Facebook and Twitter 'Harm Young People's Mental Health' (theguardian.com) 120
Instagram and Snapchat are really bad for young people's mental health, according to research by two health organisations. Virtually all major social media platforms have a negative impact on the well-being of 14-24-year-olds, the study adds. Instagram was the worst -- followed by Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. From a report on The Guardian: Instagram has the most negative impact on young people's mental wellbeing, a survey of almost 1,500 14- to 24-year-olds found, and the health groups accused it of deepening young people's feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. The survey, published on Friday, concluded that Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter are also harmful. Among the five only YouTube was judged to have a positive impact. The four platforms have a negative effect because they can exacerbate children's and young people's body image worries, and worsen bullying, sleep problems and feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness, the participants said.
Ahem (Score:2)
No shit sherlock.
And in other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Living is the leading cause of death.
Film at eleven!
I smell... (Score:5, Funny)
I smell a class-action suit! Lawyers will not be able to help themselves.
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I understand that lawyers are fitted with laws similar in character to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
They will self-limit their behaviour if there is imminent danger of doing public good.
They harm everyone's mental health (Score:1)
Facebook and Twitter 'Harm Young People's Mental Health'
Facebook and Twitter 'Harm People's Mental Health'. There, FTFY.
Re: They harm everyone's mental health (Score:2, Funny)
Case in point, our twitterer in chief.
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No, we had three stories on IBM's work-from-home policy, and something-something about drones. All your base!
Well... Slashdot (Score:1)
Pretty sure Slashdot ruins the mental health of young techies, engineers & scientists aged 18-24.
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Slashdot simply doesn't have the volume of garbage to pull this off. Slashdot is a pea shooter on a modern battlefield.
Facebook, on the other hand, is like grandma's chain letters on steroids with everyone contributing to the feedback loop and reality distortion filters.
Although modern marketing in general is all about abusing your adrenal system in order to keep your attention. That has bled over into journalism. Facebook just then takes it up a notch.
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I'll have you know that my brain damage was caused by Applesoft BASIC, you insensitive clod!
IRC! (Score:5, Informative)
The only true, and also oldest form of "social media" is IRC. It's all you need and you will actually have to learn things to use it for your first few times.
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Bullshit. BBSes predate that by decades. And if you think that wasn't social, find out what a GT was.
Try a decade or more earlier: (Score:3)
Usenet, Plato Talkomatic and Notesfiles, and many others just called and want their due. IRC is a relative newcomer from the late 1980s.
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I am also a relative newcomer from the late 80's.. but when i was young my dad had showed me how to use dial in bbs's also..
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Call me old fashioned (and it wouldn't be the first time), but I prefer my faithful ASR-33 connected to a Fidonet node, thank you.
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Call me old fashioned
You're old fashioned.
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When my local BBS connected to Fidonet and offered FREE international email, it totally blew my mind! I mean, I could write an email today, and in less than 24 hours it would be in Japan. Like magic.
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Those chat programs are the best because you actually befriend people on em, instead of just collecting people like pokemon and never actually talking much to em.
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Exactly
Actual Data (Score:2, Insightful)
Has anyone found the actual survey data? I'm curious how the survey was worded.
Re:Actual Data (Score:5, Informative)
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You'll likely need to contact the original authors. Getting sample surveys should be as easy as a polite request; getting at the raw data may take distinctly more, and it's probably best if you get a bit of a conversation going first, if nothing else to find out what information about the subjects is in there. If there's stuff with a strong risk of letting you identify subjects, they should be not very willing to share it. (Standard ethical rules: You don't out your subjects without their permission, and
Cents (Score:3)
See? What did I tell you? (Score:5, Insightful)
..b-b-but all my friends!
THEY'RE NOT REAL. GO OUTSIDE, meet REAL people, make REAL friends.
..b-b-but how will I keep in touch with people?
How did you do it before so-called 'social media'? DO IT THAT WAY AGAIN, FOOL!
..b-b-but Facebook brings people together!
LOL, no, it doesn't, it gives them a reason to STAY APART. Knock that shit off!
..b-b-but my boss requires me to have Facebook!
BULLSHIT.
..b-b-but where will I find out what's going on in the world?
YOU IDIOT! Get your news from a REAL NEWS SOURCE, NOT SOCIAL MEDIA, YOU FUCKTARD!
Seriously, isn't it time to abandon this running troll/meme/joke called 'social media'? Or are you STUPID?
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Agreed, and unfortunately "real" news sources are getting harder and harder to come by as more and more are just regurgitating "tweets".
captcha: artifact
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Says the guy who posts to Slashdot, which is clearly not another form of social media
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Very funny, but picking the pseudonym "Anonymous Coward" doesn't make you anonymous. I can see all the other bizarre posts you've made throughout the years. At least you're past the GNAA phase.
Re: See? What did I tell you? (Score:2)
News sites have news, not something all the other sites reported on 2 weeks ago. You come here for the comments. The proof is that you replied to me twice.
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Well, try to find some other outlet online... oh wait!
soy un perdedor, (Score:1)
Is is casual? (Score:3)
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Must have been getting my
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Are they certain it's a casual relationship? If one were to look at a many Facebook and Twitter comments one could just as well conclude that the platforms attract people who already have mental health problems.
This guy gets it: Correlation != Causation
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I would say not just young people... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was on IG for about a year and a half, and it was my only form of social media. One day I just realized one day how corrosive it is. I felt like a chicken, always peck peck pecking at my phone, trying to keep up with my feed. I was mainly involved with motorcycle builder, buying/selling parts, etc. People would visciously gang up on others, and do all kinds of nasty things if they didn't like you, or you wouldn't sell parts as cheap as they wanted. I had real-life friends that would get fired up and angry over things that happened on IG. I know people who stopped being friends because of some things that happened in the comments of IG.
I just walked away from it when I woke up to this. Having been around the internet since 1990, I've seen all this stuff before. But with things like IG it has a very low entry point, meaning anyone can join the fray. It's not just for the technically inclined, and quite honestly I think it shows off the worst parts of society. It can do the opposite, but it seems as in life, the ones who make the most noise and are most aggressive ruin it for the rest.
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I'd say gosand did learn to ignore them. He left Instagram, after all.
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Yes, remember newsgroups and IRC, where eventually one or more users started to control and moderate every thread.
It's more apparent, aggressive and abusive now.
At least with real life discussions you can prevent unwanted interventions, for now
Be careful in there young people (Score:2)
back in my day (Score:4, Insightful)
Political Motivation/SJW Alert (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the two groups, http://www.yhm.org.uk/ [yhm.org.uk] Young Health Movement, appears to be a subgroup of https://www.rsph.org.uk/ [rsph.org.uk] Royal Society for Public Health.
Looks like a single politically motivated activist group. It is also involved with campaigns to stop smoking, to label alcoholic beverages with calorie information, and the "Health on the High Street" campaign, whose mission is described as to "...ensure that local authorities have the powers they need to curtail business practices which may undermine the public’s health."
In other words, their aim seems to be to increase government intervention—in this case, within the realm of social interaction amongst the proles.
I would interpret this as a thinly veiled attempt to justify some kind of policy to further police language on these platforms to protect those who might be triggered or otherwise require a safe space. It is also kind of a stretch to include YouTube with "social platforms," because that is much more oriented toward pulling desirable content than it is toward open discussion.
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idiot
Great point. Nevermind. You win.
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You have no idea what an SJW is. It's a bunch of bullies who dress themselves up with noble causes but mostly don't give a fuck about them.. they just use them as a way to show how good they care, deflect criticism, and bully others by paining them as tiny hitlers.
Often their understanding of the issues they pretend to care about is shallow or some entirely false narrative cooked up for someone else's own purposes.
Wanting government regulation isn't SJW, wanting people to be decent to each other isn't SJW.
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to label alcoholic beverages with calorie information,
What the fuck is wrong with that?
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to label alcoholic beverages with calorie information,
What the fuck is wrong with that?
There's been an ongoing problem with stupid, stupid girls who skip meals so they can 'spend' their calories on booze. This makes the alcohol have a stronger effect on them and causes all sorts of nutritional disorders because they're effectively cutting back on nutrients--yes, they end up thin. Starving yourself works quite well for that. This doesn't make it healthy, and quite a few of these twits end up in the ER with alcohol poisoning. Some who manage to avoid that will get brain damage.
It doesn't he
Shocker (Score:4, Interesting)
I had this conversation with my wife last night. She watches (nowhere near as much as she used to though) several Youtube families. One in particular is a Mormon family with about 5 kids; the father started making the videos years ago and ended up starting a youtube/video production company that got bought out by Disney. So they have literally made millions because of Youtube. In any case, they always projected being the perfect, happy (not so) little family in all of their videos. But it just came out that the father has been fooling around with cam girls and is an alcoholic.
It's a perfect example of why people need to teach children not to put so much stock into social media: all you ever see are the good times, and the personas that people want you to see. It gives children the impression that if their life isn't one exciting or fun event after another then they are missing out or something is wrong with them, which fuels depression. It makes them feel like everyone else is having fun all the time, and gives them unrealistic outlooks on what life is supposed to be like. And this is only part of the problem. Add in the ability of social media to allow bullying to follow children home from school and it's no wonder kids these days have so many issues. Parents really need to be parents and make their kids cut back on the social media. It would all their lives so much easier.
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In any case, they always projected being the perfect, happy (not so) little family in all of their videos. But it just came out that the father has been fooling around with cam girls and is an alcoholic.
Honestly, anyone that's ever had a family will tell you: that's pretty damn close to perfect if that's the extent of the problems (depending on how bad his alcoholism is). I mean, by most accounts, I had a picture perfect upbringing, and we had those problems and many more! My family is all still very close (except my parents who are divorced, but don't actively hate each other or anything).
Gamified Social Media (Score:2)
A lot of users don't understand the purpose behind gamification of social sites; which is primarily to keep you using them.
I've seen users get extremely agitated over follower counts, number of likes, reblogs, retweets, etc. They begin to associate self worth with those statistics. It gets into their heads and makes their lives miserable, yet they continue coming back to the sites / apps to try and increase their widget counts.
I don't know if people get an endorphin rush if their post gets 20,000 [metric] a
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It's pretty much done pretty much entirely for the benefit of the social media sites' owners--gamificaion increases views, which increases the money ads earn. The main thing that can be done to counter it at the moment is ad blocking, to break their part of the reward cycle.
Causation (Score:2)
Or maybe people who have feelings of inadequacy and anxiety choose to use social media in an attempt to mitigate those feelings (futile.)
It's all social media, not just the big ones (Score:2)
There have been many studies like this that show social media in general increases feelings of isolation, inadequacy, etc. that were already there. Coming of age is a difficult time for a lot of people, and having a non-stop 24 hour feed of your "friends" posting all sorts of positive status updates, vacation pictures, etc. doesn't help if you're going through a rough time.
- People tend to post either overly positive aspects of their lives on social media. Most people don't post an equivalent number of bad
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- People tend to post either overly positive aspects of their lives on social media. Most people don't post an equivalent number of bad or boring things that happen to them. The exception to this is when people post about their family members dying or similar to try to get some sympathetic reactions.
I notice this about people in general. To me, a friend is someone who shares their woes with me as well as their successes and they are accepting when I reciprocate. The problem is much worse on social media because, let's face it, who wants to post a picture where everyone looks like crap?
What about slashdot? (Score:2)
Mod this post up if you think this is a good question.
The data don't support the conclusions (Score:2)
I'd like to see the raw data. Based on what's in the report I'd have to say I disagree with the conclusions. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram all show small net negative results, but YouTube shows a large net positive. "Social media", taken as a whole, has a small net positive. This is hardly a "harm to young people's mental health" and a need to take action as the RSPH is demanding.
Of course, the devil's in the details, which are sadly missing. The survey called out 14 factors and asked part
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Sorry, I linked the wrong page on the RSPH site. Here is the report: #StatusOfMind [rsph.org.uk]
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True thing. Fits my observations. (Score:2)
Said it before. [slashdot.org]
Facebook is not a social network, it's is a global mental illness.
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It's kind of amazing how I went from the nerdy one who was always using a computer, to now I am the least nerdy of all, surrounded by people with their faces in their devices. My own habits haven't changed much at all.
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What's depressing is the sheer amount of nothing they get done despite being glued to a computer all day.
So true.
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I've seen this before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reruns of Batman and Three Stooges 'Harm Young People's Mental Health'
I heard that back in the early 1970's when I in kindergarten and the early grades. Teachers didn't like kids using their jackets as capes, jumping off high surfaces and screaming "BATMAN!" at the top of their voice, or trying to poke out each other's eyes like the Three Stooges. Fun times.
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My dad and his best friend jumped off the barn with umbrellas because of Mary Poppins.
I'm sure the ancient Greeks were aghast at all the kids lookin' at their moms in a new way after an enactment of Oedipus Rex.
--
BMO
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One teacher was concerned when the software I wrote had Batman-style "POW!" "BANG!" "ZAP!" overlays instead of explosions or blood, or something Normal.
To which I say... "duh ne nu ne nu ne nu ne duh ne nu ne nu ne nu ne BATMAN!"
Source ? (Score:2)
I could only find this : https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... [ssrn.com]. Had to follow a couple of links. Seriously, this Guardian article should not even be considered when it starts mentioning research and not even providing sources.
It's so easy to say "new technology will doom us all". I'm not using facebook, but I'm always cautious when reading those full-of-bullshit articles.
Just young people's mental health? (Score:2)
... according to research by two health organisations. Virtually all major social media platforms have a negative impact on the well-being of 14-24-year-olds,
Researchers need to widen the age range. I imagine social media has a negative impact on most of us.
Lol, really? (Score:2)
"Facebook and Twitter 'Harm Young People's Mental Health'"
Brought to you by the Department of No Shit, Sherlock.
Good thing I'm older and mental! (Score:2)
In my day I had to hang out all day at the nickle arcade and play the "home version" of games on my Atari 800 with Iron Maiden or Metallica on the turntable to harm my mental health!
It harms mine (Score:1)
Facebook harms my mental health and I don't even use it. Just the anguish of trying to minimize the information they collect about me and how many images of me that normal people share is enough to cause me stress. Maybe those of us who don't use Facebook can sue for the mental anguish of knowing Facebook exists.
rock (Score:2)
Oh, those young people! They should do something wholesome, like rock and roll.
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Watch out, that might be Canadian cheese you're grating!