Not Every Study on Teen Depression and Social Media Is Bad. Only Most of Them | Hacker News Reader

Not Every Study on Teen Depression and Social Media Is Bad. Only Most of Them

reason.com

24 pointsoatmeal19 comments

Someone made a good point on a recent episode on the NYT's Hard Fork podcast. They were discussing how the social media scare is similar to the moral panic in the 90s and early 2000s over video games. And millions of kids played all those violent games relentlessly and we didn't collapse as a society.

However, one of the hosts pointed out a big difference today that wasn't the case back then. Those of us who played things like Mortal Kombat or GTA rolled our eyes at the supposed dangers. But with social media, lots of young people will openly state that they think it is harmful for their mental health. They will remove it from their devices and swear it off and many end up going back to it. So there is something obviously different now.

I think the biggest difference now is that for games like Mortal Combat, we knew they were stories, we knew they were a fantasy. But social media nowadays is very focused on being "real".

It's easy to separate fantasy from reality when we know that the characters on screen are fake. But when the "character" on the screen is your friend from high school posting a new photo with a rented Porsche in front of an AirBnb, talking about how successful they are, the line separating fantasy from reality starts to blur. I'll compare my fitness journey with my friends, but I'm not comparing myself to Kano, because I know Kano isn't real.

Consciously, we may know that the photo is edited and it's not real, but subconsciously, it's a face we recognize and we compare anyway, even if we don't mean to.

Yes, I think there might be something to that. Just recently my wife was watching an episode of the new Kardashians show. She made a comment like, "they are so pretty it's almost annoying" and I reminded her that this is TV magic. They don't look like that in real life. They are surrounded by makeup teams who are at the top of their craft. They have been under the knife more times than they can probably count with the best Beverly Hills surgeons money can buy and getting the absolute best and most careful work those doctors have ever done because they know how important it is they do a good job for such high profile people. Then of course there is the cameras and the lighting. It is the absolute brightest show you will see on TV. Every room they are in is lit so that not a single shadow can be seen. And then of course every bad angle, every bad shot, every frown they don't like, is cut. And they are always ready and prepped for the paparazzi because they usually purposely leak where they will be when they want to be filmed and photographed. Every girl in a America needs to remember this and get reminded of it frequently. Almost nothing on TV, almost nothing on social media, is real.

Exactly! One thing I do if I think a celebrity looks great but have a suspicion it's editing or some camera magic, I look up photos of them on Getty Images. Getty prohibits their news/event photos from being manipulated in any way. So you get to see every bit of dry skin, pimple, wrinkle, peach fuzz, and caked on makeup in excruciating detail.

I would argue that these services have very different purposes.

Video games are meant to be virtual games, social media is for connecting people (looking at it optimistically).

Don't you think social media has more openings for bad actors, or at least more apparent openings? I think these fears are valid based on that.

A lot of that depression seems to be root-caused to teens comparing themselves to their peers.

In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [1] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [2]. I have to wonder if it's related. A lot of teenagers are bombarded with images of their peers' perfectly healthy bodies that, quite simply, won't match what they see in the mirror. The solution? Ban mirrors.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...

They are comparing themselves with lies that their peers and the strangers/advertisers they consider to be their peers promote on social media, and it's not limited to body image.

Is banning mirrors really the solution to childhood obesity? I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

I suffer from depression and extremely low self esteem.

The problem with social media is that the entire world becomes a source of envy and comparison.

Yes, even with traditional media, I would look up to the few selected celebrities and feel inferior to them.

But now, it gets worse when I see that even the boy next door is better looking than I am, which makes me feel less than average and unworthy of being alive.

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