been decreasing over the years. They also note that in the age range of 18-24 the earlier that the people were given a smartphone the worse the MHQ figure is. But did they control for age here? Because 18-24 is a 7 year duration. Their first graph shows that in a 7 year timeframe their MHQ graph drops 25%. We could be seeing an effect that the older part of the range got their smartphones at a later age (because it's new technology) and the correlated MHQ drop by year creates the drop off by age of first smartphone. Was this accounted for because I couldn't find it on a quick read. --- You might also be measuring the effect of better mental health awareness. Ie kids who got smartphones earlier might be more aware of mental health issues and are more likely to notice and bring it up.
- julkali 2y ago
  They conduct(ed) a quite extensive collaborative meta-study about the broader subject [0]. Maybe you can find your points adressed there. [0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-olnkPyWcgF5BiAtBEy0/mobilebasic https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...
bitsandboots 2y ago
Seems to me earlier access to smartphones would also be detrimental to tech expertise. Teach your kids right, teach them unix first :)
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Only give them a phone/computer with terminal like text input and output. If they want to use social media, they must code it themselves, including graphics.
- blitzar 2y ago
  Don't let them use it till they compile the kernel themselves.
- RhysU 2y ago
  "Talk to your kids about POSIX" reads my favorite t-shirt.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
detourdog 2y ago
The problem I see with the study is that smartphones are so new to society that the younger children in the US have seen a lot more chaos in formally stable society.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  There have been plenty of eras with less social stability. I don’t see how this era stands out especially.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    The events may or may not stand out but children today have less autonomy and are given responsibility for themselves later in life. I see this as developing a feel of helplessness. Compounded with current media landscape of distortion and distress is different. Finally I see that society would rather scapegoat the smartphone than point out the issue having TVs the public spaces makes consumption of this stress are background noise.
ttpphd 2y ago
Old Haidt piece. Wonder why it's getting traction this year.
dbtablesorrows 2y ago
You all miss the obvious correlations. A society with prosperity but lacking athletic, artistic and intellectual pursuits will devolve into a crowd of purposeless humans living for the pleasures of the moment. That's what current generations are. 90% of people have enough to meet needs, and no meaningful purpose in life apart from scrolling tiktok, constant stream of sexualized and otherwise glorified (money, aesthetics) material. The popular culture also glorifies temporary pleasures (drugs, drinking, sexual promiscuity). Just look at average teenager, their lives revolve around celebrities and these habits. They're lookist, superficial and shallow AF. Of course they will lose mental health thinking about looks and comparing with some photoshopped instagram celebrity. No wonder they don't have enough stability to sustain ups and downs in life when they lack a purpose, and centered their lives around these hedonistic pleasures.
- ch4s3 2y ago
  > You all miss the obvious correlations. I think this is one of the contributing factors that researchers are pointing to, smartphone use in adolescence encourages a more sedentary lifestyle and less sleeps.
- tohnjitor 2y ago
  This is almost correct. >A society with prosperity but lacking athletic, artistic and intellectual pursuits will devolve into a crowd of purposeless humans living for the pleasures of the moment. I would change this to >A society with prosperity but lacking family and reproductive pursuits will devolve into a crowd of purposeless humans living for the pleasures of the moment.
  - dbtablesorrows 2y ago
    I am all for family values, but I am not convinced it will guarantee purpose in life and prevent you from spiralling into depression for some other reason.
    - tohnjitor 2y ago
      Indeed, few things are guaranteed.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
inanutshellus 2y ago
It's funny how predictable all these comments are. It doesn't seem to matter how many studies say the same thing. "It's probably not the smartphone; they're probably not considering [age, parental competence, socioeconomic variables, literally-anything-that-lets-me-pretend-my-beloved-smartphone-doesnt-hurt-my-mental-health]" Y'all can't help but upvote the skeptical comments. I wish I'd been saving all the articles I've read about this over the last several years. These studies are not rare and they don't disagree. Seriously. Go look right now and find a single study that says folks' mental health is improved by smartphones. Here's a post on HN I saved a while back, check out its top comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31268222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31268222 top two comments: > Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment[...] > Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem[...] The first one I read was one back in 2017 by Jean Twenge that documented a cliff-face-leap of depression, loneliness, and anxiety and correlated it to the release of the first smartphone. Ask yourselves - why are you all so desperate to deny this research?
- smokel 2y ago
  > It's funny how predictable all these comments are. Indeed they are, and that is why I come here. I like to see research being questioned and critiqued. If I am interested in simply taking everything I read on the internet for granted, I'd visit Facebook or LinkedIn, instead. Most of us are well aware that too much phone usage is probably bad for you in one way or another. There is no need to acknowledge that on this forum. So what you have here is a typical case of confirmation bias, no need to get upset about it :)
  - nofam 2y ago
    Questioning research is good. Asking naive, obvious questions the researchers clearly predicted and accounted for is just adding noise and reducing signal. Not all questions are good questions.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Why are some so desperate to blame smartphones? As far as I am aware, smartphones are used globally but the symptoms described are not. Of this is an indictment of those societies that are destroying their children’s’ mental health and perhaps futures, it’s nice to have a relatively simple scapegoat upon which to pin the blame (though I suspect smartphones are as irrevocably embedded in our culture as all the other problems are at this point), and imagine solving the issue by removing.
karaterobot 2y ago
We're currently at the stage of denying that social networks have negative mental and social effects. As more evidence is collected, we're shading toward fatalistic acceptance. But, even then, I suspect not much will change: we'll acknowledge that we have a problem, but we won't do anything about it for a long time yet. There are too many sources that enable this kind of addiction for it to just get dropped.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  It thought we were past the denial stage. Then one day I mentioned that I don't let my 2.5 play with a phone and the reaction from HN was shocking.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Only phone or computer with terminal text output and input allowed.
    - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
      I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I think that's actually a great idea...
    - xandrius 2y ago
      Better be vim or emacs or that kid is not going very far I tell ya
hi_dang_ 2y ago
[dead]
genrilz 2y ago
Every time Haidt comes up, I do go through the post and do another literature search on social media effects. The most notable thing about this post is the MHQ figures. However, you might note that the difference in age of smartphone use moves a person by at most one bucket. Given that he is suggesting a ban on smartphones and/or social media, I would expect some more catastrophic effect. In terms of the literature review, this time I read through [0]. It also finds small but significant effects on anxiety and depression, but finds no significant effects on overall measures of well-being. This is because social media also seems to have some positive effects on some other measures of well-being. This meta analysis also finds that age does not seem to change the effects of social media. On longitudinal studies, it seems like social well-being does decrease social media use, but anxiety and depression to not increase social media use. Also, social media use doesn't seem to cause anxiety and depression here, so there is probably some third factor causing anxiety, depression, and social media use which causes this correlation. Also interesting is that internationally the effects are neutral, and in the US, the effects are neutral, but in Europe they are negative, while in Asia they are positive. IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning. [0]: https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/technology/2022-hancock.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/technology/2022-hancock.pdf
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  "IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning." Does the term "hypothesis" in this sentence mean something like "a general supposition" or does it have the meaning as used in scientific research. The former definition does not require evidence or proof. The later definition of course requires that the hypothesis be a statement that is falsifiable. The phrase "worth banning" is a personal value judgment. "Catastrophic" is also a subjective measure. Neither is falsifiable. Perhaps this is why the blog suggests using a legal standard such as preponderance of the evidence rather than a scientific one. As everyone living in the real world knows, parental decisions, school decisions nor even state or federal laws are 100% based on scientific evidence, generally. People make arguments. Evidence of varying quality is presented. People draw on their own experiences. Money, e.g., marketing and lobbying, plays a significant role. It is not a scientific process.
theshrike79 2y ago
It's not the phone, it's the fact that parents let their kids on social media. The age limit is 13 on ALL social media platforms. Including Discord (which is a bummer, it's handy for voice chat when playing Minecraft). I've seen friends of my kids have Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok accounts at 9 or 10 years old. Unless they get complete unfettered access with no parental controls the parents have installed them on their devices and created an account.

132 points by julkali 2y ago

Xen9 2y ago

Mental health research feels silly to me. When humans are put to live in small apartments and pushed their entire lives to obey the BUY and VOTE commands, they will of course go insane. It's questionable whether anything can be done about this but those who live in the illusion that there was no complete behavioural control of the average homo sapiens and use false models of the causes of the mental issue problems, that somehow do not go after the socio-political root causes IE judge the abusers, not only betray themselves but those who they seek to help the most. To englighten: Smartphone could be the most useful cognitively beneficial, amazing tool a children can have. Your own photography, recordings, books, and all your friends available to call on a single device is plain wonderful. But the smartphone, the PDA, has been made a tool of surveillance and manipulation. The average parent does not comprehend the problem or have any technical capability. Children usually are directed to fitting in socially. If nothing else, the children will watch Youtube videos on their friends phone and soon start to idealize them, else you will not know what the other children even speak about, when they have been manipulated to worship a brand or to support some political agenda indirectly. They will not be able to cut all the harms out of it. World has three classes: owners, hermits and pets. Because majority homo sapiens belongs to the lowest class, the species tolerates most animal abuse out of primates.

28304283409234 2y ago

Smartphone "with Internet access that you could carry with you?” I'd say the free and unsupervised internet access is the problem. Not the device.

middlefing 2y ago

[flagged]

brookst 2y ago

It’s interesting but doesn’t seem to address the correlation / causation thing. It may be that other attributes of the kids, parents, family, or socioeconomic context lead to earlier smartphone use and also worse mental health / happiness later in life.

croemer 2y ago
Came here to say this. This blog was founded to convince others of the harm of smartphones. It's not unreasonable to imagine that the authors have significant confirmation bias. Everything they claim needs to be taken with a big grain of salt. Haidt is also marketing his book via the blog. It would be much more credible if he designed proper scientific studies and punished them in relevant Journals after peer review. The fact he doesn't publish properly is consistent with my hunch that his claims wouldn't stand up to scientific scrutiny.
em500 2y ago
It's kind of addressed in section 5: "We cannot be certain that the correlations shown in the data are evidence of causality, but we think it is appropriate for those who care for children to act on the preponderance of the evidence (which is the standard in a civil trial) rather than waiting for evidence beyond a reasonable doubt (which is the standard used in a criminal trial." It's not that social (or medical) researchers are unaware that observational studies can't establish causation, but in most cases when studying human reactions nothing better is feasible. For a proper randomized controlled trials even voluntary enrollments are problematic: the researcher needs to choose and randomize the treatment. How can that ever be implemented for a sufficiently powered study of smartphones/social media use for children (or adults)?
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  “We can’t do real science because it would be too expensive, so we’ll just assume that what we are trying to prove is true.” I hate it, and we need to figure out something better. We use this same method in diet research, too.
jimbokun 2y ago
Jonathan Haidt has covered the correlation/ causation question very rigorously. The case that smart phones and social media specifically have an impact is very strong.

hello_kitty2 2y ago

Could it also be sign of unhealthy parenting? Parents who are not good at parenting give a smart phone to kids earlier?

tetris11 2y ago
If you don't have time to parent because you're off to your second job, plonking a child in front of a screen is a godsend (for the parent, not for the child, naturally).
dghughes 2y ago
It used to be park your kid in front of a TV.
- barryrandall 2y ago
  Content on TV (for better or worse) is regulated, and those regulations are periodically updated to address the moral outrage of the day.
RNAlfons 2y ago
They don't even need "mental health issues" because it just works. Give the toddler an iPad and it'll stop bothering you. Scary stuff...
- osigurdson 2y ago
  The school my son used to attend wanted to be hi tech (I guess) and gave all kids iPads with all textbooks and assignments provided this way. You don't need a study or aversion to technology to realize how bad they are for this purpose. The screen is small, constrained and low fidelity compared to a paper text book. It also (by default, as provisioned) turns off every ~5s to save battery life which is incredibly annoying. It is just objectively worse than paper.
faitswulff 2y ago
Probably just correlated with poverty, as with almost everything else. Only wealthy parents can afford to send their kids to summer camp.

cchi_co 2y ago

The concern about the impact of internet and social media (and consequently smartphones) on children’s safety is well-founded. Increased anxiety and depression, reduced attention span, sleep disruption...

gtirloni 2y ago
I don't remember feeling depressed about my Internet usage before social networks existed. Just making a point to try and separate those two, as impossible as it seems these days.
- ajma 2y ago
  I don't remember feeling negatively affected by social media until politics started to get into my feed.
- technothrasher 2y ago
  When did you start using the Internet? I was already using social networks (Multi-user BBS's and FidoNet) before I even first got onto the Internet in 1988, and then immediately got on to Usenet and IRC for social networking.
  - dghughes 2y ago
    Yeah late 80s early 90s BBS (terrible name of BATE) was the first thing I ever did on a computer other than my Atary 600XL. Talk to actual people!? Wow! Then onto IRC where "no flaming" (arguing or trolling) was a strict rule. But 90% of it was people wanting to hookup people asking ASL was every second sentence. But whatever modern social media is there is something different about it.
    - technothrasher 2y ago
      I think the biggest differences with modern social media are that 1) it constantly seeks your attention with notifications, and 2) it is trying to make money, so they've spent money on how to keep you addicted.

bdcravens 2y ago

Causation or correlation? Rarely do parents force phones on their kids; they give in to their kids asking. This could say something about those kids, or perhaps about parents who give their kids what they ask.

liveoneggs 2y ago
they start asking early
- blitzar 2y ago
  I really wanted a gun when I was a 3. My parents didnt get me one.

kjksf 2y ago

[flagged]

zx10rse 2y ago

This is well known fact by now I would say. The social dilemma docu shows some pretty interesting data - The Social Dilemma - Influence of Social Media on Teen Depression and Behavior They were showing some pretty concerning data of the first generation that grew up with smartphones in school. I can only imagine in time what will be the picture of the first generation that is growing up now with LLM models everywhere around them. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui0UNXsEGJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui0UNXsEGJ8

Aerroon 2y ago

>The most mentally healthy respondents are those who did not get a phone until their late teens. The first graph also shows that the oldest people score the best on their mental health test in general. --- They note that their Mental Health Quotient figure has been decreasing over the years. They also note that in the age range of 18-24 the earlier that the people were given a smartphone the worse the MHQ figure is. But did they control for age here? Because 18-24 is a 7 year duration. Their first graph shows that in a 7 year timeframe their MHQ graph drops 25%. We could be seeing an effect that the older part of the range got their smartphones at a later age (because it's new technology) and the correlated MHQ drop by year creates the drop off by age of first smartphone. Was this accounted for because I couldn't find it on a quick read. --- You might also be measuring the effect of better mental health awareness. Ie kids who got smartphones earlier might be more aware of mental health issues and are more likely to notice and bring it up.

julkali 2y ago
They conduct(ed) a quite extensive collaborative meta-study about the broader subject [0]. Maybe you can find your points adressed there. [0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-olnkPyWcgF5BiAtBEy0/mobilebasic https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...

bitsandboots 2y ago

Seems to me earlier access to smartphones would also be detrimental to tech expertise. Teach your kids right, teach them unix first :)

mewpmewp2 2y ago
Only give them a phone/computer with terminal like text input and output. If they want to use social media, they must code it themselves, including graphics.
blitzar 2y ago
Don't let them use it till they compile the kernel themselves.
RhysU 2y ago
"Talk to your kids about POSIX" reads my favorite t-shirt.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

detourdog 2y ago

The problem I see with the study is that smartphones are so new to society that the younger children in the US have seen a lot more chaos in formally stable society.

jimbokun 2y ago
There have been plenty of eras with less social stability. I don’t see how this era stands out especially.
- detourdog 2y ago
  The events may or may not stand out but children today have less autonomy and are given responsibility for themselves later in life. I see this as developing a feel of helplessness. Compounded with current media landscape of distortion and distress is different. Finally I see that society would rather scapegoat the smartphone than point out the issue having TVs the public spaces makes consumption of this stress are background noise.

ttpphd 2y ago

Old Haidt piece. Wonder why it's getting traction this year.

dbtablesorrows 2y ago

You all miss the obvious correlations. A society with prosperity but lacking athletic, artistic and intellectual pursuits will devolve into a crowd of purposeless humans living for the pleasures of the moment. That's what current generations are. 90% of people have enough to meet needs, and no meaningful purpose in life apart from scrolling tiktok, constant stream of sexualized and otherwise glorified (money, aesthetics) material. The popular culture also glorifies temporary pleasures (drugs, drinking, sexual promiscuity). Just look at average teenager, their lives revolve around celebrities and these habits. They're lookist, superficial and shallow AF. Of course they will lose mental health thinking about looks and comparing with some photoshopped instagram celebrity. No wonder they don't have enough stability to sustain ups and downs in life when they lack a purpose, and centered their lives around these hedonistic pleasures.

ch4s3 2y ago
> You all miss the obvious correlations. I think this is one of the contributing factors that researchers are pointing to, smartphone use in adolescence encourages a more sedentary lifestyle and less sleeps.
tohnjitor 2y ago
This is almost correct. >A society with prosperity but lacking athletic, artistic and intellectual pursuits will devolve into a crowd of purposeless humans living for the pleasures of the moment. I would change this to >A society with prosperity but lacking family and reproductive pursuits will devolve into a crowd of purposeless humans living for the pleasures of the moment.
- dbtablesorrows 2y ago
  I am all for family values, but I am not convinced it will guarantee purpose in life and prevent you from spiralling into depression for some other reason.
  - tohnjitor 2y ago
    Indeed, few things are guaranteed.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

inanutshellus 2y ago

It's funny how predictable all these comments are. It doesn't seem to matter how many studies say the same thing. "It's probably not the smartphone; they're probably not considering [age, parental competence, socioeconomic variables, literally-anything-that-lets-me-pretend-my-beloved-smartphone-doesnt-hurt-my-mental-health]" Y'all can't help but upvote the skeptical comments. I wish I'd been saving all the articles I've read about this over the last several years. These studies are not rare and they don't disagree. Seriously. Go look right now and find a single study that says folks' mental health is improved by smartphones. Here's a post on HN I saved a while back, check out its top comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31268222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31268222 top two comments: > Social media definitely amplifies it, but consider the economic and social environment[...] > Unpopular opinion: Social media is a great scapegoat, but it is not the source of the problem[...] The first one I read was one back in 2017 by Jean Twenge that documented a cliff-face-leap of depression, loneliness, and anxiety and correlated it to the release of the first smartphone. Ask yourselves - why are you all so desperate to deny this research?

smokel 2y ago
> It's funny how predictable all these comments are. Indeed they are, and that is why I come here. I like to see research being questioned and critiqued. If I am interested in simply taking everything I read on the internet for granted, I'd visit Facebook or LinkedIn, instead. Most of us are well aware that too much phone usage is probably bad for you in one way or another. There is no need to acknowledge that on this forum. So what you have here is a typical case of confirmation bias, no need to get upset about it :)
- nofam 2y ago
  Questioning research is good. Asking naive, obvious questions the researchers clearly predicted and accounted for is just adding noise and reducing signal. Not all questions are good questions.
silverquiet 2y ago
Why are some so desperate to blame smartphones? As far as I am aware, smartphones are used globally but the symptoms described are not. Of this is an indictment of those societies that are destroying their children’s’ mental health and perhaps futures, it’s nice to have a relatively simple scapegoat upon which to pin the blame (though I suspect smartphones are as irrevocably embedded in our culture as all the other problems are at this point), and imagine solving the issue by removing.

karaterobot 2y ago

We're currently at the stage of denying that social networks have negative mental and social effects. As more evidence is collected, we're shading toward fatalistic acceptance. But, even then, I suspect not much will change: we'll acknowledge that we have a problem, but we won't do anything about it for a long time yet. There are too many sources that enable this kind of addiction for it to just get dropped.

bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
It thought we were past the denial stage. Then one day I mentioned that I don't let my 2.5 play with a phone and the reaction from HN was shocking.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Only phone or computer with terminal text output and input allowed.
  - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
    I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I think that's actually a great idea...
  - xandrius 2y ago
    Better be vim or emacs or that kid is not going very far I tell ya

hi_dang_ 2y ago

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genrilz 2y ago

Every time Haidt comes up, I do go through the post and do another literature search on social media effects. The most notable thing about this post is the MHQ figures. However, you might note that the difference in age of smartphone use moves a person by at most one bucket. Given that he is suggesting a ban on smartphones and/or social media, I would expect some more catastrophic effect. In terms of the literature review, this time I read through [0]. It also finds small but significant effects on anxiety and depression, but finds no significant effects on overall measures of well-being. This is because social media also seems to have some positive effects on some other measures of well-being. This meta analysis also finds that age does not seem to change the effects of social media. On longitudinal studies, it seems like social well-being does decrease social media use, but anxiety and depression to not increase social media use. Also, social media use doesn't seem to cause anxiety and depression here, so there is probably some third factor causing anxiety, depression, and social media use which causes this correlation. Also interesting is that internationally the effects are neutral, and in the US, the effects are neutral, but in Europe they are negative, while in Asia they are positive. IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning. [0]: https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/technology/2022-hancock.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/technology/2022-hancock.pdf

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning." Does the term "hypothesis" in this sentence mean something like "a general supposition" or does it have the meaning as used in scientific research. The former definition does not require evidence or proof. The later definition of course requires that the hypothesis be a statement that is falsifiable. The phrase "worth banning" is a personal value judgment. "Catastrophic" is also a subjective measure. Neither is falsifiable. Perhaps this is why the blog suggests using a legal standard such as preponderance of the evidence rather than a scientific one. As everyone living in the real world knows, parental decisions, school decisions nor even state or federal laws are 100% based on scientific evidence, generally. People make arguments. Evidence of varying quality is presented. People draw on their own experiences. Money, e.g., marketing and lobbying, plays a significant role. It is not a scientific process.

theshrike79 2y ago

It's not the phone, it's the fact that parents let their kids on social media. The age limit is 13 on ALL social media platforms. Including Discord (which is a bummer, it's handy for voice chat when playing Minecraft). I've seen friends of my kids have Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok accounts at 9 or 10 years old. Unless they get complete unfettered access with no parental controls the parents have installed them on their devices and created an account.