
UK survey of 14-24-year-olds indicates social networks harm mental health - pmcpinto
https://qz.com/988765/instagram-fb-is-the-most-harmful-social-network-for-your-mental-health-but-youtube-goog-has-a-positive-effect-a-new-report-says/
======
overcast
This is why I removed myself from every social media site within the last few
years. Instagram is the only one that sticks around for business purposes, and
even that is very addicting. I've setup comment section blocking plugins on
all browsers. And I've turned off ALL notifications, except for incoming phone
calls on my phone. The smartphone, while an amazing and life changing
invention, will be the death of us. Too much constant consumption.

All these applications do is show you the very best slices of everyone's
lives. When added up, it makes it appear everyone is living the greatest lives
ever, and makes yours seem mundane at best.

~~~
h1e2l3l4o
Just as an aside. I discovered recently that Instagram's web interface (at
least on mobile) allows you to upload images. It's a pretty basic offering,
but it suits my needs and I've unistalled the app as a result.

~~~
joelrunyon
Do you have instructions on this? I've never seen it before + can't reproduce
it?

~~~
h1e2l3l4o
Here's what I see when I'm logged into their website on IOS

The camera icon in the centre (much like the app) is what you tap to start the
process of uploading your image.

[https://postimg.org/gallery/ctpt4i50/](https://postimg.org/gallery/ctpt4i50/)

------
beager
* for young people age 18-24

Whereas I'm 33 and Instagram is the only social network that I use anymore,
because the product prioritizes sharing a human experience rather than a
political article or an opinion. Snapchat is the same, but I never got into it
(cf. my age).

~~~
pjc50
> product prioritizes sharing a human experience rather than a political
> article or an opinion

"In the real world, people slow down and look at car crashes. On the internet,
they do the same - but it's interpreted by the system as a demand for more car
crashes, which the system will then attempt to supply"

\- paraphrase of a comment seen on Twitter

~~~
nebabyte
Rather superficial attempt at wit. Anywhere "in the real world" that operates
on feedback - which in a corporatized world is many things - also has that
"interpretation by the system" \- see the MSM as the most obvious example.

~~~
pjc50
Sure, it's a common problem of metric-driven and target-driven systems, but
that doesn't mean it's not a problem. If we've built systems that reward
outcomes that we find bad .. maybe we should do something about it? Or at
least encourage people to be aware of when they're participating in the car
crash production system.

Currently going around on my twitter is a reminder not to retweet screenshots
of professional troll / Mail "journalist" Katie Hopkins calling for a "final
solution" to Islam (in the context of the Manchester bombing). That's the kind
of thing I mean: engaging with it at all is just feeding the outrage machine.
Report and block instead.

------
wackro
From the report's webpage ([https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/policy/social-
media-and-you...](https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/policy/social-media-and-
young-people-s-mental-health-and-wellbeing.html)):

> Follow the Young Health Movement on Instagram

Irony is never lost.

------
igitur
From what I gather this found only some correlation, not causation. So I might
as well postulate that people with mental health problems are more likely to
be on social media. That's not too difficult to believe.

~~~
e12e
From the report: "One in six young people will experience an anxiety disorder
at some point in their lives and identified rates of anxiety and depression in
young people have increased by 70% over the past 25 years. _Our own research
has shown that young people themselves say four of the five most used social
media platforms actually make their feelings of anxiety worse_ (See YHM survey
- page 18)" [my emphasis ]

But you're right insofar as this doesn't appear to be a longitudinal study
with a control group. But such a study would probably be pretty hard to pull
off.

Maybe ESS[1] could help here if questions about social media habits were added
- but we'd not see results until a few years hence, obviously.

[1]
[http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/](http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/)

~~~
igitur
I put really little value on what surveyees think causes their anxiety.
Epitome of anecdotal data.

~~~
e12e
If what you're trying to measure is how someone feels, it might be necessary
to ask them how they feel - and what they feel influence that. If one person
thinks job stress make them unhappy, that might be anecdotal - if seven
hundred of a thousand say work makes them unhappy - that might be more towards
the "data" end of the spectrum?

------
ebbv
I've become convinced all social media is detrimental to mental health. I've
stopped using any of it and am feeling a lot better, with no real downsides.
My Twitter account is the only one I haven't deleted yet only because I have a
four letter username on there which you can't get anymore, but I think I will
probably delete it anyway soon.

~~~
louhike
But don't you consider HN as social media?

~~~
ebbv
Nope. It's just a specialized news feed. I don't make friends on here or
really even talk to people most of the time. I only read informative comments,
I rarely even note people's usernames.

~~~
monk_e_boy
> I only read informative comments

Um.

How do you know that they are informative before you've read them?

~~~
ebbv
HN has a cool system where comments get up-voted if they are good or down-
voted if they are bad. That really makes it easy to sort the good ones from
the bad ones.

------
cylinder
I follow places / landscapes / design, wife follows friends (their highlight
reel life) and "influencers." It is complete garbage what these people are
peddling (for money).

------
wcummings
Phone diets will be the next health fad IMO. Can't happen fast enough for me.

~~~
ashark
Getting everything set up so I can efficiently _Internet_ diet 6-6.75 days a
week—not just phone diet—is one of the things on my todo list that I'm not
getting done because I'm doing other stuff on the Internet all the time, haha.

------
dovdovdov
You mean the infinite subliminal billboard of our generation?

------
LeeHwang
Not surprised.

Scanning my own personal feed, it seems like everyone is successful and happy.
It makes me depressed even though I know the feed is biased.

------
1ba9115454
I've seen a group of English girls around a table in the old square in Prague,
one of the most beautiful places in the world for people watching. All of them
were not speaking to each other just scrolling through Instagram.

~~~
smcl
It's entirely possible you bumped into a group of young girls who've had a
busy, interesting and stimulating trip through a cool country and who wanted
to stop for a quick coffee and a bit of free wifi. Please don't jump to
conclusions and judge people like this.

~~~
escherize
It's entirely possible smcl hired those girls to go to Prauge and act that way
so that he could tell you not to jump to conclusions. Please don't jump to
conclusions.

~~~
penagwin
It's entirely possible that smcl and escherize are in cahoots to tell you not
to jump to conclusions. Please don't jump to conclusions.

------
romanovcode
Instagram has so much "hidden" advertisement it's just pathetic.

~~~
josefresco
Instagram is full of "lifestyle" or "aspirational" marketing. After years of
pragmatic search engine marketing it's an entirely new way of thinking about
selling your product or service. Instead of "our product does x, y and z" it's
"here's my wonderful life with this product, don't you want it (the life) to
be yours?"

~~~
oblio
Lifestyle advertising is not new:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Generation).

~~~
coldtea
It's not that old, historically speaking, either.

~~~
boomlinde
In the context of mass marketing, though, it is again very old. PR is
basically propaganda, where these emotional manipulation techniques are very
important.

------
franciscop
Why was "Instagram" removed from the title? It is in the linked article and in
the body it's explained that Instagram is the worst of them all, so I would
say it's highly relevant for the title.

~~~
dang
A moderator changed the original title to less baity language from the article
(in accordance with the HN guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
but couldn't figure out how to fit Instagram in. Since other reports on the
same survey single out other social networks (e.g.
[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/19/popular-
soci...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/19/popular-social-media-
sites-harm-young-peoples-mental-health)) it doesn't seem essential.

------
awkwardtortoise
They write the same shit every year, every generation.

People said the same thing about newspapers. The same thing about radio. The
same thing about rock 'n roll. The same thing about rap/hip-hop. The same
thing about TV ( IDIOT BOX ). They said the same thing about myspace 10 years
ago. They said the same thing about porn.

I'm sure in 10 years, they'll say the same thing about VR because people need
to sell ads and justify their paychecks.

~~~
inimino
That doesn't make it wrong.

