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Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness (www.afterbabel.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why does this have to be a two sides thing? Is this underpinned by the culture war bullshit? I can't tell and I can't be assed to deep dive into every spat to untangle all the reading between the lines.

I'm surprised they found that there is no evidence that using these platforms is "rewiring" children’s brains. Wasn't it shown that social media companies base pretty much their entire technical decision making on psychologically conditioning not just children's brains but everyone who uses it? So the evidence now shows that these are benign after all? Zuckerberg and Dorsey and Huffman never had us trapped in infinite scroll fine tuning the knobs to keep us teetering on the brink? There's some discrepancy here.

I don't see what the divide is anyways. Social media is all about things like violence, structural discrimination, sexual abuse, substance abuse. It's odd the book author is saying these are non-issues. Seems like he is taking a rather shallow view.

Also teenagers have been using the broader definition of social media for decades.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I'm surprised they found that there is no evidence that using these platforms is "rewiring" children’s brains. Wasn't it shown that social media companies base pretty much their entire technical decision making on psychologically conditioning not just children's brains but everyone who uses it?

Not really. There's a difference between things being sticky and actually altering the brain.

Yeah, we spend more time on social media than we intend, but I also take longer to get up in the morning than I'd like. The big question is does this alter the rest of my behaviour, or my mental state, when I'm not doom scrolling or refusing to leave my duvet?

That's a much harder question to answer, and the evidence is a lot more mixed.