Anxious Generation – How Safetyism and Social Media Are Damaging the Kids | Hacker News Reader

Anxious Generation – How Safetyism and Social Media Are Damaging the Kids

matija.eu

119 pointsmunyak140 comments

> For example, nowadays, parents expect their children to be free to go and do groceries alone or play outside without adult supervision only at around the age of 10 to 12 (if not even higher).

Except, parents nowadays can get arrested for even less. [1]

[1] https://reason.com/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-his-...

> The kids are growing up playing with their phones rather than playing outside with other kids, learning the ropes of, well—life.

With suburbia and car centric infrastructure expanding, where are they even supposed to play?

States need to adopt safe harbor clauses for parents. A particular part of a town / city being unsafe for kids should not be seen as the parents' problem, but an indictment of bad city planning, services, and management.

EDIT: Also this story is insane. Who sees a neighbor kid playing in their yard and calls the police? I'm going to generalize here and speak about my fellow conservatives (because Florida is a solid red state at this point), but I've noticed many have little interest in actually living in a conservative way. In the 'olden days' people would just invite the kid in because -- you know -- you knew your neighbors and thought they were good people (or at least tolerable people). Nowadays, it seems everybody just ignores their neighbors and minds their own business. Not that it's only conservatives who do this (far from it; it seems systemic).

Imagine calling the police on your neighbor's kid!

EDIT 2: From the article: "The authorities claim he had no access to water or shelter". Again... can you imagine being a kid in your own neighborhood and not being fairly certain that, if you needed it, one of your neighbors would give you WATER? I know all the kids on my block and regularly invite them over to play with our kids if we're all outside, and have no compunction giving them water? For goodness' sake, the person phoning the police should have been arrested for not undertaking the most basic neighborly duties to a child.

> I'm going to generalize here and speak about my fellow conservatives

That's not generalizing because you don't know which category the person is from. What you did was fabricate a scapegoat using your imagination. There are plenty of valid reasons to let the police handle a legal dispute involving a child.

I’ve spoken about it in other threads, but I believe that a significant factor in the the weakening of neighborhood community is the need for people to move frequently (relative to the past) to have access to opportunity (whether it be education, employment, or something else). Each move means a total reset of social connections for the individual moving and a hole left behind in the community being moved out of. Eventually nobody in a neighborhood other than a handful of longtimers (likely retirees) knows each other and everybody is a stranger.

I think it would do an immense amount of good if employers in particular made greater efforts to allow employees to stay where they are, whether that be through small satellite offices or remote work.

Remote work has the potential to solve so many societal ills.

Do we actually know the circumstances here? I have family that work in CPS (in Utah) and it takes A LOT before kids will be removed and placed in foster care. Even then, the end goal of the foster service is to reunite the kids with their families. Right now, we just have an anonymous claim with a pinky promise from the author that this is real.

I'm thinking of the recent Ruby Franke incident. Were Ruby to describe the situation she might say her kids were outside for their health. However, dig in just a little and you find that she was severely abusing them for drinking water to try and force out the devil.

The reporters claim to have reviewed the actual case files in the article. I am always a little skeptical of these types of articles as well. But I do know firsthand (people I know directly and am familiar with the conditions and case) of cases of CPS way overrating, to both deliberately false reports and well intentioned reports that were mistaken.

> Except, parents nowadays can get arrested for even less.

I wonder how many parents read about that one example and then behave in a way that ignores the likely millions of cases every day of kids playing in their front yard alone where that didn't happen.

No parent wants to take an avoidable, even 1 in a million chance of losing custody of their kids because of doing a reasonable thing that someone could take out of context or make trouble for them about.

No parent wants to avoid the much higher risk of damaging their kids psychologically?

Yes because getting your child taken away is a more immediate visceral sort of injustice than (usually unknowingly) damaging their mental health. Most parents would have their kid fucked up than not at all even if the chances of losing your kid are lower. Idk ymmv but that’s what I’ve observed

It may really depend on the location. My neighborhood is nice ( with an occasional crazy person driving through either too fast or too loud ) and it does warm my crusty heart to see kids playing in the frontyards. I can absolutely understand that there are locations where that would not be sensible.

Part of the problem is the faster and wider communication of these kinds of incidents. I think people can intuitively understand, at lowest, 5%* odds. Anything below that is either 5% or impossible unless you're mathing it out.

Hearing about these kinds of tail-case incidents at least once or twice a year is probably enough to bump them up to the 5% category.

*I'm not committed to any specific number here. The relevant threshold is "high enough to consider when making decisions".

An interesting resource is IDC 203, which describes how the US intelligence community discusses probability. The table in paragraph 2a says something similar to what you are saying:

almost no chance / remote := 1%-5% very unlikely / highly improbable := 5%-20% etc...

It shouldn’t have happened at all.

This happens much more often than is reasonable.

> Debra Harrell, 46, let her 9-year-old daughter play outside alone at the park. The South Carolina child had a cellphone she could use to call her mother in case of emergency. On the girl’s third day alone at the park, someone asked her where her mother was. The girl said her mom was at work. (Harrell works at McDonald’s and didn’t want her daughter to have to sit inside the restaurant for hours on a beautiful summer day.) The result? Harrell was arrested for “unlawful conduct towards a child” and put in jail; her daughter is now in the custody of the department of social services.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/07/debra-harrell-arres...

The park in question was half a block from their home.

Debra Harrel made the terrible mistake of being: black, lower income, and living in the South while black and lower income.

Meanwhile you have gangs of roving kids in Philadelphia robbing and beating people up.

And you have elementary schoolers in NYC walking to and from school.

Really it comes down to location. And the people most likely to be roused by news stories are people living in very sheltered locations (e.g. no one in Chicago is taking the "Chiraq" propaganda seriously).

If you don't want to have busy bodies getting involved in your life, don't live in busy body shitholes (most of the south -- coincidentally where much of this stuff happens).

Yea, I was going to say, there's no way the police would have reacted that way if the mother wasn't black and working class. If she was a white professional, she would have been treated with kid gloves by everyone in the justice system. The busybody nosey neighbors would have of course still reported the kid no matter what race she was.

This story has a lot of details left out, and the cops may have very much been over reacting. But it is a pretty different scenario than the one previously cited. In this scenario, the girl was younger, and left at home/the park all day while the mother was away at work, for multiple days. (Rather than just being outside for a couple of hours once). It also is not clear what other conditions may have been present that may have contributed to the outcome.

I very much agree that helicopter parenting and snobby neighbors are a major issue. Just that it is hard to judge individual situations without all the facts.

I grew up in car-centric suburbia. I played outside everyday. Rode around on my bike with my friends. We'd play wall-ball, stick ball, street hockey. Hang out at the neighborhood pool. Make bike jumps out of stuff. Play in the park. The problem is not having the imagination to make something out of not much. And today suburbia has many more parks and resources. Eg. We never had a skatepark. We'd skate in parking lots or on shoddily homebuilt ramps. But now there are 3 in biking distance from me.

Right, stereotypical suburbia is actually pretty good for walking and biking around, hanging out at the park, etc.

What's not so good is "rural" suburbia, where every road is either a stroad or a country through-road with no shoulder and 35+ MPH traffic.

Equally bad is "urban-ish" suburbia where you have high density housing neighborhoods with few parks or other amenities, sliced up by stroads and through-roads.

  >> I grew up in car-centric suburbia. I [ed: did things in parks, streets that were safe to play in, places without risk of acquiring an arrest record].

> Right, stereotypical suburbia is actually pretty good for walking and biking around, hanging out at the park, etc...What's not so good is "rural" suburbia [ed: neighborhoods built in recent generations]

My generation had cool places to play. We had streets without heightened risk of dying. We had countless places to go without worrying about life-changing arrest records (when minor transgressions were handled and then fully forgotten).

My kids generation did not have those things.

In the face of this, modern adults seem divided into two camps:

1) Blaming kids for having their development world wiped out and

2) Taking away the few tools kids have - for coping with having their development world wiped out.

>> The problem is not having the imagination to make something out of not much.

I have over 20 years in scout and youth leadership, orgs full of of near-professionals at imagining stuff for kids.

We thought a lot about our own childhood development space - our daily hours of safe [from cars,karens,cops], adult-free time.

And we continually examined kids options for the same.

Skipping to the end: Modern kids' options are so limited it rounds down to nothing.

I saw your other message in this thread. Life changing arrests? Are we discussing the same topic? My previous statement stands. There are definitely more parks geared towards kids in suburbia today vs. 30-40 years ago.

> Life changing arrests?

Rentals and jobs require criminal background checks. Being denied work and a place to live is a fairly solid example of having your life changed.

This is a thing that is trivially understood and typically doesn't need pointing out.

It one of the stronger examples of how the world is ever changing in ways that make meaningful redemption more+more impossible.

The modern condition is that single transgressions are subject to ceaseless punishment thru sharply degraded lives.

> There are definitely more parks geared towards kids in suburbia today vs. 30-40 years ago.

And more houses built too far to be within casual walking distance from them.

There's also the thing where one reachable park is a poor replacement for the ~360° of direction I (all of us) could set out in, reaching hundreds of possible destinations. Most of that travel had low risk of adult interference. Most of those options were available to us kids, beginning at a young age.

All of that was unavailable to my kids and their generation.

Laws may be a factor but more likely infrastructure (i.e. lack of accessible third places) is much more important.

In my car centric suburb we played road hockey on our driveway and road our bikes to the park, the high school, and eventually to Tim Hortons or McDonald’s. I loved my childhood.

I don’t really understood how we ended up at the consensus that low-traffic cookie cutter suburbs with big yards are a bad environment for kids to grow up in. The reason kids aren’t being socialized correctly these days has nothing to do with suburbs and everything to do with the dopamine dispensing supercomputers they’re handed at age 0.

>Kids also become overprotected in other ways, such as not hearing other views or not being able to handle opposing views. No wonder academia is nowadays the exact opposite of free speech and the scientific method.

I wonder how much the scientific method went into coming to that conclusion.

Also if anything we are way too exposed to other people's views. Before you could speak to someone random and there was a much higher chance that their opinions were unique because they weren't the next person who binges on r/all. We had many more forums and less recommendation algorithms driving what we consume. Now you overhear people talking about something you just saw the other day online in public all the time.

It is similar to how globalisation is making everywhere feel the same whereas in the past people had completely distinct cultures from one country to the next.

Agreed that the argument "overprotection leads to lack of free speech in academia" is tenuous.

That said, I do wonder if we all _are_ being protected from opposing views these days. Like, we come across the opposing views but usually in a filtered / characature form on Social Media/Fox News/MSNBC. It's actually kinda hard to find stuff without spin in my experience.

EDIT

My hypothesis is that's it's just cheaper to create speculative / opinion based journalism rather than real investigation. Since the former gets enough clicks, there's not a strong financial reason to create good journalism.

It's always been hard to find things without spin. The only difference now is the range of different spin styles available. Every niche worldview has an online community.

And then we've come half-cycle into the exact opposite fact from the one on the post that created this thread. All it too was 3 comments.

I wonder what is really happening, because both statements sound true to me.

Among liberal faculty 35 and under, only 23% indicated that shouting down a speaker is never acceptable, 43% said the same for blocking entry, and 64% for using violence to stop a campus speech.

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/academic-mind-2022-wh...

Look at Figure 3, which covers all faculty (liberal and conservative). The shift towards illiberalism and less tolerance towards speech is absolutely visible in generational cohorts, and the under-35 cohort is the most supportive of illiberal measures. Students are even more supportive of illiberal measures than young faculty.

Are we assuming that older academics are more tolerant to being shouted down because older academia tolerated shouting more? It may just be that younger academics have always been less ok with dramatics on campus. We need to compare this to the same survey done generations ago.

I think you may have read the parent's statistics backwards. Their point (correct or incorrect) was that younger academics are more accepting of the suppression of speech.

This data does not indicate a “shift”, since it’s a point in time and we’d need historical data to claim there’s a shift. If the argument is about a “generational shift” then you’d need data going back decades at least.

> It is similar to how globalisation is making everywhere feel the same whereas in the past people had completely distinct cultures from one country to the next.

Huhu. Yet US Tik-Tokers travelling in Europe for holidays are losing their collective marbles about how coffee shops aren't opened 24/7

https://www.tiktok.com/@jackknightley/video/7373645420318248...

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tourists-tiktok-drink-wat...

That's a pretty small difference though. You might have similar differences between states within the US.

Yeah, I admit my comment was as shallow ^^.

Have you followed some of the scandals at Harvard and Yale lately? Or do do you think they are just aberrations? Are you aware that college students are claiming they are being "assaulted" by hearing different views?

The point about the parks rings so true to me. We have a playground near us that was built in the 50s-ish and the slide is probably 12-15ft high, with just a ladder. The swings are about the same height and you can swing pretty high. Honestly, even as an adult it's a bit thrilling to go down the slide. You can imagine what it must be for kids.

Meanwhile, the brand new park near my parents: the slides top out at like 6 feet. The swings are made so they don't swing high. There's absolutely zero risk of falling. No monkey bars, etc.

Very sad

Heh, the park they just built near me has a pretty tall slide, but there's a series of platforms in an enclosed structure you use to ascend it, so you can't just fall off a ladder. Kids are thankfully still kids though, and every now and then some kid climbs the outer structure and gets stuck.

The smaller slides are big tubes, and to discourage kids climbing on top of the tube, they installed these big shield wall things... which make them even more fun to climb.

The really stupid thing is that they make toddler swings (with basket seats) lower than normal swings. Why?? Do these people not understand physics? How is it that professional swing manufacturers have never actually pushed a toddler on a swing??

I remember an article posted here years ago, there is an optimal amount of danger for playgrounds.

I wonder how much of it is "think of the children!" and how much is "think of the litigation!"

There’s good reasons, spinal and head trauma.

I mean as a society we have to choose between head trauma and suicide / stunted growth. That's a choice we make.

This is the same zero-tolerance idiocy that made the COVID response so messy with so many unintended consequences. Policy is about balance, and realizing nothing is perfect.

Whatever man, go make stuff up and believe whatever you want.

I totally agree.

I have seen the changes working with children for over 20 years.

The mass media have a huge impact on parent's over protection of their children.

The media claims, which are untrue, that we live in a society with a rapist, a child abductor and paedophile in every street will no doubtedly have a chilling effect on parenting.

Schools also play a massive role in this by perpetuating this myth.

Every school in Surrey UK where I live have huge 8-10 feet high fences all around the school to prevent unwanted innocent passersby looking at the children playing and more scarily, to prevent those rapists, child abductors and paedophiles living in every street from entering the school grounds.

Children are living in prisons, constantly monitored by CCTV.

The panopticon designs of the buildings and environment.

What does this say to the children living in this protected environment?

It says; this is a very frightening place to be, there are dangerous predators who might abduct you.

No wonder then that children are presenting with acute anxiety disorders.

This is most probably why parents allow their children to have carte blache when it comes to internet access.

When I was a child in the 60's I roamed the streets from morning until night. I went home when I got hungry. Most children I knew had the same experience.

Are there more paedophiles living in the world today compared to 100 years ago? I doubt it.

One very strange phenomenon is that 95% of all child abuse happens in the family home by close family members and not by some stranger lurking in the shadows.

Look at the sex offender registry in your area

I can't, and that's a good thing.

The US having criminal records that can be accessed by anyone is very strange, and something that no other first-world country (that I know of) does to this extent. What purpose does it serve? To absolutely guarantee that people who already served their punishment can never re-integrate into society? To act as Google Search for socially acceptable murder targets for anyone who's inclined?

Were Americans actually at a greater danger before the internet because they lacked this information?

> What purpose does it serve? To absolutely guarantee that people who already served their punishment can never re-integrate into society?

That's exactly the purpose. I don't believe the average US voter really believes in rehabilitation and allowing prisoners to re-integrate into society. There are lots of ways that people are punished continuously after their prison sentences are over. Employers can discriminate against former prisoners when hiring them, landlords can refuse to rent them a home, and in many states, barriers are also in place that make it more difficult for ex-offenders to obtain driver’s licenses, to register to vote and to gain access to other public services like healthcare and education.

Similar laws were passed in my country not so long ago. I followed the debate, so I know what was the purpose.

It was passed by a populist party.

> One very strange phenomenon is that 95% of all child abuse happens in the family home by close family members and not by some stranger lurking in the shadows.

It's not strange at all. In fact, it applies to almost every kind of abuse. Adult or child, you're far more likely to be abused/kidnapped/hurt/killed by someone you know. Most such crimes arise precisely because of that personal connection. That's not a pretty narrative, however. "Serial" criminals are extremely overemphasized, and people seem to be far more afraid of even a hypothetical possibility of being hurt by one, and not the more likely scenario.

not to disagree in any meaningful way, but

> Are there more paedophiles living in the world today compared to 100 years ago? I doubt it.

world population has quadrupled (?) in that time. either the percentage has gone way down or the amount has gone up

> One of these forces is unfettered access to social media.

I think we should reframe this to make it a bit more clear who the enemy is: We're allowing ad companies unfettered access to our kids.

It's not communicating with their friends that's a problem, it's using a medium that is incentivized to encourage poor dopamine hygiene.

These platforms are designed to harm their users because unhealthy users are more profitable than healthy users.

Too many peoples' salaries here depend on them not understanding that. The most prestigious jobs here are often considered to be FAANG, two of which are the biggest ad companies on the planet. It's just depressing really.

There are others that wouldn't take a FAANG job on principle. We may not be a majority, but there are more of us here than there are anywhere else.

Ads aren't the problem. Ad companies go out of their way to ensure their ads don't exceed the cultural average in terms of content and messaging. The problem with social media is the content kids are being fed. Communicating with their friends isn't the problem, its that they are consuming content not just from their friends, and their friends are also being influenced by content outside of their social bubble. It's the wide connectivity and the foreign ideologies that come with it.

I think it's more specific than that. You're right that the advertiser using the platform to target an ad isn't exclusively problematic. Also problematic is the person who uses the platform in a targeted way to shape the global narrative according to some agenda they have. There's something antisocial about seeking influence over people who don't know you.

In some sense perhaps the attention economy that arises from this scenario is inescapable. But we have a lot of gray area between whether we make it something to be encouraged or whether we make it something to be mitigated.

If I had kids, I'd rather they use social media that aims to connect people with their friends without giving anyone a megaphone or a lever to influence the big picture narratives in flux at any given moment. As far as I'm aware, such media are in short supply. And as software folk it is we who should be doing the supplying.

One of many factors. Another is the dissolution of community and intimate time spent with other people (especially outside one's demographic) leading to what is basically insanity: thoughts and behaviors with no external "sanity check" or stop-gap (like an older more mature person mentoring a younger one to correct maladaptive thoughts and behaviors or even to just protect them from the onslaught of bad-faith actors).

Those older are also to blame for not taking a greater part in preventing this; but seeing as it's so widespread, there are most likely more systemic, societal-wide issues at play.

It’s called everyone not wanting to risk being sued.

or getting shot, or accidentally allowing a crazy person into your life

I am trying now to think of a single decision I made differently because I was worried about being sued and I am coming up empty.

I'm also trying to think of anyone I know that was in fact sued and I am also coming up empty.

decline of third spaces due to suburbanization, urban decay, and decline of religious participation.

Of course, it's going to get much much worse due to COVID. I wouldn't be surprised if the change in death rate due to the COVID lockdowns (which drives kids to screens to an even greater degree than anything here) dwarves the number of seniors lost to COVID itself.

At the end of the day, I think time will vindicate the anti-lockdowners and indict those calling for strict lockdowns. It's a major social contagion, and I don't think one we can easily stop.

Lockdowns have completely stunted the emotional and social growth of the young -- making worse the effects of constant connectivity to the internet.

Children have always been rowdy, and some would say lacking in manners, but they were always at the very least somewhat connected to their environment and the people that inhabit them.

But this is true for everyone -- like we've all forgotten how to get along and atleast pretend to live in a society.

So Orange County is going to have more emotionally and socially developed youth compared to LA, in a measurable way? I don't think so.

What's the point in using a specific, local example to discredit a generalized, global statement?

N.B. These drive-by quips go against the ethos of HN.

Asia is fully of third places still and they have all of the problems we do, and in some cases (birth rates) it’s far worse!

Yes, I don't think third places would be a fix -- only a band-aid.

The problem is much deeper. Most likely the atomization and disintegration of human relationships; of which, I think globalism is a prime cause.

I'm not talking about birth rates. I'm talking about anxiety over children playing outside.

Japan has the Hikikomori. China has problems. So does Russia. It's all over.

"there are most likely more systemic, societal-wide issues at play."

One might even use the word "structural".

"No wonder academia is nowadays the exact opposite of free speech and the scientific method."

I was interested by what I was reading until I came across this sentence which really put me off. I doubt that academia is the opposite of free speech and the scientific method. I am sure there is good criticism to be said about academia in your country but such broad statements serve no purpose and only signal ideology.

There IS a movement countering this trend:

https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-free-range-parenting-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting

As a parent, I have some mixed feelings about this. I absolutely want my kid to be independent and self-reliant ( and so far, unfortunately, I seem to be getting my wish ), but a lot depends on the kid you have. For example, mine is way too trusting towards strangers ( the way I used to be I suppose ) so I need to correct for that.

As for school and academia, doesn't it ( with exceptions in actual science ) select for conformity and obedience? It was already pretty bad when I finishing my MBA so I have no idea how bad it has gotten.

> mine is way too trusting towards strangers ( the way I used to be I suppose ) so I need to correct for that.

Why does it need to be corrected? Most people are decent and trustworthy. Odds of something nefarious happening are extremely low.

I will paraphrase a truism: statistics are irrelevant to the affected individual. Looking back at my own childhood, I recognize that things could have turned out very differently partially because I was fairly free range.

But lets say that I buy that world-view ( I don't ). How would you define odds of something nefarious happening? I am asking as we are already experiencing a heavy dose of 'do not trust your eyes and ears -- everything is awesome.. on paper'.

I might be setting you up a bit, but I am genuinely curious how you perceive the current situation.

Don't panic over that! Panic over this!

Climate change is your fault for placing the thing into blue bin instead of the gray bin!

i'm glad research and publications like these are coming out, and they only seem to be getting more popular/picked up by the media (Podcast Center for Humane Technology?)

is there going to be such an increase in momentum here that we actually see a change in 5-10 years? if younger millenials and now gen z are the ones taking the brunt of the impact, and are now becoming more aware of it, surely the societal/political movements will continue to gather pace.

is it just a matter of how well the social media companies can manipulate politicians/general populations perceptions of their own lives to prevent any kind of change?

to me a huge shift feels crucial and inevitable, but i know this perspective isn't common amongst my friends, especially those out of tech

I'm critical of Jonathan Haidt for a few reasons:

1. He's presenting himself as an expert on a topic far from his research expertise. His background per Wikipedia: "Haidt's main scientific contributions come from the psychological field of moral foundations theory, which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logic and reason." This has nothing to do with developmental and clinical psychology/psychiatry. He's way out of his depth here.

2. He's part of the "intellectual dark web", a group of people who seek out fame with a particular audience niche, and prioritize that over truth.

3. I feel he's trying to please the audience and get out bestsellers, making the same mistakes he accuses others of making, e.g. lack of scientific rigor/open mindedness. Example: maybe Smartphones aren't that bad. Sure, they have a big impact, but it could be positive and negative. To make the book a bestseller, it pays to focus on the negatives.

the evidence he cites is weak. it goes back only 12 years is not long enough to establish causality

But he is presenting his arguments based on research data, not just pulling stuff out of nowhere. I have the book and started reading it, so far it doesn’t seem farfetched or made up at all, he does cite his sources.

Is he though? I haven't read the book, but the blog provides very bad arguments based on fallacies. Maybe it misrepresents the book. I don't know.

But it's clear that this is not Prof Haidt's topic of expertise as a scientist. In scientific questions I would want a review on the question of impact of social media on mental health to be done by an expert on teen mental health. Not a socially conservative moral philosopher turned bestseller popsci author.

Of all its "members", Jon Haidt was the least voluntarily grouped in with the rest of the IDW. If he was ever a member -- not that that should be damning -- it wouldve been nearly a decade ago. The IDW has not been relevant for half a decadd. He's also a bog standard Progressive politically.

Also, his focus is on human social relationships and how they affect society. The article is well within his realm of experise. You are just attacking a man dedicated to promoting peace and well being in personal and intrasocietal relationships because you clearly have a political axe to grind -- and you dont even have the right target.

Are you sure we are talking about the same book? The subtitle is "How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness"

The people who diagnose, treat and study mental illness are psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. Haidt is neither. Epidemics are studied by epidemiologists.

He's a moral/social psychologist. Sure he can talk about social relations and peer pressure.

Whether or not he promotes peace and well being has no bearing on the scientific merit of his claims.

Going back a few generations there were similar panics over books, radio, tv, video games, the internet and now social media.

You can sort of ask yourself this question on the 'tech' side of things. How often do you use reddit or hacker news? These sites are MVPs for information addiction.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-addicted-t...

Wikipedia should be taken with a huge grain of salt when it comes to even slightly controversial topics.

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/

https://slate.com/technology/2020/06/wikipedia-george-floyd-...

Are you suggesting that Haidt is in fact an expert on youth mental health? What do you base this conclusion on? Him having written a bestseller?

While you are right that Wikipedia can be biased, I'm surprised you bring this up in this context.

It's not hard to objectively evaluate a professors research expertise. You look at the scientific papers they have authored.

That's about as far from a bias-prone topic as it gets. I get maths is even less prone to political bias.

I am interested in how scientists can isolate the increase in mental health problems from the more sophisticated diagnoses that we have now.

How do we know there is more mental health problems (a “bad” thing) vs more mental health problems are diagnosed and treated (a “good” thing)?

What do you mean by "more sophisticated diagnoses"?

I just started reading the book this morning. I go to Hacker News and this is the top post. Either I have a third eye, or this is nothing more than a coincidence. This is also my first comment here, so apologies if I accidentally break a site rule.

You can take a guess on the average frequency that this currently #8 bestselling book on Amazon is getting picked up by an HN reader.

> In those days, you'd be spending too much time in front of your screen, and the worst that could happen was you'd worsen your eyesight, end up somewhat socially inept, or even get a job in the industry once you grew up.

Social ineptness of nerds is not because they spend time in front of computers. It's much more the other way round: those with a predisposition to ineptitude like computers.

Is there any _scientific_ evidence rather than folklore/gut feeling backing up the sentence above?

I love academics complaining about lack of free speech while exercising said right. They seem to confuse right to free speech with freedom from criticism.

Academics? Almost all of the free speech complaints I see these days come from the right, from people who would feel insulted if you called them an academic.

How do you define academic? For me it's essentially a synonym of a research scientist at a university. And that definition clearly fits Haidt.

>Jonathan David Haidt is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business.

Also, the title makes it obvious that he is no expert on mental illness. He's a business school professor.

Both are probably creating an anti-synergy in this scenario.

The person that's socially inept will likely spend more time alone/with their PC then if this outlet didn't exist, and that will inevitable further hamper their social skills

Developing social skills just takes motivation and practice. This is well established. For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28054797/

It's not on them and perhaps not even on the parents. A lot of this may be from others. An example is a recent case in GGP of a coyote biting a child. Animal control culled three coyotes. Seems reasonable to me. Mankind has defended its children from the wild for millennia. Our children have explored and we've defended them when they stepped into danger.

But there are certainly those who believe that children should not explore bushes in a park https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1dt16au/well_...

If it were 1900 they'd blame newspapers for "damaging" kids. If it were 1930 they'd blame radio. If it were 1950 it'd be television. If it were 1980 it'd be video games. What all of these have in common is being completely bogus.

If it were 400BCE they'd blame writing

    this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness
    in the learners' souls, because they will not use
    their memories; they will trust to the external written
    characters and not remember of themselves

- Plato, quoting Socrates

I don't think this is quite the same.

Newspapers were largely uninteresting to kids, and if anything would have helped literacy at that time which was still a struggle.

Early radio and TVs were often family bonding time, as households had only one.

Video games kickstarted computer literacy for an entire generation.

This is a targeted exploitation-driven market now that has been so much more refined by technology that it's beyond addictive. It's also targeted in a way none of those other things could have been to a specific individual to double down on that.

>beyond addictive

No, it's not addictive. That word has a meaning and it does not apply to this context. The DSM V has addressed the "social media" and "video game" concepts re: addiction with committees multiple times and every time it's very clear from the science: there is no addiction. And no, personal anecdotes do not overturn this. You might use the word "disorder" like the DSM V's grandfathered in "gambling disorder". But it is not an addiction.

The idea of "addiction" in the context of stimuli from screens and speakers is a meme with no more basis than slenderman. Huge popular awareness but completely made up.

"kids are overcoddled yet exposed to potentially harmful content with smartphones"

which is it then?

Overcoddled in the physical world.

it's more like 'kids should do and believe what i want them to' if he were being honest. the smartphone is irrelevant

That seems like the opposite of what he's suggesting? I think he's saying that, in the physical world at least, kids should do and believe whatever they want, independently from their parents.

My god seeing “kids are X these days” narrative on HN as anything but as an object of ridicule is upsetting

I'm not hiding anything by saying I'm on the left of the political spectrum. There is always a danger when criticizing aspects of capitalism that I don't understand capitalism or hate America, or want to live under communism. Anyway...

It irks me endlessly that many of the complaints about how the world is turning to crap has, at its root, capitalism. You think movies and TV are peddling filth? It sells. Think social media is corrupting our minds with disinformation? They are making lots of money at it. The news is constantly pushing stories about you you and/or your kids are in peril.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying we need to get rid of capitalism. My point is look at the root causes and incentives, rather than blaming weak-minded liberals for having an agenda to ruin the country.

You’re saying the purpose of a system is what it does. We can all agree to that. Now what?

You turned what I said into a mindless tautology. That isn't advancing the conversation. Can you restate your point more constructively such that I can respond to it?

People's preferences are the root, not the mechanism used to satisfy them.

I also remember reading somewhere the frequency of mass shootings pre-2008-2010 decreased dramatically with the rise of social media. Right around the time Facebook use became ubiquitous. I was trying to find the source, but couldn't. I think it was a graph from Wikipedia.

one thing the author touches on that I'm curious about-- > academia is nowadays the exact opposite of free speech and the scientific method

I always see this bandied about as axiomatic, but I'm really curious if: a. this pertains outside of "softer" subjects and and the liberal arts b. this isn't a case of overblown media coverage of the occasional "how dare you say XYZ".

I'm a little skeptical of it because I know SV types love to pooh pooh academia, but I went to a devotedly conservative college (and a decade ago) so I'm hoping to hear from someone with recent experience and a lack of that implicit contempt for formal education.

obviously the pro-Palestinian protests exposed some serious issues with respect to speech on campus, but I'm more curious about the typical daily experience of students. are the morality police really so widespread, or is it overrepresented and limited to individual overzealous types and colleges like Oberlin with a reputation for such?

How about stick to the subject: kids. Not college-age adolescents or adults.

Personally, I think it all goes back to Hitler /s

I'm not really sure why you think I should stick to the subject or what the point of your Hitler "joke" is supposed to be.

> why you think I should stick to the subject

umm ... because you made a "reply" to a post about kids, but it wasn't about kids. Do you need this explained further?

Even if colleges are more censorious these days (which I’m skeptical of), I struggle to think of any institution in American life more open minded than colleges.

Mainstream media acts as a hive mind. Businesses do not host speakers critical of their operations. Silicon Valley VCs are among the most fragile minds out there.

Safetyism in particular is the main culprit:

From "How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?":

https://archive.ph/jVOl3

> In a book entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind”, Mr Lukianoff and a social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, posit that overprotective parenting in the shadow of the war on terrorism and the great recession led to “safetyism”, a belief that safety, including emotional safety, trumps all other practical and moral concerns. Its bounds grew to require disinviting disfavoured campus speakers (see chart 1), protesting about disagreeable readings and regulating the speech of fellow students.

Does anxiety correlate to inflammatory ultra-processed diets?

Is there an incentive to self-report anxiety?

How does this connect to the article at all?

There is an epidemiological uptick in anxiety diagnosis rate; hence the article title: "Anxious Generation."

Is that due to broader trends in public health like lack of exercise and poor diet, specifically inflammatory foods like ultra-processed foods, exposure to food packaging, plastics, waterproofing chemicals, or other environmental contaminants?

What correlations in social research and human behavior can we identify?

Is there an increase in anxiety diagnoses in states with medical discounts for anxiety treatments?

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