Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness

Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by nicolas_t on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @05:20AM (#39988657)

One of the criteria I used when choosing my son's school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It's a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I've heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early.

I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.

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Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by srmarm on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @06:50AM (#39989233)

This sounds like a really good way of approaching it. From what I understand the argument against is clear but enforcing it in the face of peer pressure a little more complicated!

My nephews school allows basic 'dumb' phones but not smart phones which seems a fair compromise.

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Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by nicolas_t on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @09:24AM (#39990448)

Yes, the peer pressure is exactly the point. The older your child is, the more his peers will influence his behavior. I hope by the time he goes to middle school, I'll find a school with this kind of restrictions.

Dumb phones is definitely a smart compromise...

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Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by RGamma on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @06:10AM (#39988964)

> you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age

Elsagate videos got many tens (hundreds?) of millions of views at the time. If you know where to look you can see the cumulative engagement of babies in front of their tablets.

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Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by TeMPOraL on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @07:20AM (#39989407)

There's this old stat about video games, oft quoted a decade or more ago in context of Zynga, etc., that one of the largest game market is casual games, and the players are predominantly working-age women.

There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.

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Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by RcouF1uZ4gsC on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @07:55AM (#39989678)

> There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.

I also wonder what the breakdown of Netflix streaming hours is. I suspect a huge chunk of it is just toddlers and pre-schoolers watching the same episodes of Cocomelon over and over again.

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Re:Yes, Social Media Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage M... by RGamma on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @03:06PM (#39994549)

Edit: E.g. see this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs (What If 10 SPIDER-MAN in 1 HOUSE ??? || Hey All SuperHero , Go To Trainning Nerf Gun !!)

50M views with lovely comments such as "Ujhgjjgfgk", "ĤĎĎ hcl jdjdsewi10000000000", "nnnmkkk", etc.

This sort of shit gets billions of views...

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