Nobody denies all the effects of social media are negative. After all, if they were, nobody would use them. So there are benefits to it.
It also isn't news, really. The Dutch 'MIND Hulplijn' [1] in their former carnation 'Stichting Korrelatie' had a pilot with an online forum where people with mental issues could connect with each other. It eventually decided to close the forum because of users talking each other down in regard to the subject of suicide. However, the effect of a support group was also clearly there which was also a reason why they were reluctant to close it down.
What I'd like to know is how the effect would be compared to a forum or real-life support group. Because comparing social media with 'no help' or 'loneliness' obviously isn't fair.
>Gender was approximately equal, with 50.8% being female.
If anything, the data is more accurate for females, since there are 1.6pp more females.
Uh, what? That's a patently ridiculous assertion to lead with (and not support).
I found the study that the article bases this on[1]. It doesn't make this claim and instead associates a higher mortality rate to sufferers of all mental disorders, 67% of which are deaths by natural causes. That these natural causes are directly associated with the mental disorder isn't even something the study says. Anxiety is just one of the many disorders analyzed.
This is similar to attributing a lower life expectancy to all people with endocrine diseases (e.g. diabetes) and later saying hyperthyroidism (another endocrine disease) is the sole cause of death in that group.
- [1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
I mean it’s the same with most ads, creating an anxiety that can only be assuaged by buying the actual product.
When I comment on something disturbing that I don't think I want to see again they think I love it and give me more. This is great for my emitional well being too!!!
Our brains aren’t designed to be lit up with dopamine every 5 seconds for hours on end nor are they designed for foods that are high in sugars, fats, and salts every day.
This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction.
I think there are deeper long term trends causing psychological problems in the west: move away from physical to cognitive labour; increasing community isolation and lack of social institutions; various failures of the state; lack of meaningful wage growth in key brackets, and failure of the "aspiration engine" to create opportunities; lack of time for parenting, moving to dual working-parent households; helicopter parenting caused by breakdown of social trust; lack of infrastructure and provision of environments where children can be known safe in public. etc. etc.
The major forces here are: move to a services economy; dual parent working households; lack of social services in state provision; state infrastructure moving away from providing for the young to paying for the old. This means much of how children grow up in the world is unphysical, disconnected, time-poor, risk adverse, overly demanding, etc.
These two feel interrelated :)
> I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat for larger social forces.
Do you know if there are countries where the causes you laid out are not the case? (given demographics, I'm not sure if there are too many strict counter examples)
We gave social media 20 years to impact the world, why give it only 5 for a rollback? It feels like long term effects would take much longer to surface.
Being on screens all the time - especially when out and about (and whether it's social media or maps, it doesn't really matter) - means less casual conversation, less "hello, how you doing", less banter, less touch points with real people. It means toddlers look up out of their prams and can't meet their parents' eyes, it means you don't smile at strangers, or exchange a common glance about something trivial. It means kids don't get to sit in pubs with their parents and have to "do adult conversation". It means if you're in a situation as a teen and you're uncomfortable, you just reach for your phone instead of reaching out to the next awkward teen, who might just end up being your lifetime friend.
And then beyond that there are infinitely many takes-away-the-humanity cuts. Even something like this: once upon in our country you could buy a parking ticket for a space in a car park, then what typically happened when you got back to your car with time to spare is you then pulled up next to someone and offered them your ticket for free. This shit doesn't happen now - spaces are tied to number plates (because: profit), and so another little touchpoint with other humans is eroded.
Getting hold of many of the companies you use is becoming harder, through profit motives / AI chat / whatever - high street banks disappear, and immediately there's a whole source of contact that disappears.
We got a deal on our post-wedding train journey 25 years ago because we did it face to face with a guy in the station, and when we got chatting about the occasion and he discovered it was our wedding, he upped our ticket to 1st class. No such luck now, when you order all your tickets online, and the customer support is outsourced to somewhere a thousand miles away.
Real people are for the most part lovely people, and their motives are 95% aligned with each other - love your family, help people, be generous, be kind - but the more time we spend slipping behind digital facades, being taken away from human contact through these many papercuts, the worse things are likely to get. IMO.
It is likely possible to disambiguate these concepts and build prosocial networks, if we want such a thing or believe it can work.
You're speculation here could be a counterargument to Jonathan Haidt's meta studies on the effects of social media on teenage girls, if you can supplement your speculation with a better explanation for the increase in major depressive episodes in the time range he cites than the correlation with Instagram use.
For this article, however, all the participants are aged 18-30. Using it as a jumping off point to paint all concern over social media as a "moral panic" is reductive and unhelpful.
That establishes a of divergent populations baseline. The change their, such as deny, social media access or content. Measure the change to those two populations.
Assumed facts:
* social media access dramatically increases prevalence of anxiety and a state of dependency/addition. When true, removal of social media triggers addiction withdrawal that displays as emotional health illnesses.
* Populations that do not frequently make use of social media are not at risk of withdrawal.
* persons in high risk professions are typically conditioned into states of substantially lower neuroticism that population averages are not exposed to
Social media is, in that case, a replacement activity.
The question, which is i think unanswered, is whether and what its replacing in the lives of children. It may turn out to be: not much. That when taken away, children don't suddenly get more time, attention, socialisation, etc. instead, they just get less. Or that the kinds of tech hellholes theyre dumped in have purely passive interaction, eg., ipad kids.
The average father in present day spends more time with their kids weekly than the average mother did in 1960.
> helicopter parenting caused by breakdown of social trust
This one is more likely I think. Kids aren't able to just run around anymore.
> lack of infrastructure and provision of environments where children can be known safe in public
Kids can not safely ride their bikes a few miles across town. Fewer sidewalks, bigger cars. Distracted drivers. Its a death sentence.
They always fixate on external things instead of strictly looking at it as internal economic and social shortcomings.
There was a short time, between 2012/2013-2020 when the "kids were alright", though a bit worse in school than previous generations.
I can give an hour long monologue on YouTube’s continued exploitation of children. Their half assed attempts to fix this (by some well intentioned Googler’s, who I’m sure must have had a lot of pushback) aren’t enough. Just try unblocking a channel for your kid’s account (you can’t - the only option is to unblock EVERYTHING).
[1] Beboploop.com if you want to try it out, invite codes below:
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SP8CMRQJQA
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I think this comes from WHO, but isn't consistent with other information from WHO, so it's pretty debatable.
I believe the source is this[0], which says "Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in all countries and communities, affecting people of all ages and income levels. They represent the second biggest reason for long-term disability, contributing to loss of healthy life."
However, elsewhere on their site[1], WHO lists the top 3 global causes of death and disability in 2021 as heart disease, COVID-19, and stroke.
[0] https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-peop...
[1] https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/theme-details/GHO/m...
The other side of that coin is that anxiety is also most prominently the result of social conditioning as opposed to diagnosed illness. This results in anti-anxiety medications that are vastly over-prescribed for individuals that receive less than ideal benefits.
This headline seems to imply quite a lot for a relatively small study based on survey responses.
2. For the mass market social media platforms, it's pretty easy to get emotional support inside your bubble, at the cost of ... everything else.
I feel like the huge and obvious problems with social media hide a small and subtle, but insidious problem: How do I show that I care about you?
I feel like there is a range that might be described:
I don't care very much about you one way or another. (Small/no signal on social media, very unlikely to be boosted)
I care enough to fight for you. (Big Signal on social media, likely to be boosted)
I care enough to calmly discuss the problem. (Small signal on social media, unlikely to be boosted, likely to be trolled, unsatisfying in the face of active fighting words)
andrewmutz•1h ago