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Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness (www.afterbabel.com)
submitted 1 year ago by nithinj@sh.itjust.works to c/science@lemmy.ml
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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 83 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ima go out on a limb and say treating kids like garbage probably does a lot of the heavy lifting in wrecking their minds. Also working all the adults so no-one is around to parent, and overworking and underpaying non-guardian adults like teachers.

Things like the lack of school lunches, the limit of civil rights on kids, delinquency (that is, state and federal crimes that apply to children only) and so on show that the fucks we give for children in the US are scant.

I remember when the Columbine High School shooting happened, and everyone was so eager to blame it on video games and Marilyn Manson. We make these claims because we don't want to face the consequences of the choices our society has made.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The other aspect to this is that even if social media is bad it is mostly because people are terrible to each other via social media. They are judgemental, demanding, lack empathy,... Those things were already a problem with social interactions before social media, just not this visible and a bit easier to avoid. And the same is true about companies being exploitative via social media (the ones that run it and the tracking/advertising aspect and companies just acting as regular users on there), that problem wasn't created by social media, it just became more visible.

[–] Instigate@aussie.zone 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The way I like to think about it is that social media has acted as a magnifying lens for many aspects of social interaction, for both positive and negative. The positives include greater sharing of knowledge, better lines of communication with relatives, easier capacity to organise and protest… but the negatives include what you’ve described: bigotry and social division, commercialisation, and exploitation of the dopamine-reward system for profit gain among many others. It’s brought together some amazing people but has rewarded some abhorrent behaviour. Social media has both intensified and distorted our social interactions.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I think if anything could be attributed to social media itself it is probably that whole dopamine aspect but the fact that it is emphasized in the design is of course again due to exploitation.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 year ago

This is an editorial article on a moral philosophy essay site. It's not science news

[–] forgotmylastusername@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why does this have to be a two sides thing? Is this underpinned by the culture war bullshit? I can't tell and I can't be assed to deep dive into every spat to untangle all the reading between the lines.

I'm surprised they found that there is no evidence that using these platforms is "rewiring" children’s brains. Wasn't it shown that social media companies base pretty much their entire technical decision making on psychologically conditioning not just children's brains but everyone who uses it? So the evidence now shows that these are benign after all? Zuckerberg and Dorsey and Huffman never had us trapped in infinite scroll fine tuning the knobs to keep us teetering on the brink? There's some discrepancy here.

I don't see what the divide is anyways. Social media is all about things like violence, structural discrimination, sexual abuse, substance abuse. It's odd the book author is saying these are non-issues. Seems like he is taking a rather shallow view.

Also teenagers have been using the broader definition of social media for decades.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

asdfasfasf

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I'm surprised they found that there is no evidence that using these platforms is "rewiring" children’s brains. Wasn't it shown that social media companies base pretty much their entire technical decision making on psychologically conditioning not just children's brains but everyone who uses it?

Not really. There's a difference between things being sticky and actually altering the brain.

Yeah, we spend more time on social media than we intend, but I also take longer to get up in the morning than I'd like. The big question is does this alter the rest of my behaviour, or my mental state, when I'm not doom scrolling or refusing to leave my duvet?

That's a much harder question to answer, and the evidence is a lot more mixed.

[–] AncientFutureNow@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Its not good for adults either.

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll have to read this later. This website seems sketchy to me, but I'll have to actually read it to find out

[–] protist@mander.xyz 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is a rebuttal by the author of the book that was the target of that recent Nature article. He's a professor at NYU who's been studying this for a long time

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[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

asdfasfasf

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

His second point in his rebuttal is particularly eyebrow raising.

Do you mean this one?

Odgers’ alternative explanation does not fit the available facts.

Because that's obviously correct. I don't know where you live, but I live in continental Europe, where issues such as "opioid crisis, school shootings and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence" simply do not exist or are, at worst, not increasing. (One exception might be a very specific variant of opioids, which is gambling. Edit: Besides, gambling is also heavily promoted online, made easier to access, even packaged into video games, so it's just a further problem for defending phone-/internet-centric teenage culture.) They also frequently have little to do with how young people feel, think and live in general even in US, as far as I see from the stuff (conversations, media) that I see online. Projecting these very specific issues onto all young people all across the world looks like nothing more than American defaultism.

I've read both the review and the response, and I find the response more convincing, supported by much more explicit data and clear arguments.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Racial and sexual discrimination in schools (and elsewhere) definitely exists here in Europe too and with the rise of right-wing parties is increasing in recent years.

[–] tiredofsametab@kbin.run 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Even in extremely homogeneous societies, there is racism and, if there aren't other races enough, other forms of othering often around socioeconomic standing or even one's ancestors or even their ancestors' jobs (looking at you, Japan, and treatment of people who had the audacity to even live in an area with many burakumin, though this issue is getting better and there are more legal protections)

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

What makes you think homogeneous societies would prevent racism? If anything it is the other way around, if there is extreme heterogeneity there is no real option to be racist.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

other forms of othering often around socioeconomic standing or even one’s ancestors or even their ancestors’ jobs

Ok but none of that is new, it is not relevant here.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

asdfasfasf

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You've forgotten what we're talking about in the first place. To explain the rise in mental illnesses, you have to find what changed in people's environment that could affect the health situation. If nothing in the environment has changed, the expected result would be that there would be no change in the outcomes either. If the discrimination has been roughly the same for the last few decades, why would it suddenly start resulting in different rates of mental illnesses?

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

asdfasfasf

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To add to my other comment, I noticed I failed to address this earlier comment of yours: https://kbin.social/m/science@lemmy.ml/t/954121/-/comment/6137667

Here you do exactly what Haidt criticises, IMO entirely correctly - focusing only and exclusively on the situation in the USA. Which absolutely looks narrow and reductonist.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

He specifically mentioned Obama and the economic recovery in the US. How is my responding directly to the thing he brought up somehow ignoring the rest of the world, unless you want to say he was ignoring the rest of the world from the get-go?

Either we both made it US-centric or I responded to his specific claim that was citing the US economic situation to talk about kids in the US. The latter is far more sensible, but if you want to be difficult then sure we can go with the former. In which case the critique begins with him.

The second major problem with Odgers’ review is that she proposes an alternative to my “great rewiring” theory that does not fit the known facts. Odgers claims that the “real causes” of the crisis, from which my book “might distract us from effectively responding,” are longstanding social ills such as “structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation.” She proposes that the specific timing of the epidemic, beginning around 2012, might be linked to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which had lasting effects on “families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution,” who were “also growing up at the time of an opioid crisis, school shootings, and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence.”

I agree that those things are all bad for human development, but Odgers’ theory cannot explain why rates of anxiety and depression were generally flat in the 2000s and then suddenly shot upward roughly four years after the start of the Global Financial Crisis. Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama’s second term, as the economy was steadily improving?

You asked for an example. This is an example. I am also assuming you didn’t read Odgers’ piece because it’s clearly US-centric as well (the portion he’s referring to).

It’s clearly about the US. Blame Haidt and Odgers.

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[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

asdfasfasf

[–] GardenVarietyAnxiety@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

It's not not social media... But also it's the parents, which are also affected by how the ruling class treats the entire planet. Oh, and climate change looks like a load of not fun.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Doesnt benefit the geezers too nuch either

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember when video games were the root of all evil.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Video games and social media are very different things. Social media is actually a detriment to society.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly.

[–] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

this guy was a co-author of "The coddling of the american mind" which is just a reactionary screed about campus culture (have blue haired libs gone to far?). Here's a podcast that goes into the book https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/id1651876897?i=1000603422829

In this article, he's literally advocating for following the examples set by Utah and Florida with regards to kids and social media. And yes, he's one of those "social contagion" idiots https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jonathan-haidt-social-contagion-rogd-pbs

[–] kaine@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is all about the phones, not systemic issues that surround teenagers. But those pesky phones, and the apps surrounding them.

[–] Steak@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

I don't know if you're joking, and there definitely is other problems. But it's the fucking smartphones too mate they are a huge issue.

[–] Zozano@lemy.lol 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kinda surprising given the knowledge we have that teens even want to use it.

I hope the next generation of teenagers think social media is cringe boomer shit (because now, it basically is).

[–] CableMonster@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

It is extremely irresponsible to give your minor a smart phone and social media, but the majority of parents do it anyways, I dont get why its happening.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

So, what youre saying is that ignorance really is bliss