Mental health impacts of social media

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/27/pushback-grows-social-media

Social media companies are increasingly being blamed for historically high rates of depression, suicidality and other mental health issues in youths. And now, states and local governments are increasingly pursuing legislation and legal action.

What we’re watching: How social media companies will seek to deflect some of the heat by adopting more controls or restrictions on youths’ time online — and whether we’ll be able to measure how much any single effort to curb their use will impact anxiety, depression and thoughts of self-harm in kids.

It’ll be interesting to see this play out. As a high school teacher, I feel that the non academically inclined are going to be smothered in their sleep when they have to start earning their own way. Or they’ll do a communal extended family scrounge around for a decade or more before they get their own place. But at least they’ll have tiktok to show them looking blank faced and dead eyed at other people doing stuff in order to shake a few dollars out of the advertising money tree.

sadz

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I feel like this is effectively the butterfly effect from when people started putting up signs saying “No Ball Games” and “No Skateboarding”.

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It’s snowballing and I don’t see a way out except for let it play out, which is rather disconcerting.

My students never talk to each other, even though they’re friends, Even if they sit next to each other, they talk on Instagram. Pretty soon they’re going to forget how ro speak. They’ll just go “ug ug blagh” if it’s ever needed. Like neanderthals or people who’ve spent their lives in an underground, dark pit.

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Social media platforms (especially when used on “smart” phones) are basically casinos for kids. Once you’re in the building, there’s no clear definition or end point, much like casinos are designed to have curving walls and no sharp edges or clear end points. With social media, you can just keep wandering around in a way that’s utterly different from the old technologies that shaped many of us: newspapers and stories (which have an end point); TV shows; movies in theatres. All these older technologies had defined endings, then you move on. This is one reason the new tech-based platforms are a serious problem as they are engineered to capture users and not them let go, with predictably unhappy results.

Guy

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I’m still annoyed that many newspaper sites or apps don’t have a way for me to just read through today’s paper, scrolling from story to story…

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That’s where I’m at, and I left school 15 years ago.

We’d sit next to each other on the school bus, say nothing, then go on MSN and blab all evening.

I’m still in touch with some people, it would be a six-monthly meet-up, then yearly, now I reckon I’ll never see a few of them again. They don’t make any effort anyway, apart from sending “Broadcast” messages on WhatsApp that no one asked for about their new puppy.

It is a different kind of experience when read on a phone, isn’t it.

Guy

Just endless data. Very little of real use and importance.

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And images, in a way that can overwhelm our cognitive abilities to process them. Hence all the anxiety issues we’re seeing with the kids. Our brains were not designed for this.

Guy

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Totally agree.

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What would “let it play out” look like, exactly? You’d have to have a fundamental crisis and loss of faith in the technology companies, and stuff like that is forgotten within a decade or two anyway. Pfizer, for example.

My fear is that it is only going to get worse, especially with ChatGPT being a pseudo-friend, and the Metaverse. I see it all as a stinking pile of shit, but young influential minds don’t know better. The five-year-olds are already hooked onto Minecraft and Roblox, it ain’t good.

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When Elon Musk thinks things have gone too far . . . :grimacing:

The AI issue, btw, will impact social media / mental health but it is really a separate and very serious other concern. It deserves its own thread.

Guy

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Someone said AI is going to put 300 million out of work. That’s the population of the USA.

That’s a lot of people out of work.

If this happens, look forward to social instability.

Yep, Goldman Sachs report is that “Someone”.

Exactly. Personally, if it was up to me I would ban the algorithms. Thats what is keeping everyone on the hook. They are designed to keep everyone addicted and boost only the most popular, they benefit very few.

It’s only going to get worse with AI etc. There needs to be intervention.

AI algorithms will be more relentless., I imagine.

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