Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsy | Hacker News Reader

I think it's somewhat important to ask why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys, and Haidt does not seem to really reflect on that. Social media in and of itself is really just an accelerant for the particular set of social expectations we stack on girls and women around appearance and how that relates to self-worth. Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human beings. What does it say about our society that we are not equipping girls and women in the same way?

I'm a little confused about Haidt's pearl-clutching in this instance, when he has elsewhere argued against "coddling" and bugaboos like "intersectionality" and "identity politics". While there is certainly much to criticize in these areas, you would think one solution to this issue would be to advance a society in which women are valued equally to men. Reading between the lines of his body of work, it appears Haidt wants to return to a type of mid-century traditionalism, where children and young people are both protected and challenged by traditional adult authority figures (who are conveniently mostly people like him and his collaborators). I'm not so sure that's the direction we should be going in, but heavy-handedly cutting off the exploration at "social media as cause" certainly precludes any further analysis of an underlying dynamic.

View on HN

It is a very interesting aspect of all this kind of discussion that when any problem exist for girls and women, the problem is described as being caused by an external force. When ever a problem exist for boys and men, the problem is described as an internal force within the boys and men themselves. As long I have seen those topics on HN it never fails to display this cultural view about men and women.

Men not graduating as much as women, must be mens fault for not studying enough. Women not earning the same as men, must be mens fault. Boys being isolated and depressed, must their video gameing and porn habits. Girls getting mental illness from social media, must be social expectations we stack on girls and women. Men getting worse outcomes in hospitals? Must be their behavior. Women getting worse outcomes in hospitals? Must be bias by doctors against women. Why are there more men in prisons? Must be testosterone. Why more women at home taking care of children? Must be cultural.

Any observable difference between men and women, can be describe as either being caused by external factors like social expectations or internal factors like behavior and hormones. Whenever I see researchers doing a comprehensive and deep study to explain why something is observed more in one gender than the other the usual answer is a tiny bit of biology and a huge (dominating) dose of culture. Such answer generally does not change base on gender, so if we are asking why social media is causing mental illness more in girls and boys, the answer is likely a tiny bit of biology and a huge dose of culture.

And it’s extremely patronizing to women and girls. It takes away their agency and centers their choices back onto men and society.

By contrast, if a man spends too much time playing video games, he’s seen as lacking discipline (something within his control), not as a victim of society or corporations (something outside of his control).

(1) You speak as if by “we” (or “society”), grandparent was exclusively referring to men. We (non-men, for example women) are a part of society, and some of us can be quite awful to each other; this, I expect, is common sense.

The obvious reading is that GP simply meant any cultural pressure for women to (over)value appearance (or conversely the lack of cultural immunity to such pressures), regardless of whether it comes from men or women, because it has always come from both (historically, and today).

So I fail to see how they are taking away agency from women and attributing it to men.

(2) If you live in the English-speaking parts of the West, our cultural awareness absolutely has an equivalent of this for men and boys. It’s sometimes called “toxic masculinity” (we can debate whether it’s the appropriate choice of words, but the awareness exists).

If a boy or a man man spends too much time playing video games, because he is repressing his emotions, some would certainly ask whether it’s because society has never taught him to process emotions and display vulnerability. (I had a roommate like this.)

And conversely, if a girl or woman spends too much time on social media (but stripped away from context), you’d bet “poor self-discipline” is on the list of hypotheses too in people’s minds, rightly or wrongly.

I think this is trying too hard to conjure bias _ex nihilio_, or at least lumping GP’s reasoning with what you’ve seen elsewhere.

(3) Part of what people do is influenced, or inspired, or sometimes constrained by culture. Admitting this does not take away agency from people.

i overall agree with this comment, but i do hear a lot about how “men’s role in society is changing”, and “why do we have so many un(der)employed men: because of the degradation of their role as exclusive breadwinner to a family” (i.e. fewer men having children, more women joining the workforce). those are external forces acting on men.

flipping both axes, there’s also the perception that women today “choose to” have fewer kids, and focus instead on self-directed fulfillment. that’s the internal framing you speak of, ignoring that the ability to have this choice meaningfully sits atop a bunch of external societal change over the last century.

so… i’m not really sure how these framings get selected for that perception you and i have in the end. is it just a tendency to “glass half-empty” it? maybe coupled with the incentives of outlets which most prominently discuss these things? i can’t say i’ve spoken much about these topics with a co-ed crowd IRL.

Generally when I see discussion around men's role in society, the way people phrase it is that the change is in how men themselves view their role in society. If I type your phrase ("men’s role in society is changing") into a search engine and pick the first result, it talks about how men define themselves. The change might be external, but the problem space and solution is framed exclusively as internal.

And yes there is a "glass half-empty" aspect to it, but the aspect I want to highlight is that problem and solutions are generally framed internal when men as a demographic is described. The suggested solution is not that society should do anything to help men, but rather than men must change themselves.

Naturally we can flip this. We can creatively frame it as an historically injustice that men was forced to work exclusive to provide for women who did not support themselves, and now men are free to choose to spend time on other things like say video games. A hostile society however looks down on this and thus physiologically harming those men who choose to do something else than perusing a carer as a breadwinner for a wife and family. The problem is with society and it is society where the change should occur.

The above is obviously an extreme way to frame it and exist only illustrate how the framing impacts the discussion. I generally do not see such explicit framing when reading scientific studies, through they often align to a degree with the cultural framing that the author inhabits. Meta studies in social science often highlight when multiple studies on the same subject have conflicting results because the framing is made in conflicting cultures.

Reflecting on that question means saying things that many people would find offensive. It's a lost cause to suggest that corporations implicitly understand something innate about female psychology and are taking advantage of it, and that's exactly why social media wins; the current politics you mentioned are a protective layer against taking meaningful action against the machine. If society was as concerned about the online activity of boys (news flash, your kid is likely watching hardcore porn every day), action would be more swift because there's no political manifold to dissuade elders from trying to save boys. This analogy is of course imperfect because parents are evidently not as concerned about boys.

> you would think one solution to this issue would be to advance a society in which women are valued equally to men.

There's no reason to believe such a society can exist any more than believing it's possible for a thing to be both dry and wet at the same time. It's dubious whether such a society is even desirable, and even if it is, it's been debated since time immemorial and isn't a practical way to address real world issues. You might as well ask why the world can't be more like Star Trek.

You think it would be dubious for a society to value men and women equally?

Men and women are not identical; inescapably, the mean value contributed by each will material differ in at least some contexts.

If a society equally values the contributions of men and women in all contexts, then, by definition, it must be using an inequitable metric to ascribe value to their contributions.

People aren't abstract mathematical concepts.

No two people are identical, and the range of difference between the two most extreme men almost certainly exceeds the range of difference between the most woman-like men and the most man-like women. Given the obvious differences between humans, nobody expects that every single person will contribute identical value, or should be valued identically.

However, there is a very, very, very long history of the inverse. In nearly every area of life, the activities and contributions most commonly fulfilled by women are under-valued, while the activities and contributions most commonly fulfilled by men are over-valued. This can be seen historically, as the primary occupants of careers shifted from one sex to the other. The early computer programmers (women) were treated as doing secretarial work, while modern computer programmers (mostly men) are compensated like rock stars. Conversely, early school teachers were highly respected and well-compensated when they were mostly men, and respect and compensation both dropped relative to other careers as teachers became more likely to be women.

These are systemic biases so ingrained that we don't think about them. People are lining up to respond to this comment to helpfully explain to me that those earlier programmers weren't the same, or that modern teachers are every bit as respected and well-compensated as they should be, or whatever.

The Venn diagram of all men and all women is not a circle, because of course there are differences. But there is much overlap between the two circles, and women are mostly not valued equally where the circles overlap, and the non-overlapping areas of each circle are valued completely differently as well.

When you see it, it's clear as day. When you don't or won't, it sounds silly. Feel free to dig in to the truth of it, or dismiss it as folklore.

Cherry-picked examples.

I could easily do the same and claim that men are undervalued. They are sacrificed in wars, make up the main portion of the homeless and they do the hardest and dirtiest work to provide the modern infrastructure of the world.

They have no support structure, can't fail and are constantly pissed on in culture and media.

Neither of us is telling the whole story.

At some level, humans are undervalued, seen only as grist for the mill, to be ground up and their value extracted, then discarded. Soldiers, homeless people, food service workers, child care workers, teachers, oil rig workers, and on and on and on. That is universal and a larger issue.

My point was to focus on the center of the venn diagram, where men and women do the same or similar jobs, especially jobs in which the balance has shifted over time, so that we can see that even in the midst of a general undervaluing of humans, separate from the extreme undervaluing that happens at the edges, women are undervalued even more than usual.

For some reason, many people find it hard to understand this.

No, it would mean not attributing innate value to maleness or femaleness, so to speak,, but to the relevant metrics.

One can still compute a mean afterward and potentially find that it differs, but that is no judgment of inherent value / not a causative factor for the value judgment being made.

And even then, there might sometimes be benefit to treating people more equally than they are on some metrics. Maximizing efficiency often means sacrificing resiliency, after all.

Given that there is clearly a difference in relative value produced across a non-trivial number of (often incomparable!) contexts, men and women cannot be equal, and the fiction that they are would not survive an afternoon spent watching the Olympics, or a brief visit to a maternity ward.

In my opinion, the only thing we should do with that information is accept that (1) men and women are different, (2) disparity of outcome may be the result of those differences, as opposed to systemic bias, and (3) insisting on equality of outcome will, invariably, produce grossly inequitable results in some contexts.

Alas, I see that we (you and I and great-grandparent) are talking past each other.

> ...that many people would find offensive. It's a lost cause to suggest that corporations implicitly understand something innate about female psychology...

You are wrong. Feminism as a broad social movement, and as an academic discipline, explicitly sought to question and attack the social structures and behaviors that were often insisted to be "innate" about female psychology and well being. Basically no one would find that offensive today. It's profoundly mainstream.

Many more people would find it offensive to imply that social media addiction, or that an increasing trend of suicidal ideation as a result of social media use, is somehow a result of femaleness tout-court. That's downright archaic.

Social media companies take advantage of the ways women are socialized into an incredible and unnecessary focus on their bodies by pouring rocket fuel on it.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with either of you. However, it seems you say

> You are wrong

But also:

> Many more people would find it offensive ... Is somehow a result of femaleness tout-court

But the person you're replying to seems to be saying that if there is some ingrained female-related cause, it couldn't be discussed today.

How does the second thing I quoted from you not directly agree with the comment you replied to?

Because the implication of their argument is biological causation, which is pure conjecture on their part.

On the other hand, the entire posted article goes at length to study the social impact of social media for young people and young girls in particular and routinely references the heightened effect of the hyper focus on bodies for young girls.

Their comment is just a naked assertion. Would people find it offensive? Well, if the entire basis for your point is a strawman, then yes. But as far as I can tell, there is no causal evidence between femaleness and social media addiction or suicidal ideation. The need to leap to biological causation is unwarranted and unsupported.

Acting like they're already agrieved is a rhetorical slight of hand without substance.

There’s a great deal of evidence for innate sex differences in average social behavior, and those differences would readily explain the disparate impact.

It’s hardly fair to call that a “leap”, especially given the comparatively limited body of evidence in support of your preferred hypothesis.

"But as far as I can tell, there is no causal evidence between femaleness and social media addiction or suicidal ideation"

And yet the charts look wildly different.

If blue spheres and red spheres both explode, but blue spheres explode 25% more often. Would you hypothesise, discuss and test whether or not it might be it's essential blueness or would you prefer to avoid the most obvious difference and shy away from discussing it? Does that sound reasonable to you? If it is blueness, you will arrive at an answer much faster if you're allowed to investigate and talk about that. Perhaps then they can explode with the same frequency.

It is fairly common that biological causation is suggested or suspected when dealing with a difference in outcomes along gender lines. Sex hormones as an factor for behavior is usual one of the first suspect, especially if the difference is found around or after puberty. There are historically a huge number of studies done on testosterone to demonstrate this leap done by both researcher and public opinion.

That said, much of those studies where later found to be mostly wrong, and testosterone tend to be a bad predictor and a very weak influence on behavior. It seems more that hormones have a stronger influence on shaping culture than it has on shaping behavior.

That’s just your opinion.

You're proving my point whether you realize it or not.

This article makes repeated references to the hyper focus on women's bodies on social media, and repeatedly points to them as a causal factor.

Please, present reputable published evidence for "innate" biological causation for the female sex in relation to the mental health effects of social media use and its impact on suicidal ideation. The absence of evidence is the not the proof of some grand conspiracy.

In fact, it would have been hard to provide a better proof of your point!

The reflexive rejection of any inmate gender differences can do just as much harm as good. For instance, if girls are innately predisposed to fall into harmful social media habits and feminism rejects and denounces any acknowledgement of it does that help girls? Or does it hurt them?

For instance, a greater tendency among girls to express aggression through social violence rather than physical violence is universal across all cultures. Few would say this is not an inmate difference, and it has obvious roots in sexual dimorphism. This is significant with respect to social media because you can't punch someone through a screen, but it amplifies the ability to carry out social violence. Group chats, and threads denouncing rivals are a very effective tool of social violence.

Failure to recognize this innate difference in how boys and girls express aggression could lead to platforms failing to recognize the importance of curtailing this behavior, leading to greater harm.

I can't imagine why anyone would find it offensive to believe that women should not be valued equally with men. Oh wait, right, because that's inherently offensive.

The world can be more like Star Trek, and might move in that direction a bit more quickly if there weren't so many people premature playing a victim before they try to undermine the effort.

> why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys

I agree that's an interesting question. I think it's that girls are (conditioned to be?) more sociable than boys. After a divorce, many more men find themselves friendless than women, because the mens' social networks were really their wives.

The stereotype that women gossip isn't wrong; women chatting about nonsense is simply maintaining social networks. Men maintain social connnections through team sports and work. I don't happen to believe it's "conditioned" - I think women are different from men, and behave differently. On the whole. (And for "women", read "girls and women")

So if women communicate verbally more than men, it's not surprising that women make greater use of social media.

The body-image thing obviously isn't about verbal communication, and I think it's a distinct phenomenon. I see a lot of young women in the street, with lots of exposed skin despite the wintery conditions; and with orange make-up applied with a trowel (they're always staring down at their fondle-slab). I don't know why young women want to look tacky, like a porn actress.

I think part of it is that for every teenage girl spending 5 hours a day on social media, there's a teenage boy spending 5 hours a day playing video games, often with other teenage boys. I'd guess that video games are a more positive way to socialize, because teenagers are cooperating and competing rather than comparing themselves to others on social media.

Yep. People seem to forget the pearl clutching in the 90s over boys playing violent video games.

If the media was to be believed, video games were inevitably going to raise a generation of men ready to shoot up schools at the slightest provocation. Lots of research later, we started finding the men who grew up playing multiplayer video games were more strategic and often made better leaders. The fact that overwatch has guns doesn’t actually matter much in practice. However, the experience of getting a bunch of random people to cooperate is a lifelong skill that carries over into lots of other areas of life.

Most of what I learned about working in teams, I learned from playing world of Warcraft in my early 20s. If you can run a successful raid every week with 40 strangers, working with a team in an office is easy.

No, we have a generation of men who love shooting up schools and each other.

Not exactly a “generation”, but you are onto something here - men (broadly speaking) do appear to be more susceptible to radicalization.

uhhhhh I don't think the video games are the reason but boys shooting up schools did turn out to be a big problem you know. So, idk, they were probably worried about the wrong thing but it seems they were right to be worried about that outcome.

Sure - and as an Australian I find America’s tolerance for school shootings utterly baffling.

Here in Australia we play all the same video games as American kids do, and we don’t have school shootings. The problem isn’t the video games.

But you do have football, sunshine, beer and Australian women which probably goes along way to resolving problems with young men

America has all those things in spades too.

The Christchurch shooter was an australian (to our eternal shame). But he shot up a school in New Zealand instead of in australia because it was easier to buy guns in NZ. (Was easier. They pushed through stricter gun controls after that incident).

Um. No. Assuming you read what he wrote, he stated clearly that he got it and did it there not because of convenience, but because it would cause NZ to clamp down on guns ( and serve as an example ). He was actually a successful terrorist, which is presumably why CNN asked everyone not to even think of looking at it, because it can corrupt you.

> tolerance for school shootings utterly baffling.

I hang out with fewer gun owners than many but I am from Tennessee. It is kind of like getting people to recognize the need to do something about climate change. Most everyone recognizes it as a problem now, but solutions are someone else's business. "The ability to affect the problem is upstream, what am I going to do about it? What am I supposed to do about schools, sell my gun and be without it when something crazy happens?" That is even before addressing that they can be fun, like a collectible or a sport.

The ideas tossed around are often regulations at the consumer level, and the societal momentum is thoroughly against those in general.

If an uncharacteristic law was introduced along the lines of, "no more new guns" then some in my area would begin manufacturing themselves. I already see cardboard signs advertising squirrel rifles.

I've lived in the USA and I believe you. I just find it unbelievably depressing that the "best country on earth" can't find a way to stop their own children getting shot by other children in government run schools. As far as I know, the USA is the only country in the world with this problem.

Climate change might be exactly the right metaphor. Despite widespread public support for action, the australian federal government is still doing very little about the problem. Its not a good look.

>I'd guess that video games are a more positive way to socialize, because teenagers are cooperating and competing rather than comparing themselves to others on social media.

And even if they were comparing themselves to others, the context of it would be in the video game, rather than what their real world circumstances are.

More like "some" video games.

On one end you have lads playing video games who turn out to be good managers/workers in tech. On the other end, you have socially stunted lads who gradually find themselves falling down the "incel" rabbit hole.

> Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human beings.

Before absconding boys from harm, maybe we should check twice on their health. They are often forgotten or their difficulties brushed off in studies. How are addictions progressing? Obesity maybe? Why are they all on 9Gag? Let’s check their level of racism and misogyny, it might be a proxy for self-esteem. Have right-wing groups gotten more expressive recently? Are we taking proper care of the boys?

Can we ensure, if we measure something where girls are particularly exposed, that we also measure an area where boys are particularly exposed, before assuming boys are exempt from harm.

Boys are for sure not exempt from harm, but the harm seems to be as a result of equity: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...

> “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”

Powerful stuff.

Quote in more context:

> Women are tiring of their stereotypical role as full-time therapist for emotionally distant men. They want a partner who is emotionally open and empathetic, the opposite of the age-old masculine ideal.

> “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”

I think it’s pretty clear that the harm isn’t caused by equity, but that the equity exposes the harm caused by other things.

Yeah fair, I obviously don't think equity is a bad thing, I just think a lot of men were taught to rely on inequity and now that it's being reduced, those men aren't adapting.

A bit disappointing seeing the implicit bias in that article. The thrust seems to basically be "women are fine, men are failing and need to do better". Some choice quotes:

> Women are tiring of their stereotypical role as full-time therapist for emotionally distant men

> “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”

> The same emotional deficits that hurt men in the dating pool also hamper them in forming meaningful friendships.

At first glance the article is even-handed, but reading closely you notice that not a single trait of women is described using negative terms, but men are described as needing women to be their therapists, as "not having more to give" women, and as having "emotional deficits."

This is basically an inversion of the ancient trope that women are defective men, and just as harmful.

Of course it's on the men to adjust, and that's what we see in most men overall. The ones who struggle to find relationships are the men who aren't adjusting. We should figure out why they're not adjusting, not ask the women to give back some of their hard-earned freedoms because some men can't handle it.

The inversion would be if the claim was that a trait of men is causing this maladjustment, but the claim is instead that men are misprioritizing an equal relationship with a woman in favor of career and unequal relationships that they're now struggling to find.

Also I dunno if you missed this quote, but it's firmly discussing actions women are taking that impact these single men:

> Heterosexual women are getting more choosy. Women “don’t want to marry down,” to form a long-term relationship to a man with less education and earnings than herself, said Ronald Levant, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and author of several books on masculinity.

The article also ended on a hopeful note, giving an example of a group of men who do prioritize relationships, with their Man of the Year trophy, saying literally:

> “We treat friendship as a luxury, especially men,” Ritter said. “It’s a necessity.”

Women can't all "marry up" unless you systematically disadvantage all women, such that for F1, there is a M1 who is of higher whatever (status, income, looks), and so on for F2 and M2, F3 and M3, and so on.

Given the stats on enrollment in colleges, on who is preferred for tenure track in academia, and so on and so forth, well ... that's just not gonna work out.

This is not a binary decision, there is a third choice of not marrying at all.

Correct! Which is in itself an interesting bit that also serves to make the "dating scene" (that feels too small to encapsulate the whole problem) fraught: men are, for want of a better term, thirstier than women are, on average, only extend that slang to far more than just sex. If this is true, and I think it is, this will only leave more men milling about, unmatched, which can lead to a better fulfillment of "marrying up" for women, at the cost of more men remaining unmarried.

Of course, nobody cares about men in and of themselves, so that's not really a problem.

It's amazing how easily you skim over the behavior that women don't marry down.

It's always been a selfish behavior void of love, but I suppose that one can find rationalization in needing stability and protection if one is to start a family.

Now, however, as women match earnings or even out-earn the typical guy, they still won't marry down. Which creates selection criteria of an "impossible man". Acceptably attractive, stable high earner, emotionally advanced (yeah, right).

Meanwhile, men do marry down. And none have an ever increasing list of demands. Just noticing the asymmetry here.

Anyway, men won't emotionally "improve" because that is a strictly female value assessment. We're not broken, we're just different. My girlfriend gives me a daily update of all the ups and downs and gossips in her dealing with colleagues at work. I do not give a shit about any of it, but will pretend to care.

Neither of us are broken, we're different. And that is fine.

> We should figure out why they're not adjusting, not ask the women to give back some of their hard-earned freedoms because some men can't handle it.

No one is asking women to stop having careers, or stop going to college. Rather, my point is that the article treats the women's perspective unquestioningly as reality — men aren't emotionally available enough, and aren't successful enough, and those are facts, not merely biased perspectives of a single gender.

I don't know how to fix this problem. Undoing a century of feminism is a non-starter. But you can't fix this by telling men to be better. They need the same kind of societal consideration and institutional support that women get.

> it's firmly discussing actions women are taking that impact these single men

Sure, it's stating that these are things women do. But the phrasing is neutral at worst. There's no implication that women wanting to "marry up" in a world where most men are now "lower" than them is an unreasonable desire.

> Of course it's on the men to adjust

Why? How? Even if men can somehow just become more emotionally available (assuming that the problem is on the mens' side and not womens' for expecting men to act like women), how do you suggest men fix issues like not being more academically successful as women, or not earning more than them?

Boiling all this down to a single question (I'm curious how you would answer): How can you possibly reconcile a world where men and women are equal, but women still only want to marry men that are older and more successful than them?

Exactly. So boys are hurting and the conclusion is: do better. We'll just add that to the ever growing list that defines Mr Perfect.

Imagine that in this particular article we'd say to teen girls: your mental health issues are imagined, just be sane and normal. Do better.

Wildly unacceptable, but perfectly normal to talk about men that way.

They can expect more, but it might not be all that reasonable.

Right now, single women are earning more than single men (and have greater home ownership). Yet most women would prefer than men earn more than they do. Put those two things together and you create this untenable situation where women desire only a fairly small fraction of men. And that's just from an economic perspective and what people will admit to right now, nevermind anything else.

>misogyny, it might be a proxy for self-esteem

Seems to me misandry would be a better proxy for self-esteem. I do know men who are very much misandrist. I'm not just talking about them "going woke" I'm talking about kids whose fathers abandoned them or whatever and they feel a lot of resentment when they look around and see this is a common story. As men collectively become more productive, more empathetic, less toxic, and all this stuff I only hear more and more people pleading that we ratchet up scrutiny of men to the point Gilette think's it's a good idea to run an ad directed by women about how men need to do better and do this and that wrong and just need to get their shit together [1].

Similarly, I would say that self-hating racism is a better proxy for self-esteem than racism in general. In fact this shit is out of control in Incel communities to the point they have terms like "currycels", "ricecels", etc. You know why they feel this way? Is it because they themselves are racist towards towards others? No it's generally because they look at dating site stats and see how women are racist towards them (in a highly specific context) and internalise the racism of others and hate themselves. Oddly I don't think I've EVER heard somebody suggest that women should be less racist towards men to improve men's self-esteem, even though I've seen such racism CRUSH men's self-esteem over and over.

I don't know I see the idea that the key towards self-esteem is holding people other than yourself in high esteem and think they're totally absurd on its face. If an Indian Man or Black Man or White Man or Asian Man doesn't like people like themselves, if they don't look up to proud Malcolm X like role models, their self-esteem is always going to be shit. Men are generally portrayed as either oppressor or oppressed, either way they have cause to feel bad about themselves.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI

I saw a video the other day which pointed out a troubling statistic: Universities today have more gender bias than they had in the 70s. But the gender bias has reversed - instead of men differentials succeeding more than women, men are now much less likely to graduate from university than women are.

I think it’s pretty awful having one gender succeed at the expense of another, whichever way around that goes. For society to be healthy we need everyone to thrive.

https://youtu.be/DBG1Wgg32Ok

Worse: Gender equilibrium in universities was reached in 1980, both in USA, France and probably other countries. Every effort we’ve made since then for women in a particular field, should have been met with an equal effort for men in another field.

I think this might be whataboutism. It’s clear to me the original poster was speaking exclusively on the social media aspect and the fact that social media does not have a similar causal effect of mental illness specifically on boys, and so I don’t know how addiction/obesity/etc contribute here. I agree there may be other effects on men, but it seems very clear here that the original poster was talking about social media specifically.

We should not accept topics which de facto exclude men.

Huh? The article is about how social media impacts the mental health of girls. They didn't study boys, why would we talk about boys without any data on them in the source?

It's overly inclusive to insist on talking about everything all the time, lest we leave someone out... We'll talk about the men, lots of people are talking about the men, but let's take a second to talk about how women are feeling, okay?

The answer of why is quite obvious to many people but no longer politically acceptable.

There is a large external pressure for studies to show that there are no differences between men and women while there is also demand for studies that show negative outcomes of women in comparison to men. The same problem happens again and again with these studies in that nothing explains the negative outcomes of women. Except one explanation that is instantly discarded for being socially untenable.

The intersectionalist looks at the studies and declares, "It must be something - let's keep looking!" while the sexist takes a look and nods.

Nobody is going to risk their careers or their funding when they can continue being paid to investigate other avenues of explanation. The suffering of people will continue until a more acceptable explanation is found.

And because I don't wish to speak between the lines: There are psychological and emotional differences between men and women. And, from all the humans I've known at least, women tend to give more of a shit about the opinions of other people than men give a shit about the opinions of other people. While the toxic negativity of social media impacts both genders I would honestly be shocked if it didn't impact women more if for no reason other than because they care more.

I have built my whole identity on not caring what people think of me, and of me not asking for anything from anyone.

It's lonely.

an earlier newsletter shows this distressing graph of teen suicides and, shocker, boys are doing terribly, a suicide rate at least three times more than girls, but the author seems to find the 34% delta less distressing. the data is unsettling, but the author doesn't remotely confront the question about why 2017 is a post-2010 maxima for both boys and girls. (which would probably change the boys delta to at least 60 percent and possibly undermine the premise that social media exclusively harms young women)

https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/i/101249738/increases-in-...

Recently an organization representing war news reporters was distressed by the rise in female reporters getting killed, 6 more than the year before.

The fact that 85% of killed reporters were men...ah, well.

Men are not doing alright. And our response to it is nothing at all or...do better.

"We" as in a total society or specifically as men do not stack any of these specific expectations on young girls. Young girls do this to each other. The influencers are girls and followed by girls. Instagram is girl territory and all the social gossip around it is girls.

They're not trying to win boys' approval, instead girls' approval.

Social ranking amidst young girls is natural behavior, what changed is that the limits of the physical world that kept it in check were removed, and now we see the fly-wheel effect.

Indeed, I am glad someone said this. The myopic GP analysis, characterizing young women as victims of murky cultural dynamics, is decades out of date at this point, and does not consider the complex real-world experiences and tremendous personal agency of these women. I think the supposed "mid-century traditionalists" have a keener appreciation of that agency.

To simplify the reasoning about this dynamic, I call it the duck lip effect.

At what point did "society" ask for duck lips? Where exactly did specifically men ask for it and actively select for it? If anything, they widely reject it. The expectation for duck lips does not exist, it was spontaneously fabricated by female influencers and that puts the idea and "expectation" in young girls' heads.

In other words, for as a long as we richly reward female influencers setting exactly the wrong example and being awful role models, this carries on.

I think if you put ten random women in a house for a week, you're going to get girl drama and pictures of duck lips. Just like if you put ten random men in a house for a week, you're going to get wrestling and videos of Jackass stunts.

> why this effect is more observable for girls than for boys

I'll take a stab at it:

1. During most of homo sapiens evolution as hunter gatherers, women were more likely to congregate in centralized groups while men hunted in small groups. It is documented that gossip is an integral activity among the women of a tribe moreso than their male counterparts. Without the inhibitions produced by in-person interaction, women gossiping on social media are more likely to produce negative interactions than their male counterparts who have a much lessened propensity to gossip.

2. From an evolutionary standpoint, a woman's reproductive fertility is closely associated with their appearance. Men are hardwired to pay close attention to a woman's looks whereas women are hardwired to care more about a man's ability to "protect and provide". Since social media promotes visibility of the most attractive women, this has the effect of reducing feelings of self-worth for the female users moreso than the male users.

> Social media in and of itself is really just an accelerant for the particular set of social expectations we stack on girls and women around appearance and how that relates to self-worth

This is an extremely reductive take.

The depressing part about social media isn't just about beauty, it's about success in general. Social media made it very easy to show the image of success without actually being successful.

If you're basing your understanding of reality on social media, you will think that life is extremely unfair to you. Apparently all your friends are always eating at expensive restaurants, driving luxury cars, going on fancy vacations, and getting flowers every day.

This leads to a weird state where pretty much everyone is faking their success, but thinks everybody else's success is real. Which, if you think about, can be quite depressing.

> Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human beings.

If we assume that there's really zero genetic involvement, and it's all just environment: If you treat girls like boys (have to achieve something to be valued, no inherent value), you'll get tougher girls and fewer issues with social media. But you'll also get more girls killing themselves and being violent towards others when they fail to achieve things that get them recognition.

Not sure if that's a huge improvement.

> What does it say about our society that we are not equipping girls and women in the same way?

The issue is with girls using social media, not with society somehow favoring boys and giving them all the great tools and what not. Boys are insulting each other in a shooter games or trolling people while girls are on social media. If one group hikes through a forest and another swims through a river and some of the latter drown, it's not the better equipment the hikers were given that kept them from drowning.

> While there is certainly much to criticize in these areas, you would think one solution to this issue would be to advance a society in which women are valued equally to men.

Women are valued moreso than men. Men are 10x more likely to die at work, have little to no access to domestic violence shelters, and if war comes, the only people who will be conscripted to potentially die will be men.

Women on average score higher than men on the dimension of neuroticism in big-5 personality tests (as well as anxiety-related dimensions in other tests). [1]

Couldn't the why be due to (at least in part) these innate gender differences?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

Reading between the lines of his body of work, it appears Haidt wants to return to a type of mid-century traditionalism, where children and young people are both protected and challenged by traditional adult authority figures (who are conveniently mostly people like him and his collaborators)

You raise a lot of worthwhile questions. It's certainly possible this piece isn't written in good faith, or that Haidt has become fixated on a particular theory and gone into some confirmation bias spiral. This might be part of a broader push to rein in 'big tech'. I know little to nothing about him as an individual, and have doubts about his theory here, but submitted it because it seems to have the position and traction required to become a political football with longer-term ramifications.

This isn't about appreciation. Platforms that boys more often frequent are also often less toxic. They tend to be more vulgar perhaps, but there is a difference. Although that differentiation seems to be too much for many as some even suggested we need to end anonymity. Not a good idea. Some platforms have distinct demographics that favor one gender or the other and their focus is different.

Even platforms like 4chan or reddit are less toxic in a way because they are more impersonal. That is a huge difference compared to social media where you need to present yourself and people compare themselves to each other, a main source of social pressure. One kind of platform is centered around topics, the other kind is centered around people. Twitter is perhaps a mix in between.

Do you believe the common users on a platform primarily consisting of boys do value other users more? In a way that might even be true, but it certainly isn't about the appreciation of those you communicate with.

Granted, some equations change for public figures. There is a reason there are PR agencies for that and that was even before social media.

Girls tend to impose expectations on each other. There isn't some "traditional authority" who does so. Who would that be exactly? The parents? For teenage girls?

> Social media in and of itself is really just an accelerant for the particular set of social expectations we stack on girls and women around appearance and how that relates to self-worth. Boys have more capacity to transcend social media's focus on image and beauty by finding other ways to be valued as human beings.

Sounds like one of those truisms that people love to repeat. Like all other instances, this one likely isn't grounded in anything concrete

I just think the gender norms for men are different. Traditionally, women are valued more for their beauty and (later) their capacity to raise children. Men are traditionally valued for their capacity to be bread winners. “Women are valued for what they are. Men are valued for what they do.”

I think both ideas can be pretty toxic to their respective genders. The problems just show up differently. Social media, online bullying and body shaming hurt girls more than boys. And video game addiction, desperation due to purposelessness and suicide seem to hurt men more than women.

Every human deserves to have a life in which they flourish. We should, as much as we can, work to tackle all of these problems.

> The problems just show up differently. Social media, online bullying and body shaming hurt girls more than boys. And video game addiction, desperation due to purposelessness and suicide seem to hurt men more than women.

Idk. I feel like this is just culture trying to make up stories for each gender to define what deviance is supposed to look like

It reminds me of how some people gravitate towards mbti types or enneagram even though they're obviously pseudoscience

Are gender norms different though? Yes. But I don't think they should be. And the first step to overcoming them is disregarding the stupid stories that sound true

> Idk. I feel like this is just culture trying to make up stories for each gender to define what deviance is supposed to look like

Regardless of how much the differences are cultural or innate, gender specific outcomes certainly show up in the data. Eg, this chart from the linked article:

https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8...

> the first step to overcoming them is disregarding the stupid stories that sound true

Yeah; it would help immensely if we could teach everybody that they're essentially healthy and worthy of love. Good, consistent parenting acts as an inoculation against these problems. When we're talking about the kids with the worst mental health outcomes, they're probably disproportionally poor, and more often than not come from single parent households. I suspect more support for struggling families would make more of a difference to the mental health outcomes of kids than somehow overcoming gender norms. It seems like a much more tractable solution, too.

Convincing regular people to not buy into the expectations of their own gender sounds like a borderline impossible task.

First paragraph: I agree

Second no, just because Haidt is not advocating in his bodies of work for feminism doesn't mean he is against a more equal society.

Not only that they should differentiate between kinds of media.

I suggest that TikTok may not be bad at all. My feed is cats and farm animals.

But girls are higher on 'neuroticism' than boys, and I suggest that's a strong correlating aspect. Whey they are higher on that I have no idea but they are.

Suicide rates are much higher for boys. Part of it could be that girls are more likely to respond 'yes' to the subjective questions being asked in the survey. It's always tricky to compare groups when we are discussing people's subjective experiences.

We know why. But few authors are going to come out and talk about that. They do not want to be perceived in the wrong way. It should be very obvious to anyone who has spent some time on social media and has thought critically about the topic.

Sometimes we should just accept that we don’t know why.

Honestly. Why.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com