4 ms·

I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal

I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?

reactordev 4mo ago
[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
  Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. Sustained.
  - loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
    You can’t sustain your own objection, counselor.
    - helterskelter 4mo ago
      Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
      - loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
        lol :) good point
kgwxd 4mo ago
The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.
paytonjjones 4mo ago
Yes. The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media." This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect. Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though). And where you get the most juice is looking at population level introduction of social media studies like those discussed here: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi... But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts
- pythonaut_16 4mo ago
  The problem is that argument is indistinguishable from the argument "the lack of proof is the proof!"
  - paytonjjones 4mo ago
    No, I don't think it's the same as an unfalsifiable or circular claim. Network level effects are still falsifiable, it's just often really challenging to falsify them at scale.
- 8note 4mo ago
  but also, you have to distinguish from "society has separately become anti-child" which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?
  - paytonjjones 4mo ago
michaelt 4mo ago
There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before. Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections. I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/science-research-data/young-people-canada-focus-mental-health.html#:~:text=Trends%20in%20feeling%20sad%20or%20hopeless%20among%20girls https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications... [2] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-youth-mental-health-in-the-21st-century_1092c3cb-en/full-report/trends-and-patterns-in-the-mental-health-status-of-children-adolescents-and-young-people_696bf3a0.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-yo...
- qball 4mo ago
  >Young people are barely living Yeah, I wonder what caused that? The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.
  - nonethewiser 4mo ago
    Overprotected in the real world, underprotected online.
    - HDBaseT 4mo ago
      Kids need private spaces. If we overprotect them in the real world, and overprotect them in the digital world children will fail to explore all sorts of things.
      - 4mo ago
downrightmike 4mo ago
The world sucks and the kids have no hope. Social media/ internet is to distract everyone from the real world problems
- krater23 4mo ago
  Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.
  - bonesss 4mo ago
    We used to have peer pressure where slightly older slightly tougher kids would call you names if you didn't man up and try some beer. Now all that peer pressure is distilled online in short, monologue based, video format, unilateral edited transmissions setting beauty, purity, and behavior standards based on claims, and everyone has a permanent digital record, and mass shame campaigns targeted at random individuals are routine.
mc32 4mo ago
But it's not just teenagers, it's also adults who are harmed by overexposure to algorithmically presented content. Obvs we can't restrict adults from legal content but we can legislate against algorythmic content. The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...
a34729t 4mo ago
Hmmmm that's odd, because everybody I know who has worked (or works) at a major social network (or two or three), including me, thinks it is horrible for mental health of everybody involved. I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.
- voxl 4mo ago
  It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well. Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
- petre 4mo ago
  The tobacco company lobbyists probably applied their whitewashing know how to social media after being done with industrialized foods. They're also likely on Meta's payroll now. Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse. Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered. I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.
betadeltic 4mo ago
A bit of an off-topic, as age checks are not solution to this, it's just the usual "think of the children" narrative. However, there are publicists like Jonathan Haidt who have observed the link between kids mental health and use of social media. (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation
- EmbarrassedHelp 4mo ago
  Jonathan Haidt's book isn't taken seriously in academia. He also believes that social media turns kids transgender, and that may be part the reason that he's aggressively lobbying for bans enforced with mandatory age verification.
  - account42 4mo ago
    Both claims are probably true in the sense that social media is the main way that kids get exposed to broader society these days but not in the way that forcing kids off of social media will mean that they are no longer affected by the root causes.
p0w3n3d 4mo ago
Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home somehow, now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things. This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too. But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper) "hey, your kids are unsafe, better allow me read all their and yours communication. Ah and please give me your id so I can protect your children more"
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
  > now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things. .... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that? Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?
  - smallnix 4mo ago
    > Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible? But this is the level 2 argument to enforce identity verification everywhere. You are reaching ahead.
fock 4mo ago
I have not researched this, but I see some 4 to 10 year olds in the family being on the phone every time I see them. Usually they stream "brainrot" on youtube on the tablet while they play roblox on the phone. From time to time there are ads. In school they still perform ok for what is required there today, but from what happens when you say "oh, wifi doesn't work today in our place" I would argue they behave like addicts... It might be a fun addiction insofar as mental problems are usually not the cause but possibly the result if this runs for years on end. My pet theory is that these kids will graduate to online-gambling around 12-14 because that's exactly the kind of gameplay they prefer on roblox currently. Even when I was 16 there was a noticable share of classmates gambling online - and this was pre-facebook. Probably the best way forward would be to make KYC mandatory for large, data-selling public fora like we do with banks. Noone complains there and noone is forced to use platforms. If you don't want to do KYC (such as on hn or a model train forum) you are liable for any criminal activity you enable (such as pedophiles using your private messages or whatever...).
- trashb 4mo ago
  there is a reason the gambling regulations are being eased up on and polymarket is so popular. Gambling addiction is notably harder to get rid of the earlier you acquire it.
insane_dreamer 4mo ago
I haven't vetted the research, but have heard plenty of personal accounts from people I know, and I see it in my own kids -- wrestling with social media addiction is a real thing. We have parental controls on but it's a source of contention. But social media is already non-anonymous (twitter used to be anonymous but those days are long gone) so I don't have any problems with age checks there -- that's very different than requiring age verification to access the internet or the WWW generally.

reactordev 4mo ago

[flagged]

amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. Sustained.
- loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
  You can’t sustain your own objection, counselor.
  - helterskelter 4mo ago
    Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
    - loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
      lol :) good point

kgwxd 4mo ago

The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.

paytonjjones 4mo ago

Yes. The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media." This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect. Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though). And where you get the most juice is looking at population level introduction of social media studies like those discussed here: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi... But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts

pythonaut_16 4mo ago
The problem is that argument is indistinguishable from the argument "the lack of proof is the proof!"
- paytonjjones 4mo ago
  No, I don't think it's the same as an unfalsifiable or circular claim. Network level effects are still falsifiable, it's just often really challenging to falsify them at scale.
8note 4mo ago
but also, you have to distinguish from "society has separately become anti-child" which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?
- paytonjjones 4mo ago

michaelt 4mo ago

There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before. Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections. I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/science-research-data/young-people-canada-focus-mental-health.html#:~:text=Trends%20in%20feeling%20sad%20or%20hopeless%20among%20girls https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications... [2] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-youth-mental-health-in-the-21st-century_1092c3cb-en/full-report/trends-and-patterns-in-the-mental-health-status-of-children-adolescents-and-young-people_696bf3a0.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-yo...

qball 4mo ago
>Young people are barely living Yeah, I wonder what caused that? The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.
- nonethewiser 4mo ago
  Overprotected in the real world, underprotected online.
  - HDBaseT 4mo ago
    Kids need private spaces. If we overprotect them in the real world, and overprotect them in the digital world children will fail to explore all sorts of things.
    - 4mo ago

downrightmike 4mo ago

The world sucks and the kids have no hope. Social media/ internet is to distract everyone from the real world problems

krater23 4mo ago
Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.
- bonesss 4mo ago
  We used to have peer pressure where slightly older slightly tougher kids would call you names if you didn't man up and try some beer. Now all that peer pressure is distilled online in short, monologue based, video format, unilateral edited transmissions setting beauty, purity, and behavior standards based on claims, and everyone has a permanent digital record, and mass shame campaigns targeted at random individuals are routine.

mc32 4mo ago

But it's not just teenagers, it's also adults who are harmed by overexposure to algorithmically presented content. Obvs we can't restrict adults from legal content but we can legislate against algorythmic content. The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...

a34729t 4mo ago

Hmmmm that's odd, because everybody I know who has worked (or works) at a major social network (or two or three), including me, thinks it is horrible for mental health of everybody involved. I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.

voxl 4mo ago
It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well. Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
petre 4mo ago
The tobacco company lobbyists probably applied their whitewashing know how to social media after being done with industrialized foods. They're also likely on Meta's payroll now. Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse. Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered. I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.

betadeltic 4mo ago

A bit of an off-topic, as age checks are not solution to this, it's just the usual "think of the children" narrative. However, there are publicists like Jonathan Haidt who have observed the link between kids mental health and use of social media. (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation

EmbarrassedHelp 4mo ago
Jonathan Haidt's book isn't taken seriously in academia. He also believes that social media turns kids transgender, and that may be part the reason that he's aggressively lobbying for bans enforced with mandatory age verification.
- account42 4mo ago
  Both claims are probably true in the sense that social media is the main way that kids get exposed to broader society these days but not in the way that forcing kids off of social media will mean that they are no longer affected by the root causes.

p0w3n3d 4mo ago

Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home somehow, now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things. This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too. But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper) "hey, your kids are unsafe, better allow me read all their and yours communication. Ah and please give me your id so I can protect your children more"

bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
> now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things. .... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that? Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?
- smallnix 4mo ago
  > Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible? But this is the level 2 argument to enforce identity verification everywhere. You are reaching ahead.

fock 4mo ago

I have not researched this, but I see some 4 to 10 year olds in the family being on the phone every time I see them. Usually they stream "brainrot" on youtube on the tablet while they play roblox on the phone. From time to time there are ads. In school they still perform ok for what is required there today, but from what happens when you say "oh, wifi doesn't work today in our place" I would argue they behave like addicts... It might be a fun addiction insofar as mental problems are usually not the cause but possibly the result if this runs for years on end. My pet theory is that these kids will graduate to online-gambling around 12-14 because that's exactly the kind of gameplay they prefer on roblox currently. Even when I was 16 there was a noticable share of classmates gambling online - and this was pre-facebook. Probably the best way forward would be to make KYC mandatory for large, data-selling public fora like we do with banks. Noone complains there and noone is forced to use platforms. If you don't want to do KYC (such as on hn or a model train forum) you are liable for any criminal activity you enable (such as pedophiles using your private messages or whatever...).

trashb 4mo ago
there is a reason the gambling regulations are being eased up on and polymarket is so popular. Gambling addiction is notably harder to get rid of the earlier you acquire it.

insane_dreamer 4mo ago

I haven't vetted the research, but have heard plenty of personal accounts from people I know, and I see it in my own kids -- wrestling with social media addiction is a real thing. We have parental controls on but it's a source of contention. But social media is already non-anonymous (twitter used to be anonymous but those days are long gone) so I don't have any problems with age checks there -- that's very different than requiring age verification to access the internet or the WWW generally.