
Concerns that social media causes childhood depression - pmoriarty
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42705881
======
saas_co_de
One issue that I have never seen recognized is the affect of isolation on
people.

People who use computers a lot tend to be physically isolated. Social media
provides a simulation of social engagement that works on some levels of the
brain but is incomplete and missing physical touch, smell, and other aspects
of presence.

It is my suspicion that some of the negative effects of attributed to social
media/gaming/etc are actually caused by the isolation that compulsive computer
use results in and that people are essentially putting themselves in solitary
confinement without realizing it and experiencing similar psychological
outcomes.

~~~
TaylorGood
A side effect is that I've found myself having a harder time to pick up the
phone. In person I am no different than when I was using less screen time, but
the habit of calling has deteriorated and now I have to be obedient. Every day
there is a set period of time where I make calls.

~~~
dazc
I found the same thing, conversations over the phone can feel awkward and
unnatural. It takes a lot of constant use to get over this feeling, for me at
least.

Therefore, after a period of communicating purely via text I start to feel the
awkwardness again. And this, sometimes, means I actually put off making calls,
which only makes things worse.

------
kartan
A better society will help us to be less depressed.

I have had some experiences with ill-behaving companies. Where bosses think
that employees need to be in fear so they are more productive. Where people is
told to "never make a mistake" or they will be fired. You get the picture.
People is depressed. You see people actually crying at their job.

I have also worked for functioning companies. People is valued and get
positive feedback on their job. Mistakes are investigated to get an
understanding and improve the processes to help people but personal blaming is
forbidden. Where the manager´s job is to help employees to achieve their
potential and support them.

In the first situation people is depressed and unhappy. People is paranoic and
don´t trust each other. A blaming culture rewards lying about the status of
projects and their results.

In the second situation people is more happy at work. Meetings are
constructive and ways of improving the company are found. People find
themselves realized at work.

Social media is just a mirror of society. It magnifies its uglyness or its
greatness. I love to get into social media and see nature pictures from one
friend. Another one composes music and shares it on-line. Most people will
react joining into a good joke and answering with some one has a practical
question. I love to be on social media, but I can understand how different
that experience will be for others. Like the two companies I described, the
same personal circunstances can be seen as gloomy or fantastic by the
influence of your environment.

Social media can, and maybe should be regulated, but the only solution to the
problem is better education that values the indivual while encourage to work
for the better of all society. And then society is going to be able to look at
the mirror and like the image that is sees.

~~~
wepple
Social media is not a mirror of society.

When I go and spend time with friends or family, I’m doing it fairly
unrestrained and of my own will. Sitting around a dinner table chatting about
whatever only involves the people at the dinner table.

Social media takes this idea and tries to move it into a browser seemingly
innocuously, but adds algorithms and manipulations all with an end goal of
selling attention to advertisers and personal information to marketing
companies.

It may feel like it’s just the real world society except online, but every
little interaction is so drastically transformed, you’re left with something
completely different.

~~~
nine_k
Your picture fairly accurately describes Facebook.

It's not as accurate for Twitter, and is totally off mark (fortunately) for
things like Mastodon or Dreamwidth.

------
petra
It's probably not just social media, but the internet(and tv) itself.

We know how human beings are supposed to live to be happy: small communities
of stable relationships, with a lot of face to face time, ideally spending
some of it outside doing some sort of physical activity.

And being focused is better , more enjoying than being distracted, and better
for mind according to the meditative traditions .

Some people are introverts though, so for them this recipe is somewhat
different , less social contact. But the social contact they have shouldn't be
emotionally empty. And even their alone time is focused, like in book reading.

Alas, the internet is the excat opposite.

~~~
matthewbauer
Yes, definitely agree.

I wonder if there are more introverts now than there were many years ago? It
seems to me that has been a trend but I don't have any data to back it up.

~~~
dazc
Certainly less willingness to engage in conversation or, often, a failure to
even acknowledge the presence of other human beings.

------
Trav5
I find the comments that rant against social media on hacker news amusing.
Hacker news is a social media website.

"Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and
entrepreneurship." [0]

It's the same as a group on any other system, just different formatting. It
even has karma which can suck you in...

I do not disagree with the sentiment though, managing the amount of time one
gives to social media is tough. Picking good social circles and getting out of
bad ones is tough.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News)

~~~
andrepd
I think Hacker News (and traditional topical discussion forums in general) is
to Facebook as playing boardgames with your friends is to a Casino.

~~~
darkerside
It's more like playing poker at the casino instead of roulette

------
mbrumlow
Social media in my opinion is a scourge on our society. It is a place that
fosters narcissism and sociopathic natures. The little good it does bring is
heavily outweighed by the bad.

Some will say it brings families and lost friends together across the world.
This is true, but could be had without the endless streams of gloating,
selfies, and photos of what you have eaten.

Recently I have had a child. And I have already decided that the only social
interaction he will have will be real-time or near real time. This means face
to face, live video, real time chat (sms Hangouts is okay). This shows real
interest and attention to the other party in real time and allows true
connections to be formed. No endless scrolling through people's lives you meet
once.

I should also mention photo albums of actual events will be allowed too.

I know that this will be hard and I will likely fail. But I am going to do my
best to help my son learn how to truly interact with people and feel fulfilled
with the relationships he has. Never do I want him to feel the loneliness of
endlessly peering into others life's from a small window on phone.

~~~
pjc50
> feel the loneliness of endlessly peering into others life's from a small
> window on phone

At the point where everyone in his social circle is doing this, he will feel
the loneliness of being the only one excluded from it. Perhaps he'll
experience it peering in through _someone else 's_ phone.

~~~
qball
>Perhaps he'll experience it peering in through someone else's phone.

And better yet, once the child is free of their parent's influence, they'll
probably just get sucked in because they never developed the mental mechanisms
to handle the tools properly (because their parent was too emotionally blinded
and thus incapable of teaching risk management).

Just like that parent probably did when _they_ grew up and left home, for the
same reasons. Cycles of emotional abuse are hard to break.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
This is like saying we should have our child experience gambling, alcohol,
cigarettes, and other addictive activities to teach risk management because
they're going to be exposed to it when they leave home, which is silly. Kids
aren't born mature. Self-discipline and risk management are skills that need
to be built up over time before we expose our kids to the most addictive
aspects of life IMO.

~~~
jackstraw14
Exactly! I think the OP talking about emotional abuse is confusing actual
emotional abuse with the simple absence of a well-developed cognitive
structure, and the problems that arise when parents lacking this structure try
to raise kids of their own.

If a parent could give their kid an exact copy of their good/bad mapping for
the world, the result wouldn't be a copy of a well-adjusted parent. The result
would be a child who, at best, is able to function one step from their own
reality without too much chaos. But I think it's more likely they would lose
their footing somewhere around college and go off the rails, an increasingly
necessary process it seems. Hopefully they have enough self-awareness left at
that point to figure out how to exist in their world, finally in their own
way.

------
jxub
I think Girard got it right.

Social media, as a whole, is a really big net negative to one's psyche, as we
get to know what others have or desire, and become infected with their
passions, fears and desires in this memetic process.

It makes us uniform, bland, predictable neural networks, cogs involved in
unifying the capitalistic market, and losing values far more important than
money.

Thankfully, there is still some resistance to that mental girardian
unification, southern Europe seems to be harder to unify and bend to the
global monoculture of anglo-capitalistic gollumization (I think Venkat at
ribbonfarm.com wrote somethink about it)

And I also still think we have a chance to suceed in this gollumized society
as a species, we'll just be less happier in our endless pursuit of darwinian
fitness.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _It makes us uniform, bland, predictable neural networks, cogs involved in
> unifying the capitalistic market_

This. We have become mindless uber-consumers, copying vs creating,
regurgitating vs thinking. Reposting an animated gif meme is valued more than
original thought.

As a consequence, we are easily infected (perfect word) with ideas. Worse, we
believe these ideas to be the product of our own creation.

Beyond that, all we seem to be able to muster is endless streams of desparate
duck-lipped photos, begging for validation.

This is what we've been reduced to and convinced is normal. It's a form of
collective mental illness, encouraged by mind-hackers who profit from it.

~~~
foobarian
I blame secularization. Human beings are genetically very good conduits for
transfer of ideas. This is why in the past religions had such success in
becoming popular and "infecting" people's brains.

But once modern society decided that religion is bad, they created a memetic
vacuum, a population of brains with empty slots ready to attach to whatever
big idea came next. And that happened to be social networks with their strong
feedback loops and financial incentives to be as addictive as possible.

I wish there was a church option again that was a bit less loony. Something
focused on community and shared values, less on the mystical. Honestly I think
Unitarians come close but I don't know why their numbers are record low; maybe
there needs to be more of a social network backlash to get some new members
through the door.

~~~
IntronExon
The vast majority of people are part of a religion. What are you talking
about? Religion has less ability to control people in some parts of the world,
and people in some parts of the world are becoming less religious. Most of the
world is still quite religiou though, often to their detriment.

India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, huge swaths of the US, South and
Central America, and so on are all _very_ religious. So again, what are you
really talking about?

~~~
foobarian
I'm talking about modern western society. Sorry I don't have scientific
references, and this is all anecdata/personal observation but I don't know a
single person in my large US city that is religious or attends church, and yet
I know many that spend a lot of time on social networks and yet are lonely.
Mostly combination of family/friends/work.

~~~
IntronExon
[http://news.gallup.com/poll/200186/five-key-findings-
religio...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/200186/five-key-findings-
religion.aspx)

[http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-
study/](http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/)

[https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-
landscape-c...](https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-
christian-religiously-unaffiliated/)

 _Atheists and agnostics account for a minority of all religiously
unaffiliated. Most are secular. Atheists and agnostics account for only about
one-quarter (27%) of all religiously unaffiliated Americans. Nearly six in ten
(58%) religiously unaffiliated Americans identify as secular, someone who is
not religious; 16% of religiously unaffiliated Americans nonetheless report
that they identify as a “religious person.”_

Note that religiously unaffiliated represent ~21% only.

Less dominant and slowly declining, but far from what you previously described
as _But once modern society decided that religion is bad._

~~~
arcseco
That doesn't necessarily mean that people who identify as religious also
attend a church. My family would consider themselves Catholic, yet they don't
attend church. In my opinion people have replaced the hole that religiosity
used to fill with pop-culture. The amount of time dedicated to reading into
the meaning of films/television shows, or worshiping actors/actresses (see
tabloids) is reminiscent of the seriousness that religiously dedicated
individuals take to scripture.

~~~
IntronExon
A reorientation of priorities among people who self-identify as religious is
about as far from the thesis of society deciding that “religion is bad” as can
be. Mostly though, you should recognize that “pop culture” has been blamed for
turning people away from religion for longer than people have spoken English.

------
evantahler
Here’s my philosophy: happiness comes from creation. We are hackers, we know
this. But “creating memories” and “creating experiences” counts too!

Browsing Social media is not an act of creation, but one of consumption.

------
John_KZ
I think the article mixes up and confuses two different concepts.

One is that social media might amplify "normal" social conditions, such as
bullying, to an unprecedented degree.

The other one is the misuse/abuse of social media as socialization substitutes
by children, leading to isolation.

Social media can bring a lot of benefit to everyone, even children, if they
are used to augment and improve our real-life, face-to-face interactions. But
they cannot and should not substitute them.

Some argue it's just about how you use them. That's not true. Companies like
facebook use psychometrics, sociologist and psychologists to optimize their
software for something, and that something probably never is your well-being.
We can use regulation to enforce this. You can be the most active and social
person there is, but a properly designed piece of software that filters and
controls all your social interaction can destroy your social life and mental
health. Especially if you're 9 years old and most of your life experiences
come from a screen.

------
enord
Social media is yet another aspect of the atomization of the individual.

We are engaged in a great un-meaningfying of human interaction driven by a
philosophication of empirically established human propensities. We are what we
do, and the value of what we do is eatablished by market forces.

You are your friends and likes. You are your upvotes and replies. You are your
retweets and followers. These are truths when you are too young to establish
your own moral footing. And we pulled the rug out from under them; religion is
out, atheism is uncool (they can tell), spiritual self discovery is
illegal(usually involves drugs) and The Internet, well, thats where they get
depressed, innit?

We are ill equipped for the marketisation of identity.

~~~
ukulele
One of the best things about the internet is the potential for searchable
comments like these 20+ years from now. I look forward to seeing how the same
things get repeated over and over and over at the onset of each new
technology.

~~~
enord
Hahaha, I remember claiming that expensive phones with crappy cameras was a
stupid fad that would blow over. If you dont't make a bold claims you don't
get the benefits of hindsight i guess!

I would like to add that I was trying to make a point about morality and
nihilism in our culture with developing technology as the backdrop, not the
cause as such.

------
taurath
Maybe lack of actual community existing causes childhood depression? The way
so much of our society is set up to allow for individualism and solitude it
doesn’t surprise me that the kids are not alright.

------
creep
I'd be depressed too if my news feed was filled with the social dynamics of
pubescent-aged children. It's much easier to understand what's truly going on
in the social world when one is physically present in that world, and it's
also much easier to remove onself from a toxic group of people. Every school-
aged relative I have has a Facebook with nearly every kid from school added as
a friend. But every friend's feed is presented by default as if you are
directly involved with their shit. It's hard to remove oneself from that,
especially because having more Facebook friends to a kid is very socially
laudable.

------
sjg007
Childhood and adult.

------
zappo2938
I went to three different high schools in as many states before the time of
the internet and cell phones. Each time I became disconnected from my hard
earned friendships was depressing. I wish I had better communication at the
time.

------
conmarap
This doesn't surprise me at all. Unfortunately, social media is not social at
all. It's not just the medium everyone uses to talk about and prize
themselves, but also the medium that people use to silently ostracize others,
who in turn use the completely fake and narcissistic posts of whoever they
deem popular, or "cool," as a metric of how good their own lives are and,
ultimately, fall into depression whilst failing to understand the fakeness of
what they see.

------
DanBC
HN readers might not be aware of "Skoville", a social media site for children
under 13.

[https://www.skooville.com/](https://www.skooville.com/)

It has some superficial "educational" Flash games (about being safe online, or
about getting a job and paying your bills.

But it also has some of the negative features of social media.

[https://www.skooville.com/](https://www.skooville.com/)

------
larodi
every 'media' producing interrupts may be considered harmful for one's mind,
as it blows the thought process into smithereens. psychologists, psychiatrists
and spiritual teachers from all around the globe are crying warnings in our
face since before the dawn of Internet, but only few listen...

the concept of conscious living/being and (as one other commentator noted) the
essence of meditative practices is completely incompatible with social or any
other media based on push updates and preprogrammed streams (tv/social/etc).
add to this the tricks for retention and the fact that we develop reflexes to
ask the network, and not our own memory, and you get a totally unconscious
living, one that slowly diminishes concentration and intelligence irrelevant.

the WHO needs to immediately come forward and warn Earth's population of the
forthcoming collapse of free will/thought, as this is already happening and we
can only guess where it gets to. it's concerning that there are many signs
we're about to witness social-media-related-insanity 'en masse' in the very
near future.

------
Cococabanana
This reminds me of growing up as an active member of the original BBS scene in
the 90's.

Parents/Adults are clueless as usual. Let the kids have their fun!

------
stratigos
Ive been saying this since 2007 when all my friends complained that I dont
have a facebook account ;)

------
Gatsky
Social media is indistinguishable from smoking, except we are all smoking the
same damn pipe.

(tobacco smoking, to be precise)

------
kangxitenant
Nice article. Being pedantic, Id just like to point out that all photos are
digitally manipulated tho.

------
clubm8
Then what caused my childhood depression?

Does AIM count as social media? ;)

------
joejerryronnie
Remember when rock music was going to lead us down the path of evil? And then
violent video games were creating an entire generation of lawless degenerates?
Now social media is causing depression. I can only imagine the societal ills
that AR/VR will wreak on us all!

