Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illness in teen girls

Re:Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illne... by 8f2ab37a-ed6c on Wednesday February 22, 2023 @03:26PM (#34902111)

I don't think we need to go as far as to point fingers at MeToo for this. We have an entire generation of young adults who hit puberty after smartphones, social media and dating apps became standard. They might have never had to ask someone out in person, and going to a bar to meet someone would be the last place they think of.

https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-...

To be fair I'm actually shocked by how high bars are on that chart, at least given my anecdotal experience.

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Re:Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illne... by AussieWog93 on Wednesday February 22, 2023 @03:35PM (#34902251)

Again, pure anecdata and possibly a lot of misatteibution, but 2017-ish seems to be some kind of inflection point.

Even back in 2015 or so, it seemed that the overwhelming majority of people met IRL, whereas just a few years later everyone was meeting online.

Might be a changing demographic thing (I was 22 in 2015, and 26 in 2019), but something definitely happened.

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Re:Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illne... by pessimizer on Wednesday February 22, 2023 @03:43PM (#34902400)

> We have an entire generation of young adults who hit puberty after smartphones

It's unfair to blame #metoo, but it isn't unfair to blame a modern version of PC that expresses itself as puritanism. This is the least sex-having generation of all time. They're afraid that saying the wrong thing to each other is genocide or rape, especially the wrong sexual thing.

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Re:Social media is a cause, not a correlate, of mental illne... by quacked on Wednesday February 22, 2023 @04:44PM (#34903342)

It's actually become more bimodal when it comes to approaching women, or at least this was accurate between 2013-2020: There are largely two groups of men--sexual outlaws and polite society. Sexual outlaws (star athletes, musicians, drug dealers, frat boys, etc.) are expected to behave outrageously and thus won't be overly chastised for making outrageous propositions, whereas an otherwise polite society member can be blasted for coming across as inappropriate in the wrong scenario. It doesn't necessarily line up with who's attractive and who's unattractive, either.

It reminds me of the Solzhenitsyn quote about knives. If a criminal is caught with a knife he doesn't know any better, it's his tradition. But if you're caught with a knife, this is a serious crime, and you must be harshly punished.

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