Slashdot Mirror
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.
A few generations ago, 16 year olds lied to Army recruiters to be able to parachute into Nazi-occupied Western Europe during WWII.
Could you image all these youtube/emo/facebook kids doing that shit today?
You'd be hard-pressed to think of technologies available to a young child that would "help."
Keep your kids off of social media.
People are shitty, especially people during childhood.
It just used to take you longer to figure out, because they didn't used to air their dirty laundry on their fucking social media profile.
The difference today is there are a lot more ways to catch people in their social lies than waiting to hear it from a friend of a friend who tells it to you confidentially.
If may in part be that more cliques are starting earlier now that people can social network more outside of school, rather than fewer of them until kids are old enough to independently go out and socialize (depending on the region, anywhere from 6-12 depending on how spread out the neighborhood/school kids are geographically.) Now all that activity can happen online, allowing the poisonous behavior to start earlier (it happened as far back as preschool, in my experience, but without social networking it was easier to move into a 'fresh' social group without the old one following you around. Not so true today if you are 'plugged in'.)
get rid of it.
I'd vote for 10 more Trumps just to see you suffer.
You just described school, pre-internet. Possibly also, life.
Assholes, bullies, predators and generally a very toxic environment with a high potential of causing depression? The first thing I thought of was Slashdot's comments-section, to be quite honest :S
When I was growing up, kids were just as shitty as they are now. Bullies were just as prevalent. Of course, kids who got bullied only had to deal with it while at school.
With social media, these asshole kids are able to stock their targets whenever they want. So nowadays the kids who get bullied don't get an escape from the mental bullying.
Of course I know a lot of people no this site do not believe that mental suffering is a real thing and people should just shut up and stop being snowflakes. Naturally, the people who think this way grew up in their middle class white suburbs without a single obstacle in their live.
While I was fortunate enough that I never had to deal with that stuff as a kid, I know a number of people who did. 25 years on, these people are... different than other people today.
I could easily see how social media could drive a person to depression. Constant pressure, constant negative imagery and the kid feels there is not escape. Remember... Kids can be super assholes.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
It's a fact. Google it up.
it also causes them to drink, do drugs, have sex, and do other potentially irresponsible things less frequently than previous generations of kids.
Basically it is replacing other forms of abuse and addiction.
Is this a net benefit? Who knows?
If it's bad now, just wait until Facebook add their 'Dislike button'.
I got off that treadmill between 6th and 7th grades, before finding myself without friends and finally leaving high school early (ducked out just before Columbine sent everything to shit.)
I had a number of friends who tried to climb the social ladder, something I had been trying to do when I was younger because it was supposed to be important to being successful later in life (something I actually believe is true, but I've become happy I didn't do it, since I avoided a lot of really superficially nice but really ugly people, or becoming such an ugly person myself.) Some of said friends got into debt over it, did bad things because of it, and a few got into drugs (whether dealing or partaking) and did a decade long slide into insanity, crime, depression, or disease.
I suspect it can also be the opposite, depression causes people to spend more time in social networks.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Hard to break this to you, kid.... they don't care about Trump.
They only want to see you libs all triggered. That's all.
If someone was depressed in a pre-internet era, the word would likely not get very far outside of the city borders. Today, it's possible someones depression will become known throughout the world thanks to interconnectedness. I wouldn't be surprised if the level of depression is really just the same after all this time, yet the only difference is the technology compared to, say, 50 years ago. I would worry that technology is just a convenient scapegoat.
Daily read for tech news: Freezenet.ca
And I don't even use it.
I don't think social media is the sole causation of depression, rather it can be a contributing factor. Facebook is a case study in the law of unintended consequences. As much as I dislike Mark Zuckerberg and want to give him absolutely no credit for anything, I don't think he foresaw that Facebook would be a breeding ground for malcontent. He never thought Facebook would become a place for bullying and encouraging people to compare their lives or relative lack of success to others. I am a goodly number of years out from being a teenager and Facebook began negatively impacting my mood and self esteem so I just left it in the dust. I am now just a little over three months Facebook-free and I am better off for it.
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.
Let's start a new party and get rid of the libs all together.
Yeah, but maybe trying to divide the population into mutually exclusive categories like left and right, conservatives and liberals, or democrats and republicans isn't a very good start.
Social Networks are only a tool. A tool that enables people to be in constant contact and share their inner thoughts and interests with everyone. It removes some filters people have when talking face to face with someone else, which is a powerful thing both for good and bad.
The problem here is that Internet culture, specially western Internet culture is just this bad.
What happened with Internet tools such as social media is that the inherent culture that has been growing up for decades now is unleashed at people without filters.
So you end up with: the vain, empty and fruitless celebrity cutlure. Worshipping of individuals, erasure of critical reasoning, and relying on content that is constantly bombarded with sponsorship matterial and hidden agendas.
Extremists from all and every side - religious, brand loyalism, closet racists coming out, the fashion and beauty dictatorship, political polarization, among other crap.
Sensationalism is on an all time high. With "fake news" agencies, tabloid style journalism, and news organizations overall just aiming for the fastest click, all you get is empty content blasting on 11 that adds nothing of value to anyone.
But this isn't a problem with social media, this is a problem with the entire culture in itself. Kids, teens and young adults are just more exposed to it via social media.
The new generations are born into this transitional period and are not equipped to distinguish one (real world) from another (virtual/Internet world), so they can easily go for one over another. Limits are not being clearly explained and implemented, and the fact that kids keeping their attention to a virtual world eases up parents life in the real world only exaccerbates this confusion.
There's pressure on western society for kids to be knowledgeable and get used fast to the Internet, which is yet another overall culture thing. It's becoming less and less expected for kids to have friends to play on a daily basis. And with current political climate, lots of parents even prefer if their kids play only with kids from similar backgrounds, similar social class, race, religion, etc.
This all leads to less diverse experiences, less tolerance for new situations, and a sort of destructive mindset that cannot handle change.
And the funny thing is that the Internet could be just as much used as a tool to help depressed people. But they are simply not there. Because it's that much easier for kids and adults to be swayed by crap that only makes things worse.
I read the title and the answer is "no."
There are so many other causes of childhood depression (wrong school system, etc.) and the fact that childhood depression existed long before desktop computers of any kind existed that no, social media, as such, is such a small part. Indeed, social media is sometimes the only connection left a depressed person has with the world at large (and if this is you, seek help *right now*^`1) that removing access to it (because parents are going to only read the title) would be harmful.
--
BMO
1. That was me back in 2012. The only things I did were food shopping and going to the pharmacy. If that. But not enough. I lost a bunch of weight due to anorexia (anorexia is not just teenage kids with body image problems, it's also adults or anyone else that just doesn't feel the need to eat). While losing weight this way was effective, it's not recommended by me. My world shrunk to my apartment and the only connection with the outside world was my computer and my property manager who insisted that I come over and sit around the barbecue roughly every Saturday and he wouldn't take no for an answer. (he had a key, of course)
About that. I was pretty good at putting on the mask, so nobody would know that anything was wrong, just that I wasn't around much.
By the time December rolled around and my brother rescued me, I was an almost-suicidal mess and didn't care what happened to me because I didn't think anyone would miss me. Steve probably kept me alive long enough for that to happen. Without the two Steves (my brother is also named Steve), I'd probably be dead from the heart attack in Feb 2013.
Which leads me to today. I am still alive, and I have an actual life again. It took a lot of work and a lot of visits to the head shrinker, but I am mostly functional and /married/ to a wonderful person who doesn't think I'm as awful as I think I am.
The tl;dr of this footnote is that life changes and if your only connection to the outside world is social media, you are in a depressive episode and you need help immediately. You cannot drag yourself out of it alone. But if you get help, you will get the time for life to change for the better (because it can't get much worse). Help doesn't have to be professional help, but it can be a friend or your local DBSA. Google that organization and find a group close to you and go.
I think everybody needs positive social regard. It doesn't make you weak somehow. But we all need it in different ways. Extroverts thrive on attention and big groups, they literally can't get enough. But that doesn't mean introverts don't need people, we just prefer them in small groups and have a limited capacity for even that. For us attention is like vitamin A: we need it, but too much is toxic.
When I sold my company I went from leading a small team to working for two years by myself as the new owners got up to speed. Now I'm fairly extreme on the introvert scale, and the thing I craved when I led a team was more alone time just to stretch out and work on technical problems, and that's exactly what I got. It was unbelievably hard to work that way all the time. For two years I worked at my kitchen table, with no face time at all with customers or other developers, and it's probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What's up is that child psychology, adult psychology and geriatric psychology are all distinct areas of research focus. You wouldn't expect a researcher who normally publishes papers on children to includes adults in his or her study.
The impact of Internet use on adult mental health hasn't been ignored. You just have to look at different studies. In fact there are journals devoted to it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
wasn't genreally because of how tough and patriotic they were but because they had no options and were dirt poor, right? Imagine your kid 8 or 10 on a farm, that the farm is failing because of a few bad seasons and your parents can't afford to feed your brothers and sisters when this nice man from the army says he'll take you away and give you grub.
My bro skipped the army and opted for college (I'm got hip problems (real ones, as in I'll need a hip replacement someday), so it was never an option) but I still would have opted for college. Most do. If you look at our volunteer army, it's almost entirely the poor and long term military. For all intents we've got a warrior caste, we just don't talk about it in those terms.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
or is it giving these bullied kids an outlet so that you're actually noticing them? You're right, these kids always existed. But when I was a kid they were so trampled down nobody noticed. Hell, I was one of the only slightly bullied kids (I was big but timid, so sometimes a target) but I knew kids who were bullied by their teachers, and not just the gym teachers.
To be honest what changed was Columbine. Bullied kids suddenly had to be paid attention to. Even the gym teachers stopped the bullying since you never knew when one of those kids you kept shitting on for giggles was going to decide he had enough and, instead of quietly offing themselves, would decide to take a bunch of their tormentors with them.
So no, it's not that these kids get piled onto on facebook. You know they can just unfriend the jerks, right? We're noticing them because they've shown they can and will hurt the normies if their pushed far enough. The sad thing is it had to come to that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Imagine if you could, from early childhood on, hear everyone's thoughts, unfiltered, and you can't turn it off. Your life would be a living hell and you'd probably want to eventually kill yourself. That's what so-called 'social media' does to us: you get people's unfiltered thoughts, and it's very easy to be critical or outright cruel when you don't have to face someone when you're saying it.
So-called 'social media' should not be allowed for kids, at all, period. Make them interact in person, get properly socialized, get proper social skills. Learn what the 'social contract' is. Of course I'm an advocate for nobody using 'social media' at all, I think it's a cancer on our society in general.
I burned my house down just to piss of solicitors.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Probably a reference to known by products when burning coal, oil or wood
The Earth isn't flat either, sorry if that comes as a shock.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Makes it worse, yes.
You either have a chemical imbalance or you don't - social media doesn't cause the imbalance. Social media will certainly make a huge contribution to what a person feels as a result of the imbalance.
Take away the social media, the "bad feels" will certainly diminish, but there will still be something there, it's just the way a lot of us are wired.
Assholes, bullies, predators and generally a very toxic environment with a high potential of causing depression? The first thing I thought of was Slashdot's comments-section, to be quite honest :S
Yes CNN news said it was the Best10 causing depression because of social media.
That doesn't sound like it's good, for anybody.
Anyone have kids during the Pogues phenomenon? It turned into gambling. Schools and parents had to shut it down.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain