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Is Social Media Causing Childhood Depression? (bbc.com)
General practitioner Rangan Chatterjee says he has seen plenty of evidence of the link between mental ill-health in children and their use of social media. "One 16 year-old boy was referred to him after he self-harmed and ended up in A&E," reports BBC. Dr. Chatterjee was going to put him on anti-depressants, but instead worked with him to help wean him off social media. "He reported a significant improvement in his wellbeing and, after six months, I had a letter from his mother saying he was happier at school and integrated into the local community," says Dr. Chatterjee. That and similar cases have led him to question the role social media plays in the lives of young people. From the report: "Social media is having a negative impact on mental health," he said. "I do think it is a big problem and that we need some rules. How do we educate society to use technology so it helps us rather than harms us?" A 2017 study by The Royal Society of Public Health asked 1,500 young people aged 11-25 to track their moods while using the five most popular social media sites. It suggested Snapchat and Instagram were the most likely to inspire feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. YouTube had the most positive influence. Seven in 10 said Instagram made them feel worse about body image and half of 14-24-year-olds reported Instagram and Facebook exacerbated feelings of anxiety. Two-thirds said Facebook made cyber-bullying worse.
Consultant psychiatrist Louise Theodosiou says one of the clearest indications children are spending too long on their phones is their behavior during a session with a psychiatrist. "Two or three years ago, it was very unusual for a child to answer their phone or text during an appointment. But now it is common," said the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital doctor. She has seen a rise in cases where social media is a contributing factor in teenage depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. These problems are often complex and wide-ranging -- from excessive use of gaming or social media sites to feelings of inadequacy brought on by a constant bombardment of social media images of other people's lives, to cyber-bullying.
Consultant psychiatrist Louise Theodosiou says one of the clearest indications children are spending too long on their phones is their behavior during a session with a psychiatrist. "Two or three years ago, it was very unusual for a child to answer their phone or text during an appointment. But now it is common," said the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital doctor. She has seen a rise in cases where social media is a contributing factor in teenage depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. These problems are often complex and wide-ranging -- from excessive use of gaming or social media sites to feelings of inadequacy brought on by a constant bombardment of social media images of other people's lives, to cyber-bullying.
You'd be hard-pressed to think of technologies available to a young child that would "help."
Keep your kids off of social media.
I'd vote for 10 more Trumps just to see you suffer.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
It's a fact. Google it up.
You seem to be conflating social media with the whole of the internet. And your post is mostly baseless drivel with any logical reasoning, you need some more of that common sense that you speak of.
The downsides of social media are outweighing the few upsides. The downsides are: .....Plenty more
Full of memes and false information, a very bad place to learn.
Confirmation bias.
Attention span destroying
Anti-social
Propaganda
Advertising aka brainwashing
Herd mentality
Bullying
Gambling (loot crates)
Whilst I'm not saying some of your points are outright wrong, you are vastly overstating the level of affect.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
If you look at the "whole picture", you can see the pattern from infancy.
Child cries, gets attention (varied).
Boredom = video put on.
Teens plug into social media:
- instant "friends" that aren't really friends
- feedback on social activities
- suggestions for other interactions that are minimally inclusive on a physical level
- advertising bombardment
- tailored interest grouping that "fits" whatever whim they have (good or bad): If the comments stream doesn't completely match what they Want to hear, they filter the comments (mentally) to only see what brings them the attention they were seeking, which results in deepening whatever they were feeling in the first place.
It's all about being little attention junkies: Give them what they want and they're happy. The problem is, it's only a temporary hit, and they want more.
Because it wears off so fast, the cycle is rather steep and intense, with a serious downward spiral.
As many of us have seen, it's not the positive expressions that get the most attention, but the negative ones. After all, the "train-wreck watchers" want to see just how far the mess will spin out, and will even be there on the sidelines with more wrenches and grease to add to the situation. Good feelings and Warm Fuzzies are nice and all, but don't hold the collective interest like a good old fashioned emotional spinout that leads to a suicide attempt.
If teens want the negative attention, Heaven knows the internet has negative reinforcement in Spades available 24/7/365.
I just wish the same could truthfully be said for Positive attention.
We already know it's causing depression in pretty much every other group. It would be more newsworthy if it didn't cause depression in children.
Today we have better records and it is much harder to lie to recruiters. But right now there are 18 and 19 year old "kids" among the 11 thousand American soldiers in Afghanistan.
We had good records back then too, on top of that we used dental exams to determine if the person was lying. A friend of mine's uncle enlisted at 13, he lied and wheeled his way through it all. How did it slip by? He looked like he was 16, even passed the dental exam, he managed to successfully forge his birth certificate. By the time they figured out he was under age he was already legal age and let him stay in the service. The only places where records get spotty in that era is where they were destroyed or lost in particular years. Meaning church/county office/dr. office fires and so on.
The kids today especially many of those 18/19yr old 'kids' and even older get triggered and freak the fuck out if you don't use their gender pronouns, or think that they're the most specialist thing on the planet. Pretty sure you can blame the "every1 is a winnar!" bullshit outta that one along with helicopter parents. This isn't limited to just one person complaining about it either, you can find employers in just about every field that have serious problems with the work ethic that many of these kids have, even here in tech related fields. 30 seconds of searching and you can find articles on sites talking about just how poor the work ethic is, and how they'll break down and run for a bathroom at the slightest amount of criticism.
Om, nomnomnom...