This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my prediction.
I think there are deeper long term trends causing psychological problems in the west: move away from physical to cognitive labour; increasing community isolation and lack of social institutions; various failures of the state; lack of meaningful wage growth in key brackets, and failure of the "aspiration engine" to create opportunities; lack of time for parenting, moving to dual working-parent households; helicopter parenting caused by breakdown of social trust; lack of infrastructure and provision of environments where children can be known safe in public. etc. etc.
The major forces here are: move to a services economy; dual parent working households; lack of social services in state provision; state infrastructure moving away from providing for the young to paying for the old. This means much of how children grow up in the world is unphysical, disconnected, time-poor, risk adverse, overly demanding, etc.
I can give an hour long monologue on YouTube’s continued exploitation of children. Their half assed attempts to fix this (by some well intentioned Googler’s, who I’m sure must have had a lot of pushback) aren’t enough. Just try unblocking a channel for your kid’s account (you can’t - the only option is to unblock EVERYTHING).
[1] Beboploop.com if you want to try it out, invite codes below:
LJC37CPD89
SP8CMRQJQA
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When I comment on something disturbing that I don't think I want to see again they think I love it and give me more. This is great for my emitional well being too!!!
>Gender was approximately equal, with 50.8% being female.
If anything, the data is more accurate for females, since there are 1.6pp more females.
Nobody denies all the effects of social media are negative. After all, if they were, nobody would use them. So there are benefits to it.
It also isn't news, really. The Dutch 'MIND Hulplijn' [1] in their former carnation 'Stichting Korrelatie' had a pilot with an online forum where people with mental issues could connect with each other. It eventually decided to close the forum because of users talking each other down in regard to the subject of suicide. However, the effect of a support group was also clearly there which was also a reason why they were reluctant to close it down.
What I'd like to know is how the effect would be compared to a forum or real-life support group. Because comparing social media with 'no help' or 'loneliness' obviously isn't fair.
Uh, what? That's a patently ridiculous assertion to lead with (and not support).
I found the study that the article bases this on[1]. It doesn't make this claim and instead associates a higher mortality rate to sufferers of all mental disorders, 67% of which are deaths by natural causes. That these natural causes are directly associated with the mental disorder isn't even something the study says. Anxiety is just one of the many disorders analyzed.
This is similar to attributing a lower life expectancy to all people with endocrine diseases (e.g. diabetes) and later saying hyperthyroidism (another endocrine disease) is the sole cause of death in that group.
- [1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...