I've got a plausible (to me) hypothesis of my own - namely, that the "kids these days are getting worse and worse" is something people have been thoughtlessly regurgitating for as long as we have historical written records, and that new customs or technologies are easiest to blame. Today it's Facebook, previously it was TV, earlier still it was walkmans and metal bands. Hell, if I'm to believe random quotes from the Internet, even earlier it was paper/pens and... books. "Facebook is bad for the kids" seems to be the cheapest thing you can write these days while being sure you'll have an audience that agrees with you.
I think there is actually a bigger danger with people summarily dismissing negative consequences of technology, and then just saying "it's no big deal" because it's been going on a long time.
Look at TV. Of course TV has many positives, but it's also another factor in people (at least Americans) becoming much more sedentary over the past 6-7 decades, which has been a large factor in the US obesity epidemic. It's a mistake to dismiss the negatives of TV just because we've gotten used to the fact that nearly everyone is so fat.
Similarly, with social media, forget about teenagers, as I think many people are able to see the huge negative effect it has on their own lives. The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons.
Not trying to dismiss all negatives; just biased against this particular flavour (kids getting sad or unruly is surely because of the things they enjoy, as opposed to e.g. broken economy visible every day through their parents). So I'm not dismissing e.g. sedentary lifestyle issues.
> The fact that we're becoming a society that constantly compares ourselves to the idealized versions of other people shouldn't allow us to dismiss the obvious negatives of those comparisons
I think social media is actually a step up here - the time spent comparing ourselves to idealized versions of our friends is the time not spent comparing ourselves to the apparent presence of all those celebrities and rich people, which was a constant of the previous century. Mass media broke the availability heuristic; the generic dysrationalia it caused in people is clearly visible. Which would be a kind of tech negative I'm not denying.
They are not "thoughtlessly regurgitating" anything. Depression and suicide rates have risen significantly, and they are putting some effort into identifying the cause. This is stated explicitly in the introduction to the article.
I think a big difference is social media causes people to constantly compare their lives to people's Facebook posts, which are usually people just sharing stuff that makes them look like their life is amazing. I know when I was in high school I compared myself to others and felt inadequate even without Facebook in my pocket. Now kids can just mindlessly scroll through a highlight reel of their peers and feel inadequate wherever they are.
Walkmans and metal bands came after TV. In fact so did miniskirts and the Beatles, each of which were also decried as the end of civilization in their turn.
Nonetheless, just because people have been saying "the world's going down the shitter" for a long time, doesn't mean it's not.
Did you read the article? Or even the post title? No one is talking about kids getting "worse", they're talking about trying to explain an uptick in things like suicide.
