Comment by michaelt
4 days 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... [2] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-yo...
I find it kind of hilarious that we spent ages trying to make teenagers not hang out in public spaces, not to drink, not to fuck. And now they have finally obliged, we start to take their obedience as a sign of declining mental health.
Maybe kids would be better off if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives under the pretence of safety and make them feel if they make one mistake they will ruin their life because now they can't get into a good college or something.
> Maybe kids would be better of if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives
I think this has been pretty conclusively proven.
> 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.
Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them.
And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten.
In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either).
> and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.
> I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Nobody, of any age, should drink that much.
Obviously, but the whole argument against the regulation is, if they're not free to find out themselves, they'll turn up worse.
We'll lose some, but the surviving ones will be fitter.
Doesn’t imply that the cops should be involved in prevention.
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They should not, but getting the cops called on the parents is a few steps too far
>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.
Overprotected in the real world, underprotected online.
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.
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> But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones
I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.
Statistically parents spend more time with their kids now than in the 1900s, and the trend seems towards more and more time, especially among fathers.
There’s some “well we have no idea how much is quality time” argument, but just looking across my own families over time the reality is more like modern parents being way more present than their parents.
The issue lies elsewhere. It’s almost a zeitgeist, the direction and evolution of ideas, and less any actual cause. At least that’s how it seems to me.
> Statistically parents spend more time with their kids now than in the 1900s
Is that true? In more "traditional" times, the husband went out to work while the wife stayed home and managed the household and raised the children.
Today more and more families need dual incomes in order to make ends meet.
Either way, I don't think "the 1900s" is a good comparison. Perhaps 1970-2000 or so is reasonable.
Anyway, to counter your anecdote with another: when I was growing up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she spent a ton of time (very much of it quality) with me. I saw my dad less, of course, but he was reasonably present when he wasn't at work, and I have lots of fond memories of quality time with him.
Nearly all of my friends today who have kids are dual-income. They send their kids to daycare as soon as they're old enough, and then pre-school. The kids do get a lot of socialization with other kids (maybe more than I did in my first few years), but I'm certain they get less time (and probably less quality time) with their parents than I did.
Instead of social media we should focus on other things that happened in that same 20-year period, which probably have a bigger effect on mental health.
For example in the country I live in psychiatric help has been systematically de-funded during that period as well as support for sports, education and more.
> almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here.
if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?
That's not saying what you think it's saying...
They're saying, that social media use before suicide is like drinking water
Are you inferring that HN is social media?
By the legal definition it is. You might mean just Facebook, or just twitter, but it's pretty much any website or application that has a messaging capability, excluding games. You can see the issue with such a wide and vague definition.
Some people are scared of paedos talking to the kids, other people are scared the kids will watch bad videos, or read bad things. They are two distinct issues lumped in under the "social media" banner, and it can be hard to guess which issue a hysterical parent is referring too.
Hn is social media and even has a doomacrollint algorithm but because it's not classically considered to be akin to twitter, tiktok or Facebook it gets away with it
Is there any evidence social media is improving mental health?
It feels absurd to even ask.
Forums and Fediverse could do that, if you choose wisely and use it responsibly
I asked about social media though. Not a tiny subset of social media.
I ask because if social media has a positive affect on mental health overall then it cant have a negative affect overall. And I ask because I think everyone intuitively thinks that idea is ridiculous. But you can't disprove the net negative affect by looking at some subset.
I think you are saying it can be used such that it has a positive effect. I agree with that but I think it's missing the point.
> Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Two of those three are probably better outcomes.
(Safe) Sex is beneficial. It also goes hand in hand with relationships, which itself has many positives.