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Comment by mmkos | Hacker News Reader

Great. I think few people have any doubts about social media being a net negative for young people.

> I think few people have any doubts about social media being a net negative for young people.

They should have doubts. This position is not supported by the currently available evidence[0][1][2]. The APA’s position paper makes this explicit: “Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.”

So long as focus remains on scapegoating ‘social media’ as the main cause of suffering, we will never solve the problem. The negative aspects of social media apply to young and old equally, and as far as I can tell are largely manifestations of deeper societal issues that have festered for generations.

[0] https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advi...

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8221420/

[2] https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/no-evidence-screen-time...

> The APA’s position paper makes this explicit: “Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.”

I think this is just saying that social media is still part of society, and so there is nothing inherently bad in using social media, which is just an extension of our offline lives. That doesn't mean it's not harmful - if the offline life is harmful, social media can amplify it.

> The negative aspects of social media apply to young and old equally

The APA paper is filled with warnings specifically about adolescent social media use:

> ...potential risks are likely to be greater in early adolescence — a period of greater biological, social, and psychological transitions...

> Parental monitoring... and developmentally appropriate limit-setting... is critical, especially in early adolescence.

> Evidence suggests that exposure to maladaptive behavior may promote similar behavior among vulnerable youth, and online social reinforcement of these behaviors may be related to increased risk for serious psychological symptoms, even after controlling for offline influences.

> Research demonstrates that adolescents’ exposure to online discrimination and hate predicts increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms, even after controlling for how much adolescents are exposed to similar experiences offline.

> Data indicate that technology use particularly within one hour of bedtime, and social media use in particular, is associated with sleep disruptions. Insufficient sleep is associated with disruptions to neurological development in adolescent brains, teens’ emotional functioning, and risk for suicide.

> Research suggests that using social media for social comparisons related to physical appearance... [is] related to poorer body image, disordered eating, and depressive symptoms, particularly among girls.

I suspect literally billions of people have some doubts about that.

Do they happen to fall in a certain age group?

Young people? I’d say people in general.

Perhaps that is part of the problem with these laws: we are playing a game of whack-a-mole instead of tackling the issue of mental health. While I personally avoid social media due to privacy concerns, I have encountered other adults my age who have expressed that they avoid social media for reasons related to mental health. While walking through my neighbourhood, it is clear that there are many people with mental health issues that society has all but abandoned. Then there are the people who have issues that they do not talk about and cannot be seen.

You are literally posting to social media right now.

Perhaps it is because I put a heavier emphasis on the word media, but I don't really classify HN as a social media site. It's more of a forum where people discuss submitted articles. The dynamics are entirely different.

For one thing, there is a lot less "attention seeking" behaviour. While YCombinator and associated companies use it as a promotional tool, it is muted. Some end users may use it to drive traffic to their blogs or show off their skills, but it usually comes off as humble and related to common interests (or maybe the blatant self-promoters rarely make it to the front page). Even though some of the people who frequent (or pop in) here are more recognizable, I doubt that anyone is trying to win a popularity contest.

I think stuff like that is important when considering the psychological impact of a site. For good or for ill, reality is reality. In contrast, social media sites tend to be driven by fantasy: fame and fortune for creators, endless exponential growth for investors, and all of that nonsense. That distortion of reality can be damaging for those who either seek to achieve it and for those who feel they will never measure up.

I don't find the broad stroke of "mental health" very useful in any discussions since it implies there is a baseline mentally healthy state. I think some people are able to handle social media and others aren't, and that's completely fine.

While I agree that mental health is an awfully broad stroke, I have seen few discussions that represent it as a baseline for a mentally healthy state. It is typically used when either self-harm or harm to others is involved.

> tackling the issue of mental health

What if reducing social media usage was a good way of tackling mental health issues?

That is for the individual to decide, just like any other malady.

The mental health issue was pre-empted by the advertisement-based business model that threw everything into an algorithmic blender to begin with, causing users to scroll more and more.

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