Social Media and Youth Mental Health | Hacker News Reader

Social Media and Youth Mental Health

hhs.gov

37 pointsrobg10 comments

Framing this as a "youth" problem is wrong IMO. Social media "disease" or whatever you want to call it affects everyone. It affects old people just as much, if not more so.

I see social media as extremely problematic across a bi-modal distribution. Those most negatively affected are either under 30 or over 60. There is nothing special about those in them middle other than the context that they may have—or rather, are more likely to have—for what is "real" and what is "fake". If you are between 30 and 60 it's possible you have more context for how to understand what is real and what is fake because you watched the internet evolve. I've noticed this group has a better probability of understanding things like the authority of some domains over others. They seem to be able to spot things like scams on Facebook a bit easier.

Seniors are so vulnerable on the internet today, particularly on Facebook. The damage that social media is doing to the mental health of seniors is just as bad if not worse than what it's doing to youths. Seniors actually seem to trust social media more in many ways.

I feel that young minds are much more malleable to content and the impact might be permanent.

Perhaps or perhaps not, it isn't exactly a contest. I do think the harms and risks to both are understated.

I've seen a lot of legal adults waste decades Doom scrolling and watching TV to the detriment of their own Mental Health. I've also seen a lot of what I call elder onset Add which I associate with smartphone use.

I wouldn't be surprised if screen addiction has a similar risk ratio to alcohol addiction if we were able to get good data on it.

I don't think you can put an age range on this. As an example: Look at all the QAnon believers. They're pretty much all ages. Look how many of those people went to Dallas for Kennedy's return.

You're right, you can't. And QAnon is a great, great example.

But here's the thing with QAnon. If you ask your average QAnon follower if they have ever read a Q post on the chans, 99% will say NO. You will actually get a response along the lines of, "What's that?" or "I heard that you'll get a virus if you go there." They don't know what they don't know.

If QAnon followers actually went to 8chan to read the Q posts in their original format they would have a "Wait, what the !@#$ is this?" moment. If they understood the context for how QAnon came to be they wouldn't buy into it. They would see the message board and all the loli porn and probably be disgusted. QAnon was a joke that got out of hand because so many people on the internet don't understand the internet. Many of those who are older didn't really get on the internet until Facebook. For them that is the internet in many ways. Those who are under 30 also tend to use the internet from an isolated walled garden, like IG or TikTok.

When you look at the b-tards and goons that started the Q stuff, they do fall into an age bracket. They are all 30+ now. "Real recognizes real" so to speak, but those who lack the context for where a piece of content came from do not understand fully how to interpret it.

I don’t disagree with any of this.

I think the murky part is how much was followed seriously by people that didn’t know better, how much was liberals trolling or themselves not knowing how much was a joke to rile them up, how much was straight larping, etc.

You know that quote about when to get out of the stock market, when your shoe shine boy is giving you tips? When I had a VERY liberal friend start ranting about QAnon very seriously I knew she fell into the same exact type of person that believed it just on the opposite spectrum.

The rest of us knew it was trolling and jokes and bs, but man she flipped out on me when I tried to tell her that. I was effectively signing up to be a Nazi in her eyes, I had no idea at the time.

Anyhow… this isn’t a new problem and I don’t think it can be solved. I grant that the reach is larger than previous thought.

I take that back. Open mockery of the ideas is how it’s solved. NOT mockery of the people that believe it, and certainly not grouping them into boomers or conservatives or Nazis or TERFs or etc etc.

It's abhorrent that VCs and board members do not push their companies to at minimum involve behavioral specialists in their decision-making. Yes, I understand they are driven by profits, but they are humans too, many self-proclaimed to be "mission-driven" and wanting to "move humanity forward," yet they pour billions of dollars into literally engineering addiction under the guise of "retention" and "engagement" by "growth PMs," with no one in the process concerned for the effects of these products on users' mental health. They lower the threshold for addiction then quickly abdicate all responsibility by blaming users for not exhibiting adequate self-control and discipline. It is Evil and that is not an exaggeration.

>It's abhorrent that VCs and board members do not push their companies to at minimum involve behavioral specialists in their decision-making.

Hang on. You have to know this is absolutely being done, if not demanded by VCs.

There is absolutely a ton of work done on behavioral and decision making practices. It’s just being done to the opposite goal you want.

I’m this case, you can’t ask the peddler to peddle. It’s what they do.

You restrict yourself and your kids. The issue I think it’s we aren’t yet ready to understand that it is “doing drugs”, the difference is we aren’t buying it off the street corner, the dealer in in our brains.

That mission has always been bull!@#$ though. Always. A big part of startup culture has always been doing something exploitative, but finding a way to sell it to the workforce as "changing the world". That's how you make unicorns.

If Uber or Facebook told employees what they'd actual be doing and what the actual goal was no one would want to work for them. If you can make people feel good about what they are doing, they will do whatever you want no matter how abhorrent it is.

Related ongoing thread:

Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36044561 - May 2023 (155 comments)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com