Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpassens | Hacker News Reader

There's no need to wait, just look at the current mental health crisis.

it's a bit disingenuous to assign this solely or primarily to smartphone usage. lots of reason for todays teens to be depressed etc., maybe smartphone-usage is a symptom, not the root-cause.

it's a bit disingenuous to assign this solely or primarily to smartphone usage.

He didn't. You're the one that brought "solely" into the conversation.

yeah, my interpretation went too far, but even just attributing The Mental Health Crisis to smartphone usage, as if this really was a significant core-reason, is not right to me.

"Teens are sad because they spend all their time on their phones", then maybe ask yourselves why teens flee to their virtual spaces. (maybe look at what seems important to them and is at the same time being dismissed and ignored by the people older than them, while being told not to be idealistic and naive.)

As a barely former teen, what awaits in those virtual spaces is both worse than the dismissal and arguably feeds the naïveté causing said dismissal.

i'm not saying that it's healthy or good that teens flee into virtual spaces. i just think the mental health crisis isn't caused by smartphones - the problem is whatever is making them flee there.

The data seems to indicate that specifically social media is the cause. Take a look at some of the articles at https://www.afterbabel.com/t/the-international-mental-health... where the whole topic is discussed in more detail than fits in this comment box.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com