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this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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Just to remind ya'll we had this moral panic over TV, Music even Books. Is "social media" bad? Yeah, it's bad for everyone. Should kids be on social media? Probably not. Using a phone doesn't melt your brain it's what you do on it. I think it should be obvious playing for example Minecraft on your phone is a much different form of interaction than watching TikTok is. We need to ignore these people lumping all forms of phone use together as that's objectively stupid.
This is true, but remember that this time there is data showing a significant rise in mental health issues among children and teenagers. That didn't happen with TV, music or books.
It is too easy to blame the mental health decline on smartphones and social media though. We should look at the bigger underlying structural problems that are squeezing joy, dreams and hope for the future from our youngest.
So as a recent child depression/mental health issues are so much more common because the world we were born into is very obviously getting worse. As a little Elementary schooler we actually had like snow. Like snow days each year were expected. I remember playing outside in the snow, coming inside to some nice hot chocolate and grilled cheese. Do I even need to tell you how it's changed? The snow we do get is more extreme (power goes out) and for shorter periods of time. This year I believe we got about a week of snow you could reasonably play in, however you wouldn't want to do that cause everyones power was out or it was a fuckn blizzard.
We've got nowhere to go hangout. Malls are closing (not that you could walk to em) parks are okay but you STILL cannot walk to my neighborhoods closest park cause A: there literally isn't sidewalks the whole way and B: you'd have to cross two busy roads. Basically in short the world we were born into wasn't designed with us in mind, instead it was designed for the car. Course that brings up the fact that we aren't getting drivers licenses as often as earlier generations. We can get deep into it but frankly I don't care this comment is already too long. Instead I'll just tell you my personal experience and choice to not get a license. It doesn't provide me any meaningful benefits. I'd lived life up till 16 needing to be chauffeured around by my parents or a friend's parents to go anywhere which like all kids was something I hated as I knew I was a burden. So, as you'd expect the internet became our meeting place. It avoided the burden of being chauffeured around. Once I was finally able to drive, well, where would I even go? A friend's house perhaps but well, we can just join a voice call and do it like that.
For all we know, it's because of the micro plastics inside us.
Covid has already been proven to be a contributor as well: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16966
Did we really need to prove a "once in a lifetime epidemic" decreased mental health?
There is a significant rose in mental health issues across the board. Could it be because we are more informed and mental health is less stigmatized? No. Could it be because we're telling the children (rightfully so) that the world is dying and that they need to reverse it themselves? No. Could it be because they've lived through 3 once in a lifetime recessions, and too many catastrophes to count? No it's....