Rubbish. Nobody said that.
You just made a statement that kids are not impressionable, which is simply untrue
Then you tried to compare teens with old people which is absurd as both have problems with social media, but of a very different kind.
Do you have any evidence of such a correlation? âClearlyâ implies that you think it obvious, but these things all existed long before social media.
They were less publicised, perhaps, certainly more stigmatised, shameful, hidden secrets, but they were there nonetheless.
And in the context of this thread, at least kids now have been given the confidence to let these things out, to acknowledge them, to share them with others, so I think social media is able to work as a force for the good as well.
When I was a kid we had to bottle our feelings up and pretend that everything was fine; never did me any harm (twitch).
Edit: OK, a little browsing show lots of articles, some of them at least vaguely scientific, suggesting that there is indeed a correlation. But my following point still stands - although self-reporting of depression, suicidal thoughts etc. etc. are much higher than they used to be I do feel that much of this is because kids are encouraged to be more open about it than they used to be.
Youâre mixing up in one sentence a causal fact with an opinion. Itâs blindingly obvious for anyone with a teenager at home that social media is a massive risk and a risk that didnât exist before. Some kids / parents manage it better than others, but the risk is still there.
Not necessarily. They might have a feeling that something is off but usually need a confirmation? Whatever they canât discuss with you, theyâll discuss with their friends/colleagues or much worse - the internetâŚAnyway, some time ago it wasnât even conceivable to discuss about certain things with your parents so these generations have no idea how good they have it (from certain points of view, not so good from other povâs - I think their world is more complicated than ours at the same age)
1 Like
If that were the case youâd see a fall in cases of actual self harm.
The opposite is true.
1 Like
You are making an assumption about the increase in young people suicides.
It may have no correlation with sexual identity.
The rate due to that could still be going down but the rate for other reasons may be going up.
Teenagers, and younger, both female and male are committing suicide because they have been blackmailed online using compromising photos of them taken using subterfuge.
Children are also highly likely to be influenced by media - there was an increase in suicides during the promotion and release of the TV series â13 reasons whyâ which dealt with teenage suicide.
1 Like
No, thatâs not his point. The mini side discussion weâre having is whether social media amplifies the normal teenage uncertainties to a point where its dangerous
I was arguing that it does, some other people (ShirleyNot, Ace and Axa) argued that no, it doesnât. UM01 interjected with facts that indeed it does.
1 Like
I donât intend to imply correlation with sexual identity but itâs no surprise you draw that conclusion given my quote.
Iâd intended to quote the edit as my reply is on the broader context, and especially the role of antisocial media, just as I understand Aceâs post to be. gaburko is spot on.
I donât know if you can find any data that runs later than 2017 (the Norway study) or 2021 (the US one) because teen trends move pretty quickly.
Canât speak for Norwegian teens but the ones I know here hardly post anything on social media. Mostly they seem to use Whatsapp and Snapchat just to communicate within their own groups. None of them have any photos of themselves in their profile or on their feed.
They consume/share those stupid short reels quite a bit but mostly the focus seems to have shifted long ago to online gaming. Maybe in the 7 intervening years since the study things were different. Them teens is fickle.
2 Likes
Fair enough.
In my experience, over a few years now, online social media has given schoolyard bullies a new, much more effective way to bully others.
Unfortunately, all the parents and teachers I have talked to about it are not taking it seriously at all.
Iâm dealing with an episode this week and had to spend half the night up with one child who was physically shaking as he was terrified of going to school the next day because of a plan that some of his classmates had hatched and threatened him with.
He had already missed one day of school and has had to have medicines prescribed by a doctor for a non-mental condition exacerbated by the anxiety.
2 Likes
Those two are social media by definition.
2 Likes
Yes, I know but my point was that they use them just as a limited group communication tool.
1 Like
@ShirleyNot : You cannot possibly understand the issues involved.
If a child feels he needs to leave a group with his friends in it then effectively the bullies have won. There are usually other factors at play too.
Maybe you arenât aware of all the issues here but it would seem you are trivialising child bullying by assuming the solutions are easy and you are thinking about this from an adultâs point of view too.
It doesnât work like that and I donât really want to discuss this with you any more -or at all.
Itâs clear that social media can cause mental stress and anxiety for children - please discuss that and not my example.
1 Like
Well the issue isnât terribly clear but firstly, if they are his friends why are they bullying him and secondly, if they arenât bullying him directly why are his friends forwarding messages to people that apparently are bullying him?
Nobody is trivialising anything, just trying to make sense of it. Perhaps someone has a suggestion you havenât thought of yet?
Iâm truly sorry to hear that. We have a close family which went through a similar case and both parents were going nuts that they just couldnât help. More worryingly, in the beginning they were quite dismissive towards their daughters complaints which only made things worse.
@ShirleyNot , as I said above to someone else, do not fall into the trap of induction (oh, Iâm fine, thats means everyone else is fine). Be happy youâre not having to deal with such things. Hopefully never.
1 Like
Well, actually I was trying to understand the context a bit more but, hey.
1 Like
I was really only thinking about it in the context of this thread, i.e. yes, about gender identity and related issues, and making the point that the wider discussion and openness about it, on social media and elsewhere, probably outweighs any negative effects.
Yes, in more general terms thereâs lots of harmful stuff out there, but I did not think I needed to clarify that I wasnât opening up the discussion from the specific to the more general. Clearly I should have.
Yes, but this is a very risky way of looking at things. If you have CHF 1m, I have CHF 0, on average, we both have CHF 0.5m. So, overall, all is great, but in reality, things are fucked up.