<story><title>Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness</title><url>https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>myspy</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I&amp;#x27;m fucking annoyed by other parents that don&amp;#x27;t set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too.&lt;p&gt;We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn&amp;#x27;t even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.</text></item><item><author>whstl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers.&lt;p&gt;Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have.&lt;p&gt;It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.</text></item><item><author>raziel2p</author><text>&amp;gt; if you don&amp;#x27;t like these products and feel they are negative, then don&amp;#x27;t use them&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a nice quote from Marshall McLuhan&amp;#x27;s Understanding Media, which IMO hasn&amp;#x27;t aged at all in 60 years: &amp;quot;Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the &amp;#x27;content&amp;#x27; of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind... The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>rgbrenner</author><text>The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very different today. But the Supreme Court got it right when they said it would squelch free speech.&lt;p&gt;You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don&amp;#x27;t care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences... from the development of critical thinking skills; development of technical skills; and limiting of educational information. Being exposed to shit on the internet teaches you there&amp;#x27;s bullshit on the internet, and not to believe everything you see.&lt;p&gt;And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don&amp;#x27;t like these products and feel they are negative, then don&amp;#x27;t use them. Restrict your children&amp;#x27;s access to these platforms.&lt;p&gt;I certainly dont believe anyone should be forced to use these platforms. I don&amp;#x27;t use any of these products, and havent since they launched. That&amp;#x27;s a freedom you and everyone else can take advantage of also. But those who advocate censorship aren&amp;#x27;t advocating for freedom... they&amp;#x27;re advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>belorn</author><text>People tend to agree with expert advice when that advice align with their own personal views and values. Sadly both smart and dumb, educated and uneducated people falls for this and the pandemic demonstrated this in waves and continues to do so.&lt;p&gt;Take this study (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;s41562-020-01009-0?error=cookies_not_supported&amp;amp;code=b4778558-acdd-452b-845a-c0354d9dc375&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;s41562-020-01009-0?error=coo...&lt;/a&gt;). How many people on HN will agree with the ranking of those interventions? Early restrictions on travel and preventing people from gathering are the most effective measure to prevent an pandemic, but what people want to form sides around are the discussion around masks. Shutting down airports and imposing general self isolation are not in alignment of what either smart and dumb people believes in.</text></comment>
<story><title>Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness</title><url>https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epidemic</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>myspy</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I&amp;#x27;m fucking annoyed by other parents that don&amp;#x27;t set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too.&lt;p&gt;We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn&amp;#x27;t even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.</text></item><item><author>whstl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers.&lt;p&gt;Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have.&lt;p&gt;It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.</text></item><item><author>raziel2p</author><text>&amp;gt; if you don&amp;#x27;t like these products and feel they are negative, then don&amp;#x27;t use them&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a nice quote from Marshall McLuhan&amp;#x27;s Understanding Media, which IMO hasn&amp;#x27;t aged at all in 60 years: &amp;quot;Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the &amp;#x27;content&amp;#x27; of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind... The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>rgbrenner</author><text>The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very different today. But the Supreme Court got it right when they said it would squelch free speech.&lt;p&gt;You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don&amp;#x27;t care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences... from the development of critical thinking skills; development of technical skills; and limiting of educational information. Being exposed to shit on the internet teaches you there&amp;#x27;s bullshit on the internet, and not to believe everything you see.&lt;p&gt;And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don&amp;#x27;t like these products and feel they are negative, then don&amp;#x27;t use them. Restrict your children&amp;#x27;s access to these platforms.&lt;p&gt;I certainly dont believe anyone should be forced to use these platforms. I don&amp;#x27;t use any of these products, and havent since they launched. That&amp;#x27;s a freedom you and everyone else can take advantage of also. But those who advocate censorship aren&amp;#x27;t advocating for freedom... they&amp;#x27;re advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nicolas_t</author><text>One of the criteria I used when choosing my son&amp;#x27;s school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It&amp;#x27;s a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn&amp;#x27;t think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I&amp;#x27;ve heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there&amp;#x27;s a time to introducing things like this and it&amp;#x27;s not this young.</text></comment>