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Comment by nvarsj | Hacker News Reader

My experience is the same, back in the 1990s.

There was a ton of depression and even suicides when I was growing up. I felt like 50% of teens at my large HS were suffering from some kind of mental issue. And then you had major events like Columbine. The US school system has always managed to produce a lot of very miserable people, and no one seemed to care or do anything about it.

And now we have these studies all blaming social media, like there is some kind of epidemic that never existed before. But I am deeply cynical. I think these issues already existed, it's just there is a convenient scapegoat now.

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In the article, the author makes a point to include objective metrics like rate of hospitalizations, and the data is quite conclusive in showing an actual increase. So these issues definitely did not exist before, at the same scale.

Rate of hospitalization seems like the sort of thing that would be affected by if society frowns upon getting help or not.

Indeed, but in the opposite direction. Either that or the sort of help that's provided to teens with mental health issues today is somehow causing them to be more likely to self-harm etc., though presumably that would show up in the data if true.

Hmm. I suppose some people who might benefit from being hospitalized were instead hiding their self harm, although i would assume then that suicides would be way down.

How does the rate of hospitalizations prove anything? Perhaps a growing awareness of mental health made people who were eligibile for hospitalization seek medical care, whereas before they would not be hospitalized for lack of a diagnosis? Or perhaps the same awareness made teens enact the pathological behavior they learned about online, complete with self-harm and suicide atemtps?

Any measure you can think to track a condition that is defined, diagnosed and (especially) self-diagnosed subjectively, is by definition subjective.

This unassailable conviction that everything can always be chalked up to "more diagnosis" for every mental health trend is a thought terminating cliche. What can't be explained away by "oh, it's because diagnosis is easier and/or people are more open about their problems", regardless of whether that's the primary cause?

> Or perhaps the same awareness made teens enact the pathological behavior they learned about online, complete with self-harm and suicide atemtps?

That would prove the escalation we're seeing, which is the point.

Then you could just look at emergency admissions where the patients were brought in after self-harm attempts that left them obviously in need of immediate medical attention. Unless you're going to suggest our standards for judging whether someone might bleed to death (for example) have changed noticeably in recent decades. Seems to me the idea that teens today are no different to those of prior generations, we're just better at noticing when they've self-harmed (or indeed, committed suicide) and more likely to attribute that to mental health issues is at best wishful thinking, and at worst dangerously dismissive.

According to the article linked below teen suicide rates declined from 2000 to 2007 and then increased 56% in the following decade. It seems to me the teen suicide rate would serve as a useful heuristic argument in favor of thinking something is amiss. If there is greater mental health awareness today and greater acceptance of getting treatment then this rise is particularly alarming.

I think it is undeniable that that social media is bad for the psyche. I can’t say it is to blame for the current situation but I do believe if it went away we’d all be better off.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/teen-suicide-rate-spi...

> social media is bad for the psyche

I think it's more like social media is weaponised by bullies rather than it being inherently bad.

I was assaulted in public at high school multiple times. Today, that kind of thing can be posted and recorded on social media to make your humiliation be permanent.

Banning social media makes this "less bad", but it doesn't solve the actual problem. It just drives that problem back underground so adults don't have to be held accountable.

The problem, in my view, is that the way we do schooling is itself inherently broken. It enables and even encourages bullying, by both adults and teenagers alike.

Social media is kind of like a weapon of mass destruction in this environment. But why does this environment exist in the first place, and why don't we do something about it as as society?

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