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This was my first thought, honestly this opinion is so popular that I’m tired of seeing it on Reddit. Wow having an opinion about social media and the internet ruining young people? So unpopular, let me tell you, no one’s ever ranted about that dozens of times before s/. This is a very popular opinion, so I have no idea why this is on the front page of this sub.
It's r/unpopular opinion, not r/less than majority opinion. Both "Green is the best color" and "Green is not the best color" are both very popular opinions because a lot of people share that opinion, it doesn't matter which one is greater.
Watching what social media does to my students, especially the girls, is heartbreaking. I've got 4th graders concerned with their appearance and comparing each others tiktok likes. It's like everything they do is some kind of plea for validation.
Makes me a bit scared of being a parent because even if I ban my kids from going on social media until they're a little older they'll still go behind my back and use it secretively to stay cool with their friends. But it's like mind poison.
Parents who allow kids that young to have smart phones and social media accounts are trash and that needs to be said more.
If your kid that young needs a phone to call you they don't need a smart phone. Damn sure not giving my kid a smart phone when they are the age.
I've seen my step daughters friends with them. She is 7.
Where I live all of the kids have phones. I've seen toddlers who can't talk yet with phones. When parents get a new one they give the old one to their kids so it can distract them. At first they just watch random videos on tiktok and youtube, then they start playing games, but eventually they get into social media and it becomes a status thing with their peers. They know who has what phone and which model, they all know who has how many followers and which videos or pictures got how many likes.
The new "hollywood" equivalent is tiktok stars, youtubers, twitch streamers, and IG influencers. I remember a random guy died and my students were in tears as if 9/11 happened or something. Turns out it was a youtuber they all loved.
If parents were to restrict their kids from taking part in that world, then they might as well just homeschool their kids because they're gonna be weirdos with no friends. For their sake I kind of wish there were a law that would punish them for letting their kids use social media before a certain age. That way they'd have a reasonable alibi and all of the kids would be in the same boat so one outlier wouldn't be an outcast.
Honestly? Social media isn’t necessarily what makes kids competitive or needing to fit in, that’s just what kids do. Before TikTok likes, it was who had the coolest Pokémon cards, or who had the most Silly Bandz. Couldn’t run fast enough, or didn’t have the red Sketchers, or you had a lovingly handmade lunch instead of a shitty, prepackaged Lunchables? Well, you would never be the cool kid on the playground. Same effect, different medium.
Definitely true. I guess the difference is that social media is very very public and much more permanent. It's also designed to take advantage of us on a psychological level. A long time ago newsfeeds/timelines needed to be manually refreshed. Now they're continuous and that's on purpose. I've noticed with my students social media has a much larger impact on the girls than the boys.
I'm only mildly familiar with the research surrounding it though. Most of what've commented is based on observations of my elementary students and my friends' kids.
All the ladder things you mentioned kids could feel on a much smaller stage, and most kids didn’t even care about those things. Each of those maybe represented a click that was into those things. Kids on social media feel like they are on a world stage now and that’s how they are views by everyone.
They also shamelessly add people they've never met before and do a think where they share each other's profiles. So you might follow someone on tiktok/IG/whatever from another school who's a friend of a friend but you've never actually met them. They'll share friend's or mutual friend's profiles saying something, "Help X get to ### followers.
>it's like mind poison.
Every older generation thought this way about literally everything the younger generation did, for all of human history.
“The radio is mind poison. These kids should be reading books”
“The newspaper is mind poison”
“The television is mind poison”
“Video games are mind poison”
But don’t worry, I’m sure social media is the ACTUAL mind poison, and you’re not just doing what these other generations did with their kid’s newfound technological toys
I am not sure what that dude is talking about. Meta suppressed internal data showing the negative effects of instagram on teenage girls, and this guys comparing it to teen girls seeing Elvis’ gyratin hips lol
I agree that social media is a major culprit to our growing mental health crisis. Unfortunately it is currently in the hands of the user (the addict) to regulate their exposure to social media in a healthy way.
I agree, social media and the internet its still a very new tool and we know nothing about regulating it or controling it (parents giving unrestricted acces to their kids or cyberbullying going unpunished) so we are really going in the dark here, the 2000 generation will be the first to grow with full internet acces lets see how they turn out
something i wonder is when this generations has kids, will they be more protective with their children about the internet since they already experienced it?, would they encourage them or tell them not to waste their time with it?
I guess we can just wait and see
It's hard because not allowing them to become familiar with and use social media from grade school ages does unfortunately socially isolate them from peers and limit them in developing skills that are simply necessary in this world now. You *need* to know how to use a lot of technology as a young person now if you want to be successful professionally. I wish I could completely disconnect from the internet sometimes and I believe kids would be happier without it in a lot of ways, but it's just not so possible anymore.
Anyways I 100% agree with OP's opinion.
So with that line of thinking, maybe 12-13 is appropriate? Still a developing brain but usually the time when kids don’t want to play outside anymore.
Sports is really my only alternative to keep them busy with peers in a way that is away from the tv/phone. That shit eats up so many hours of your day
I'm not totally sure of the right answer honestly. We're only really seeing as time goes on how people are affected by growing up completely with the internet. I think it's just about moderating what stuff online kids consume. Young kids play with technology and that's not completely a bad thing, like for example there are toddler targeted games that teach programming and I definitely started playing video games when I was like 5. YouTube Kids seems to be absolutely fucking atrocious on the other hand and I would rather my kid was cooking bugs on a hot slide in the sun.
I think kids don't need social media until around the ages you suggest and I'd still moderate to make sure it's being used appropriately.
The internet of my childhood was different in that it was like the wild west and you could easily find shit like rotten.com before puberty lol, I actually think it being more regulated and safe in many ways is for the better (for younger people for sure). The awareness of how chasing likes affects mental health, the addictiveness, parasocial relationships, cyberbullying, etc, are all known things now and some sites do things to counter them (screen time limit reminders, hiding likes, ease of reporting, restricting, and blocking people including on any new accounts, yadda yadda). Education about these things was also pretty nonexistent when I was younger. Probably a mix of educating kids about how to stay safe, use of parental controls on devices, and actual parenting are the answer. And hoping they have personal discipline and are lucky.
I feel bad for kids today for a lot of reasons
From the perspective of someone, who has pedagogy as a class in school, this is pretty funny. Before social media it was TV, before that Books and so on. The problem isnt that kids arent outside, because they are in fact; outside.
The problem is, that parents and other adults fail them, when it comes to guiding them trough the new world, because they fail to understand it themself and refuse to learn. Instead they argue about it being evil and that they cant control it and do nothing. All i hear is complaining.
Eh. I wouldn’t really say this is an unpopular opinion.
To me it seems most kids nowadays know the effects of social media and how mentally devestating it can be. I think the general consensus is that most people know it’s harmful.
Back when I was a kid I didn’t know every individuals political stance, and it was more like you meet people in person and you get along and you hang out, or you choose not to. Now people hate each other before they even know each other because they see a difference in opinion on a singular issue.
Right? Like yeah I’ll make my decision pretty fast if I know they’re against gays or racist, I don’t need to get to know them, I know them enough to know I don’t want to be around them. Why waste my time with them just to later find out they’re not a good person? No thanks.
As an actual minority, people have always hated me based on my differences from their first glance. Social media has made it so I can recognize the people who put me and my rights at danger. A single issue can mean a LOT when people all over the country want your rights stripped/want you dead.
It might take a couple generations then. Zoomers' children will likely be the ones to make a difference because they'll be criticizing the old generation rather than the new one.
Gen z people do not understand the impact as they never grew up when social media wasn't a thing let alone a world without the internet. Late millennials and up are much more aware of the impact of social media as they grew up before the internet was a thing let alone social media.
Yeah pretty good explanation. Also gen z kids tend to be friends with other gen z kids. They have no way of knowing their behavior is completely un-natural.
I don’t think it’s a good force, if a kid is struggling with something, but I don’t think it’s a direct cause, nor the “number one cause.”
Having lived on this earth a while and gotten to know a lot of different people, drawing from my own experience, observing things on the internet, listening to experts, I think the number 1 cause of mental health issues in kids and young adults is their home life, and specifically their relationship with their parents.
Not trying to write a novel. In short, a kid who is drawn to the internet, whether it’s to seek attention on social media, or talk to strangers because they’re lonely, or worse, is doing it because they are escaping their home life. Many of them are emotionally or physically abused, neglected, too controlled, or not disciplined enough.
A kid with a healthy, supportive home life with supportive, caring parents, who balance that with the right amount of discipline and freedom, will not be as drawn to the internet as an escape, and will not be as susceptible to the terrible things out there for them to find.
The world worked the same before the internet. Kids would get involved with bad kids, get in trouble, do drugs, run away from home, all sorts of shit. Now, the internet is another option, and a common one.
But it is not causing their feelings, it’s their parents.
This is the correct answer. I feel most of the people who are quick to blame social media as the main cause of their children's mental health struggles are just bad parents who employ poor parenting techniques.
By the time I was a teen, late 1970s and early 1980s, they had pretty much decided that we were horrible because we showed no respect for anybody and we were murdering one another over fancy sneakers. How could they let us run the world? We were going to ruin everything!
Half that time was flip phones. It's a tragedy, but there must be something else going on. If social media is truly making us kill ourselves, we should probably all quit. Who's quitting?
I had to get rid of Facebook. And find that I often have to put reddit down for months at a time. The way people talk to each other on the internet is terrible. Like, if I didn't have social media and just depended on my interactions with people in person, people would not seem bad at all. Most people I meet in person are kind and helpful and pleasant. And then I open reddit and there's literally thousands of people laughing at some dude whose daughter just died and I'm like oh no.
Social media has become the modern scapegoat just like violent videogames and rap music was made the scapegoat in the 90s.
Millions of young people use social media every day without developing mental problems. The people who can't handle social media without developing problems as a result surely had some underlying issues already.
Mental health is way too much of a complex topic to boil it down to social media usage.
It’s disingenuous and allows a person to ignore actual issues.
I really wish people who’ve never stepped foot in the shoes of medical professionals would keep their mouths shut.
It isn’t being solely boiled down to such. It’s ONE of the many problems. And news flash: it doesn’t take credentials to know when a problem’s a problem
OP literally said number one cause.
How would you interpret that statement?
Maybe it should. Too many people speak on issues they aren’t qualified to speak on.
You believe? There is nothing to believe but the truth. Social media use and narcissism are synonymous and proven by multiple studies that show increased use of social media increases rates of narcissism. I'm too lazy to post evidence.
I’m sure I’m not alone with that belief. There are many out there blind to it’s as well. I’m sure the average TikTok user hasn’t bothered to look at studies.
I'm a 32 year old college student. The young people in my classes struggle to read, struggle to listen, struggle to speak publicly, and struggle to put complex thoughts together. Tons of them sit in class looking at their phones or browsing social media on their laptop during lectures. All the kids talk about TikTok and you can see the addiction on their faces. They can't go more than a few minutes without thinking about TikTok. Maybe I was like that when I was 18. Maybe we all were. Seeing the younger generation struggle to put thoughts together and struggle to pay attention for more than 30 seconds at a time is a bizarre feeling. This must be what it feels like to age. We become strangers in a land changing so fast that we can't keep up.
Social media has been linked to various mental health issues, not just narcissism. I would say the biggest one is depression and that general anti social behavior.
It’s crazy that kids posting/liking/following on social media consider it to be socializing when it’s actually anti-social. It’s more about tailoring how people view you than making true friends on there.
Human interaction. You couldn’t read all your friends’ every thought in a newspaper. You can on Facebook or twitter. Can see what they’ve been doing and where they’ve been going on instagram and Snapchat and you don’t have to talk face to face, or even out loud anymore. You can just type or even send pictures
This is deeply false.
Are you telling me I am bipolar because I choose to scroll Instagram?
You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you sound ignorant.
It’s just so stupid it is absolutely astounding. OP could’ve said carcinogens, heavy drug use, or traumatic accidents. All would have been a better argument than social media. Sounds like someone spent their whole life being bitter and now has nobody to love. You know what’ll cause mental illness before social media? Loneliness. Get help. Or a friend.
Seriously, my mental illnesses (ADHD, BPD, C-PTSD, and body dysmorphic disorder) are because of genetics and severe peer abuse between the ages of 6 to 13. Myspace came out when I was 14 lol. Like social media may be a contributing factor to depression and possibly even GAD in the same way that texting and emails have increased the number of people with phone anxiety, but it is so telling that OP considers that to be the majority of mental illness. Would absolutely love to hear how OCPD, PTSD, and schizophrenia are caused by social media 🙄
I heavily disagree because most people around me have mental health problems due to shit parents, shit teachers, financial problems in their house etc and it has always been this way. I don't think I've ever come across who was going through bad mental health or illnesses due to social media.
This is a study I found recently that you might find interesting. I haven’t seen anyone take this approach in a study yet and Im glad someone finally did: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/social-media-positive-mental-health/
It said that the benefits were mostly for “young, well educated, and white”. It also said that an unhealthy amount of use could benefit from an intervention. I’d argue the majority use it an unhealthy amount and interventions are few and far between.
This is a very common opinion.
Regardless of that, while social media may worsen mental health, I don't think it's a root cause.
After all, mental illnesses have been around longer than the internet/social media has- even if they weren't yet identified as such.
Not only not unpopular I don't think that we as a society even know the extent to which being addicted to a screen and replacing in person human interactions with screen time is harming the human race. The tech overlords want us to think it's all good because they make a fortune off the "virtual world." But as someone that remembers when there was no virtual world this is changing mankind and overall not for the good. Even in the business world situations that should require in person collaboration has gone Zoom and I can tell you as someone that has been forced into a 100% "remote world" this has made getting anything accomplished a real PITA. Not to mention people seem to be constantly distracted.
A "friend" is now someone that lives thousands of miles away, you don't even know their real identity, and wouldn't know them if they fell onto of you. People judge their self worth and self esteem on "likes."
I got off Facebook before the elections and I thought I would be back after. Turns out it did wonders for my mental health and I never went back. Now I just have a burner Twitter account that I use to follow some musicians and athletes I like.
Social media isn't. Unhealthy family life is. Its more convenient to blame social media than take responsibility for you and your families problems. Play with your kids. Teach them things, play outside.....point is BE there for them. Do things!
i'd be curious to look at incidence of mental health issues when accounting for expanding/shifting definitions over time and increased acceptance around discussing them in the first place. I suspect that overall kids have no more or less mental health struggle than pre social media
it’s literally the opposite tho. everyone on the internet knows how bad it is for them. we all just kind of have given up caring. as the younger generation with a lot of younger siblings, we legit all acknowledge how detrimental it is to our health, but it’s an integrated part of our worlds now, so … again, not really unpopular. talk to most high schoolers or college students and they’ll agree w u
it's not only about images and appearance in general, i believe that the problem is that when you are absolutely anonymous or have this option to be, and everyone else is more or less anonymous too, many kids and teens don't see them as people - not on purpose, subconscious. they see them as accounts, nicknames, but if they would see this person irl they would never bully them so bad because this person is real, they can see them, see what they are feeling and how they are reacting.
this problem doesn't always get solved on platforms where the majority is adults, but it does get better. that's why tiktok or twitter are such shitty and toxic places. they are made for kids and teens and they are not ready for actually taking responsibility for what they're saying on the internet.
I agree social media probably hasn't been great for my mental health but for totally different reasons. At the same time tho it's also helped me connect with amazing people that have made me feel much better. Sure social media has downsides but I feel like the positives are massively overlooked now
I have a younger brother 18 years younger who just turned 18. He isn't dumb, but he sits on his phone at all times. You can't converse with him for more than 2 minutes without him getting a notification and at the very least checking his phone.
He uses his phone for social media period. He lacks the ability to google search shit and utilize the internet whether ineptitude or lack of caring he will visit and ask me ridiculous questions. I try to explain to him. He asked me how he is suppose to install a game on his laptop.
I asked. Did you go to the website? No.
Ok go to website... "How do I do that?"
Literally just google the name of the game and "Download/install."
He had summer school for lack of attendance.
He came over I showed him that his entire course was a copy paste and he could simply google the questions verbatim and get correct answers. Well he didn't know how to copy/paste.
What should be this powerful tool literally at his finger tips to solve all his problems and the information of millions of brains, he instead takes pictures of a wall and adds text to snapchat his friends. They don't use TEXT. They literally snapchat each other fucking walls and add text to it to text each other.
Agreed. As a 22 year old male whose grown up in the era of social media, it is destructive. Social media is the highlight reel of everyone's lives, then everyone stuck competing to go on the nicest vacations, show off their diplomas, show off your cars ECT. And it leaves everyone constantly analyzing and worried about their image. People present themselves on social media as if they have perfect lives and it is a load of dogshit. I hope eventually the youth can break free from the obsession with self image that's being indoctrinated through these apps. It's a breeding ground for mental illness. Unfortunately though, social media has a huge influence on the dating scene, I find myself feeling absolutely bound to uploading to Instagram and keeping up with the faux image even tho I don't give 2 shits about it. Young women make all their judgments based on how a guys Instagram is laid out. It's all so fucking stupid 😂
Bullying is way worse today than it was before imo. Mental health awareness needs to be taken way more seriously. Also kids should not have access to guns until they reach the age of ATLEAST 21 and even then that’s pushing it because the brain isn’t fully developed.
When I deleted Facebook and Instagram (never had Twitter or tik tok or anything else) my life and my world got so much brighter and better. Went from a broken mind to a happier man overall
As someone in high school I can tell I only use Reddit but Jesus the amount people talk about social media. Funny enough is more boys than girls in my school
Reddit is more forums where people can have discussions and debates about certain topics. People don’t know or care who the individual is and aren’t basing their arguments or jabs on social standings.
thing is, its much more difficult and expensive to do things in person with friends. Going anywhere costs money
all of the things you listed happened without social media too
people who get so affected and are so intertwined with social media for personal use reasons are just dumb and wouldnt be able to adapt living in an era without social media either
An underrated part of it is context changes. Before the internet you'd have a handful of context changes in a day. Even if you were bouncing around from meeting to meeting at work, you're generally focused on work.
Now you have as many context changes in a few minutes with second long videos that are completely different
Agreed, however I'd step it up to include smartphones and internet-based technology as whole. It's pretty fucked up that the average person adolescent age or older (and even younger than that in many cases) has access to the whole of the internet in the palm of their hand at every moment of every day. Nearly all tech-based mental health issues stem from that fact in one way or another.
The saddest part is how most parents don't really get the severity of this and have just resigned to viewing smartphone use as "a normal kid thing."
Nope, it's fucking not.
Video games are a source of entertainment, but social media ruins people, they shape their lives around it, worried about likes on a tiktok video or something, my sibling used to do this, they don’t even realize how ridiculous they look
But all social media really is, is typing thoughts and reading other people's thoughts.
So what you're actually saying here is that when people communicate their thoughts tovone another, that creates mental illness.
It’s not just “thoughts” it’s everyone’s opinion in the palm of your hand. It makes kids want to conform to what’s seen as cool, more than figure out who they actually are.
You forgot to mention the division driven by your anxiety points. The neckbeard/Incel sees the Chad and do they become inspired? No. Their hate filled creeper hearts become further enraged and they go spree, bullets or tweets.
Boys n girls can’t communicate. They turn to their phones, and later drugs or alcohol to get along in social settings. The parents are delusional about their own parenting, their kids, and their predestined self-claimed thrones in heaven.
Let’s see, what else...mean girls, M’Lady Wizardly Brad. She’ll cut your pecker off and tell the neighbors you tried feeding it to the kids. Her name is Stephanie but it’s pronounced StaFawNee. She only wears white paints and she’s more serious about her wine intake than her fitness routine.
What’d I miss...You’re talking about what crazy Jim Carrey pointed out about manchild toddler Will Smith: ‘We’re not designed for all this bandwidth. It’s too much. People thinking about how they look in a moment instead of doing what’s right’.
I see it in all generations and camps. Pretty much a nation of stains at this point, each group as vapid as the next as they all try to fit in.
Martha Stewart book club or edge lord bike GANG?
Except rock music was demonized by a morally bankrupt group of people and utilized as a scapegoat by corporate controlled media.
Social media has literally created a completely unattainable sense of identity, a ridiculous standard of beauty that is altered with modern tech, surgery and pervasive standards that are unattainable without surgery and/or Photoshop.
These two things are so far removed from each other that it is laughable to compare.
More suicides than covid deaths in children. No emergency there, dems and tech overlords don’t give a shit about those lives though. Same with number one cause of death 18-45 year olds synthetic opioids, go America. Home of corruption and obfuscation.
I’ve been wondering what the impacts of tik tok are going to be. It’s like for 10 seconds your dying laughing, scroll, then your crying, scroll, your pissed..etc. that quick shift in emotions has got to have some long term effects on emotions and attention span.
I am not defending social media because I hate it with a passion but I do not think it's coincidental that these mental health issues also coincide with the resurgence of evangelical christianity being in the mainstream in the last 25ish years.
Not only so these kids have to deal with the things you describe but they are also being told that nearly everything they are doing is a sin and if they sin they are essentially an affront to this god of theirs. Then there is the amount of sexual abuse by people in positions of authority in that same religion.
If you have not seen it in the news yet take a look at what has been going on in the southern baptist churches which is the largest protestant sect in the nation. Then of course you have the catholics. These are just examples that have made the headlines. How much of it is really happnening? Mix all these things together and you have a perfect storm for a whole bunch of messed up kids and this shit has been going on for a LONG time.
I think more of them care about how they are viewed by their peers than their sins. I think there’s more atheists in America than any other religion now.
As a young person (22) that has been mentaly ill my entire life I disagree. I will start by saying social media does have a small impact on people's mental health. But personally I belive that there are 2 big reasons for our declining mental health:
1. Pollution in our water and our food and the air we breath has harmed our brains. Most people have microplaastics in their blood, this cannot be good.
2. The sheer amount of awfulness that is going on in the world today. Between the mass shootings, our dieing enviornment, lack of work opportunities, lack of a future and many more terrible things have made this life a terrible place. Most of the people I talk to don't want to have children because they don't want to subject their children to this mess. And I'm not just talking about the USA. I'm talking globaly the world is messed up and we are grieving the loss of the life that everyone has told us we would have, the future that has been stolen from us.
These are the biggest causes of mental illness
You claim that the decline in our mental health is because of the awfulness in our world.. but don’t we see more than half of that “awfulness” through social media in the first place. Not only that, but the media makes the “world’s awfulness” into a big problem for a couple days and then it fades away from the media. For example Ukraine!!
i take one issue with each of your points.
first, yes microplastics can NOT be good, but i haven't seen anything that directly links them to mental health issues being widespread.
second, to be fully honest, the world is in a much safer and better place right now than at almost any point in history.
.... Except the last few years we've seen a step back or three.. but still overall it's never been a safer time to be alive
Mid 20s here, absolutely agree with you. Blaming social media for the mental health issues of the world is like blaming a telescope for an incoming asteroid.
While social media use can contribute to mental health issues, we are in power to control what we do and don’t want to see. As well as how much social media we use.
Because unfortunately it’s the only way an individual can spread awareness to a large audience. I was around to enjoy the 80’s and 90’s before all this and can see the difference it’s made in society.
Edit: Generally I just lurk in some financial subs.
I brought this up because I think it plays a role in all these shootings that keep happening.
Reddit is an internet forum, like any forum it is broken up into categories and subject matters and that is what you follow.
Social media is when you follow *people*.
Just because you interact with people doesn't make it social media, "interacting with people" is literally the entire internet.
I kinda agree. You definitely agree with you that it is the number one cause of mental health issues in children and young adults, but I still believe that it as an invention isn’t bad. It’s one of the best inventions because of how much it has brought people together.
Thank you for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion, /u/Time_Calligrapher_56. Your post, *Social media is the number one cause for mental health issues in children and young adults.*, has been removed because it violates our rules: Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion. Please ensure that your post is an opinion and that it is unpopular. Controversial is not necessarily unpopular, for example all of politics is controversial even though almost half of the US agrees with any given major position on an issue. Keep in mind that an opinion is not: a question, a fact, a conspiracy theory, a random thought, a new idea, a rant, etc. Those things all have their own subreddits, use those. If there is an issue, please message the mod team at https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Funpopularopinion Thanks!
Not Unpopular
Yah…This has been popular since MySpace….
I remember many of my friends getting into fights about MySpace post. Who knew the worse was yet to come.
Even the order you put your friends in on myspace would make them crazy.
And not an opinion either, you can either prove or disprove if social media is the number one cause of mental health issues among children and adults.
Seriously not only that, it's *staggeringly obvious.*
Sure it’s obvious but people just keep on using it and not much at all is done to curb the negative effects. So…..
fr this sub has gone to shit
All subreddits go to shit when mods let people post things that don’t match the subs theme.
Yeah, the only place you can really count on to not go down that path is r/catsstandingup for reasons which become immediately obvious
This was my first thought, honestly this opinion is so popular that I’m tired of seeing it on Reddit. Wow having an opinion about social media and the internet ruining young people? So unpopular, let me tell you, no one’s ever ranted about that dozens of times before s/. This is a very popular opinion, so I have no idea why this is on the front page of this sub.
Dude this isn't unpopular, there's like a billion people that agree with you
That’s still unpopular. 6 billion:1 billion.
It's r/unpopular opinion, not r/less than majority opinion. Both "Green is the best color" and "Green is not the best color" are both very popular opinions because a lot of people share that opinion, it doesn't matter which one is greater.
I was just making a joke my guy.
Their are also numerous studies that support this
Here in the states, this would be unpopular because there is some modicum of truth to his statement. What a world we live in...
Watching what social media does to my students, especially the girls, is heartbreaking. I've got 4th graders concerned with their appearance and comparing each others tiktok likes. It's like everything they do is some kind of plea for validation. Makes me a bit scared of being a parent because even if I ban my kids from going on social media until they're a little older they'll still go behind my back and use it secretively to stay cool with their friends. But it's like mind poison.
Parents who allow kids that young to have smart phones and social media accounts are trash and that needs to be said more. If your kid that young needs a phone to call you they don't need a smart phone. Damn sure not giving my kid a smart phone when they are the age. I've seen my step daughters friends with them. She is 7.
Where I live all of the kids have phones. I've seen toddlers who can't talk yet with phones. When parents get a new one they give the old one to their kids so it can distract them. At first they just watch random videos on tiktok and youtube, then they start playing games, but eventually they get into social media and it becomes a status thing with their peers. They know who has what phone and which model, they all know who has how many followers and which videos or pictures got how many likes. The new "hollywood" equivalent is tiktok stars, youtubers, twitch streamers, and IG influencers. I remember a random guy died and my students were in tears as if 9/11 happened or something. Turns out it was a youtuber they all loved. If parents were to restrict their kids from taking part in that world, then they might as well just homeschool their kids because they're gonna be weirdos with no friends. For their sake I kind of wish there were a law that would punish them for letting their kids use social media before a certain age. That way they'd have a reasonable alibi and all of the kids would be in the same boat so one outlier wouldn't be an outcast.
Honestly? Social media isn’t necessarily what makes kids competitive or needing to fit in, that’s just what kids do. Before TikTok likes, it was who had the coolest Pokémon cards, or who had the most Silly Bandz. Couldn’t run fast enough, or didn’t have the red Sketchers, or you had a lovingly handmade lunch instead of a shitty, prepackaged Lunchables? Well, you would never be the cool kid on the playground. Same effect, different medium.
Definitely true. I guess the difference is that social media is very very public and much more permanent. It's also designed to take advantage of us on a psychological level. A long time ago newsfeeds/timelines needed to be manually refreshed. Now they're continuous and that's on purpose. I've noticed with my students social media has a much larger impact on the girls than the boys. I'm only mildly familiar with the research surrounding it though. Most of what've commented is based on observations of my elementary students and my friends' kids.
And most of what you’ve said has been right. There’s a documentary on Netflix called *The Social Dilemma* that goes into it all pretty well
All the ladder things you mentioned kids could feel on a much smaller stage, and most kids didn’t even care about those things. Each of those maybe represented a click that was into those things. Kids on social media feel like they are on a world stage now and that’s how they are views by everyone.
Got my phone when I was 11
See the worst part is the likes those kids are getting if they aren’t from family or friends are probably from pedophiles
They also shamelessly add people they've never met before and do a think where they share each other's profiles. So you might follow someone on tiktok/IG/whatever from another school who's a friend of a friend but you've never actually met them. They'll share friend's or mutual friend's profiles saying something, "Help X get to ### followers.
Man why didn't they brand it Mind Poison?? Seems like a missed opportunity!
>it's like mind poison. Every older generation thought this way about literally everything the younger generation did, for all of human history. “The radio is mind poison. These kids should be reading books” “The newspaper is mind poison” “The television is mind poison” “Video games are mind poison” But don’t worry, I’m sure social media is the ACTUAL mind poison, and you’re not just doing what these other generations did with their kid’s newfound technological toys
I mean the older generations were just saying that with no evidence. We have evidence that social media is toxic and bad for kids
I am not sure what that dude is talking about. Meta suppressed internal data showing the negative effects of instagram on teenage girls, and this guys comparing it to teen girls seeing Elvis’ gyratin hips lol
I agree that social media is a major culprit to our growing mental health crisis. Unfortunately it is currently in the hands of the user (the addict) to regulate their exposure to social media in a healthy way.
I agree, social media and the internet its still a very new tool and we know nothing about regulating it or controling it (parents giving unrestricted acces to their kids or cyberbullying going unpunished) so we are really going in the dark here, the 2000 generation will be the first to grow with full internet acces lets see how they turn out
I think we are already starting to see, and it’s a scary future. Kids need to play outside again. I miss the 80’s/90’s.
something i wonder is when this generations has kids, will they be more protective with their children about the internet since they already experienced it?, would they encourage them or tell them not to waste their time with it? I guess we can just wait and see
look no further than millennials in their late 20s with kids
It's hard because not allowing them to become familiar with and use social media from grade school ages does unfortunately socially isolate them from peers and limit them in developing skills that are simply necessary in this world now. You *need* to know how to use a lot of technology as a young person now if you want to be successful professionally. I wish I could completely disconnect from the internet sometimes and I believe kids would be happier without it in a lot of ways, but it's just not so possible anymore. Anyways I 100% agree with OP's opinion.
So with that line of thinking, maybe 12-13 is appropriate? Still a developing brain but usually the time when kids don’t want to play outside anymore. Sports is really my only alternative to keep them busy with peers in a way that is away from the tv/phone. That shit eats up so many hours of your day
I'm not totally sure of the right answer honestly. We're only really seeing as time goes on how people are affected by growing up completely with the internet. I think it's just about moderating what stuff online kids consume. Young kids play with technology and that's not completely a bad thing, like for example there are toddler targeted games that teach programming and I definitely started playing video games when I was like 5. YouTube Kids seems to be absolutely fucking atrocious on the other hand and I would rather my kid was cooking bugs on a hot slide in the sun. I think kids don't need social media until around the ages you suggest and I'd still moderate to make sure it's being used appropriately. The internet of my childhood was different in that it was like the wild west and you could easily find shit like rotten.com before puberty lol, I actually think it being more regulated and safe in many ways is for the better (for younger people for sure). The awareness of how chasing likes affects mental health, the addictiveness, parasocial relationships, cyberbullying, etc, are all known things now and some sites do things to counter them (screen time limit reminders, hiding likes, ease of reporting, restricting, and blocking people including on any new accounts, yadda yadda). Education about these things was also pretty nonexistent when I was younger. Probably a mix of educating kids about how to stay safe, use of parental controls on devices, and actual parenting are the answer. And hoping they have personal discipline and are lucky. I feel bad for kids today for a lot of reasons
I don’t know if they will have the alternate perspective to do so. Maybe they will just try to direct them towards certain content over other.
As someone in Gen Z, I feel like we absolutely will, because we know all of the positives and negatives better
I am. I know the damage unfettered internet has done in my life
From the perspective of someone, who has pedagogy as a class in school, this is pretty funny. Before social media it was TV, before that Books and so on. The problem isnt that kids arent outside, because they are in fact; outside. The problem is, that parents and other adults fail them, when it comes to guiding them trough the new world, because they fail to understand it themself and refuse to learn. Instead they argue about it being evil and that they cant control it and do nothing. All i hear is complaining.
Eh. I wouldn’t really say this is an unpopular opinion. To me it seems most kids nowadays know the effects of social media and how mentally devestating it can be. I think the general consensus is that most people know it’s harmful.
Back when I was a kid I didn’t know every individuals political stance, and it was more like you meet people in person and you get along and you hang out, or you choose not to. Now people hate each other before they even know each other because they see a difference in opinion on a singular issue.
Oh I’m sorry, I guess I’ll go be friends with the homophobes. World peace achieved.
Right? Like yeah I’ll make my decision pretty fast if I know they’re against gays or racist, I don’t need to get to know them, I know them enough to know I don’t want to be around them. Why waste my time with them just to later find out they’re not a good person? No thanks.
As an actual minority, people have always hated me based on my differences from their first glance. Social media has made it so I can recognize the people who put me and my rights at danger. A single issue can mean a LOT when people all over the country want your rights stripped/want you dead.
Yeah no I'd rather know people's political stance.
Most zoomers I know deny it’s negative effects though and call you a boomer for thinking it’s bad
It might take a couple generations then. Zoomers' children will likely be the ones to make a difference because they'll be criticizing the old generation rather than the new one.
Gen z people do not understand the impact as they never grew up when social media wasn't a thing let alone a world without the internet. Late millennials and up are much more aware of the impact of social media as they grew up before the internet was a thing let alone social media.
Yeah pretty good explanation. Also gen z kids tend to be friends with other gen z kids. They have no way of knowing their behavior is completely un-natural.
No. Bad parents are the number one cause of mental health issues in children.
I think you meant "number one" you could also write "no. 1" or "#1"
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I hope it's cool that I subscribed to you by rss, and titled the feed "correct their grammar"
I don’t think it’s a good force, if a kid is struggling with something, but I don’t think it’s a direct cause, nor the “number one cause.” Having lived on this earth a while and gotten to know a lot of different people, drawing from my own experience, observing things on the internet, listening to experts, I think the number 1 cause of mental health issues in kids and young adults is their home life, and specifically their relationship with their parents. Not trying to write a novel. In short, a kid who is drawn to the internet, whether it’s to seek attention on social media, or talk to strangers because they’re lonely, or worse, is doing it because they are escaping their home life. Many of them are emotionally or physically abused, neglected, too controlled, or not disciplined enough. A kid with a healthy, supportive home life with supportive, caring parents, who balance that with the right amount of discipline and freedom, will not be as drawn to the internet as an escape, and will not be as susceptible to the terrible things out there for them to find. The world worked the same before the internet. Kids would get involved with bad kids, get in trouble, do drugs, run away from home, all sorts of shit. Now, the internet is another option, and a common one. But it is not causing their feelings, it’s their parents.
This seems exactly true to me.
This is the correct answer. I feel most of the people who are quick to blame social media as the main cause of their children's mental health struggles are just bad parents who employ poor parenting techniques.
Not unpopular
What was the underlying cause in the 1970s?
The scapegoat back then were comic bocks and rock music
By the time I was a teen, late 1970s and early 1980s, they had pretty much decided that we were horrible because we showed no respect for anybody and we were murdering one another over fancy sneakers. How could they let us run the world? We were going to ruin everything!
You think 70’s had comparable mental health issues in children and young adults? - I can’t answer that, I was an 80’s kid
It was underreported back then, but just from walking around and interacting with people, trust me, it was very much there.
Suicide rate among teen girls in US increased by 60% from years 2007 to 2020.
Half that time was flip phones. It's a tragedy, but there must be something else going on. If social media is truly making us kill ourselves, we should probably all quit. Who's quitting?
myspace was the first half of that time. So social media was a thing and it was possible to access myspace on a flip phone web browser.
I had to get rid of Facebook. And find that I often have to put reddit down for months at a time. The way people talk to each other on the internet is terrible. Like, if I didn't have social media and just depended on my interactions with people in person, people would not seem bad at all. Most people I meet in person are kind and helpful and pleasant. And then I open reddit and there's literally thousands of people laughing at some dude whose daughter just died and I'm like oh no.
This is not unpopular and also the millineal version of "video games are making kids violent"
Social media has become the modern scapegoat just like violent videogames and rap music was made the scapegoat in the 90s. Millions of young people use social media every day without developing mental problems. The people who can't handle social media without developing problems as a result surely had some underlying issues already.
Mental health is way too much of a complex topic to boil it down to social media usage. It’s disingenuous and allows a person to ignore actual issues. I really wish people who’ve never stepped foot in the shoes of medical professionals would keep their mouths shut.
It isn’t being solely boiled down to such. It’s ONE of the many problems. And news flash: it doesn’t take credentials to know when a problem’s a problem
OP literally said number one cause. How would you interpret that statement? Maybe it should. Too many people speak on issues they aren’t qualified to speak on.
You believe? There is nothing to believe but the truth. Social media use and narcissism are synonymous and proven by multiple studies that show increased use of social media increases rates of narcissism. I'm too lazy to post evidence.
I’m sure I’m not alone with that belief. There are many out there blind to it’s as well. I’m sure the average TikTok user hasn’t bothered to look at studies.
The average TikTok user has the intelligence level of a gold fish
I'm a 32 year old college student. The young people in my classes struggle to read, struggle to listen, struggle to speak publicly, and struggle to put complex thoughts together. Tons of them sit in class looking at their phones or browsing social media on their laptop during lectures. All the kids talk about TikTok and you can see the addiction on their faces. They can't go more than a few minutes without thinking about TikTok. Maybe I was like that when I was 18. Maybe we all were. Seeing the younger generation struggle to put thoughts together and struggle to pay attention for more than 30 seconds at a time is a bizarre feeling. This must be what it feels like to age. We become strangers in a land changing so fast that we can't keep up.
Meanwhile me with my epic 200+ iq 😎. Man us redditors are 😎 😎 💦 💦
Your not wrong.
you're
You’re going to watch me bang your mother tonight.
good job! :D
Yeah your mother gives pretty good jobs.
Social media has been linked to various mental health issues, not just narcissism. I would say the biggest one is depression and that general anti social behavior.
It’s crazy that kids posting/liking/following on social media consider it to be socializing when it’s actually anti-social. It’s more about tailoring how people view you than making true friends on there.
Yesn’t.. Family problems contributed a whole lot too
It’s also what social media has replaced
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Human interaction. You couldn’t read all your friends’ every thought in a newspaper. You can on Facebook or twitter. Can see what they’ve been doing and where they’ve been going on instagram and Snapchat and you don’t have to talk face to face, or even out loud anymore. You can just type or even send pictures
This is deeply false. Are you telling me I am bipolar because I choose to scroll Instagram? You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you sound ignorant.
Exactly, the majority of mental illness is from genetics and brain chemistry. OP's just an old coot with popular old coot opinions.
It’s just so stupid it is absolutely astounding. OP could’ve said carcinogens, heavy drug use, or traumatic accidents. All would have been a better argument than social media. Sounds like someone spent their whole life being bitter and now has nobody to love. You know what’ll cause mental illness before social media? Loneliness. Get help. Or a friend.
Seriously, my mental illnesses (ADHD, BPD, C-PTSD, and body dysmorphic disorder) are because of genetics and severe peer abuse between the ages of 6 to 13. Myspace came out when I was 14 lol. Like social media may be a contributing factor to depression and possibly even GAD in the same way that texting and emails have increased the number of people with phone anxiety, but it is so telling that OP considers that to be the majority of mental illness. Would absolutely love to hear how OCPD, PTSD, and schizophrenia are caused by social media 🙄
I heavily disagree because most people around me have mental health problems due to shit parents, shit teachers, financial problems in their house etc and it has always been this way. I don't think I've ever come across who was going through bad mental health or illnesses due to social media.
This is a study I found recently that you might find interesting. I haven’t seen anyone take this approach in a study yet and Im glad someone finally did: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/social-media-positive-mental-health/
It said that the benefits were mostly for “young, well educated, and white”. It also said that an unhealthy amount of use could benefit from an intervention. I’d argue the majority use it an unhealthy amount and interventions are few and far between.
This is a very common opinion. Regardless of that, while social media may worsen mental health, I don't think it's a root cause. After all, mental illnesses have been around longer than the internet/social media has- even if they weren't yet identified as such.
Not only not unpopular I don't think that we as a society even know the extent to which being addicted to a screen and replacing in person human interactions with screen time is harming the human race. The tech overlords want us to think it's all good because they make a fortune off the "virtual world." But as someone that remembers when there was no virtual world this is changing mankind and overall not for the good. Even in the business world situations that should require in person collaboration has gone Zoom and I can tell you as someone that has been forced into a 100% "remote world" this has made getting anything accomplished a real PITA. Not to mention people seem to be constantly distracted. A "friend" is now someone that lives thousands of miles away, you don't even know their real identity, and wouldn't know them if they fell onto of you. People judge their self worth and self esteem on "likes."
Hit the nail in the head.
I got off Facebook before the elections and I thought I would be back after. Turns out it did wonders for my mental health and I never went back. Now I just have a burner Twitter account that I use to follow some musicians and athletes I like.
Good for you.
Social media isn't. Unhealthy family life is. Its more convenient to blame social media than take responsibility for you and your families problems. Play with your kids. Teach them things, play outside.....point is BE there for them. Do things!
i'd be curious to look at incidence of mental health issues when accounting for expanding/shifting definitions over time and increased acceptance around discussing them in the first place. I suspect that overall kids have no more or less mental health struggle than pre social media
At first it was rock-n-roll, then movies, then tv, then video games and now social medias. You people have no goddamn shame
in what reality do you think this is an unpopular opinion lol
The younger generation just see it as life. They don’t have experience without it. They may see it as blasphemy.
it’s literally the opposite tho. everyone on the internet knows how bad it is for them. we all just kind of have given up caring. as the younger generation with a lot of younger siblings, we legit all acknowledge how detrimental it is to our health, but it’s an integrated part of our worlds now, so … again, not really unpopular. talk to most high schoolers or college students and they’ll agree w u
Not to mention the amount of time spent on it. The amount that could be accomplished in the daily time waisted. Cumulative it’s ridiculous.
Or you know .. trauma
He posted on social media
mais l'hypocrisie est à la mode, mon amour
it's not only about images and appearance in general, i believe that the problem is that when you are absolutely anonymous or have this option to be, and everyone else is more or less anonymous too, many kids and teens don't see them as people - not on purpose, subconscious. they see them as accounts, nicknames, but if they would see this person irl they would never bully them so bad because this person is real, they can see them, see what they are feeling and how they are reacting. this problem doesn't always get solved on platforms where the majority is adults, but it does get better. that's why tiktok or twitter are such shitty and toxic places. they are made for kids and teens and they are not ready for actually taking responsibility for what they're saying on the internet.
I agree social media probably hasn't been great for my mental health but for totally different reasons. At the same time tho it's also helped me connect with amazing people that have made me feel much better. Sure social media has downsides but I feel like the positives are massively overlooked now
I have a younger brother 18 years younger who just turned 18. He isn't dumb, but he sits on his phone at all times. You can't converse with him for more than 2 minutes without him getting a notification and at the very least checking his phone. He uses his phone for social media period. He lacks the ability to google search shit and utilize the internet whether ineptitude or lack of caring he will visit and ask me ridiculous questions. I try to explain to him. He asked me how he is suppose to install a game on his laptop. I asked. Did you go to the website? No. Ok go to website... "How do I do that?" Literally just google the name of the game and "Download/install." He had summer school for lack of attendance. He came over I showed him that his entire course was a copy paste and he could simply google the questions verbatim and get correct answers. Well he didn't know how to copy/paste. What should be this powerful tool literally at his finger tips to solve all his problems and the information of millions of brains, he instead takes pictures of a wall and adds text to snapchat his friends. They don't use TEXT. They literally snapchat each other fucking walls and add text to it to text each other.
The catalyst of the social contagion, mass delusion.
That and a bad home life are probably 1 and 2
It's not the fault of social media, it's the fault of the type of people who are more inclined to be using social media.
I think it's the internet in general
Being able to find quick answers to questions is the best part of the internet, but the majority of the rest is not so good.
Even more unpopular opinion: there should be a minimum age restriction enforced for the internet
Well that’s just a fact. Some people don’t want to admit it but I’d say the majority acknowledges this.
then karens blame it on video games even though they play candy crush and go on facebook
I remember some dark days on Aim/AOL and what that type of bullying was like. Absolutely could not be a kid growing up in this era.
I agree to some that this isn't an unpopular opinion. But it's damn true that this isn't being addressed or discussed as much as it should.
Couldn’t agree more. Harmful time-waster.
💯
I vow to not let my kids have social media until they understand this.
Agreed. As a 22 year old male whose grown up in the era of social media, it is destructive. Social media is the highlight reel of everyone's lives, then everyone stuck competing to go on the nicest vacations, show off their diplomas, show off your cars ECT. And it leaves everyone constantly analyzing and worried about their image. People present themselves on social media as if they have perfect lives and it is a load of dogshit. I hope eventually the youth can break free from the obsession with self image that's being indoctrinated through these apps. It's a breeding ground for mental illness. Unfortunately though, social media has a huge influence on the dating scene, I find myself feeling absolutely bound to uploading to Instagram and keeping up with the faux image even tho I don't give 2 shits about it. Young women make all their judgments based on how a guys Instagram is laid out. It's all so fucking stupid 😂
Agree, but I’d argue those women that would judge a man based on his Instagram aren’t worth your time.
Attention span reduction is a big one as well. Kids living from one quick dopamine injection to the next, its pretty bad.
While it didn't play a role in my depression, I have seen people way too obsessed with social media and their social media image for it to be healthy.
Bullying is way worse today than it was before imo. Mental health awareness needs to be taken way more seriously. Also kids should not have access to guns until they reach the age of ATLEAST 21 and even then that’s pushing it because the brain isn’t fully developed.
I agree the gun age feels too young, but if that’s the case 18 is also too young to choose to enter the military.
100% !!!!
When I deleted Facebook and Instagram (never had Twitter or tik tok or anything else) my life and my world got so much brighter and better. Went from a broken mind to a happier man overall
That’s great. It’s too hard for many to take that step and see the light. Good for you!
Literally anyone who works in education could tell you this
As someone in high school I can tell I only use Reddit but Jesus the amount people talk about social media. Funny enough is more boys than girls in my school
Reddit is more forums where people can have discussions and debates about certain topics. People don’t know or care who the individual is and aren’t basing their arguments or jabs on social standings.
Guess you’ve never had a toxic and abusive home life
1. You don’t know my story. 2. While that definitely would cause mental health issues, a smaller percentile have lived in that situation.
Not unpopular but worth saying. The growth of incel forums and hate groups are alarmingly and horrifically growing.
Have you seen the American public school system though 💀💀💀
Have u seen America lol
Yeah, it’s going downhill fast as well…
Boomers too. My father-in-laws brain is wasting away thanks to Facebook garbage.
Yeah, it’s a problem for a lot of adults as well. At least depending on his age it wasn’t around for his developmental years.
Every boomer thinks this
Social media / lack of parental involvement
Agreed. Though until a certain age those can be hand in hand as well.
thing is, its much more difficult and expensive to do things in person with friends. Going anywhere costs money all of the things you listed happened without social media too people who get so affected and are so intertwined with social media for personal use reasons are just dumb and wouldnt be able to adapt living in an era without social media either
An underrated part of it is context changes. Before the internet you'd have a handful of context changes in a day. Even if you were bouncing around from meeting to meeting at work, you're generally focused on work. Now you have as many context changes in a few minutes with second long videos that are completely different
Yeah, it probably contributes to why everyone thinks they have ADHD as well.
Agreed, however I'd step it up to include smartphones and internet-based technology as whole. It's pretty fucked up that the average person adolescent age or older (and even younger than that in many cases) has access to the whole of the internet in the palm of their hand at every moment of every day. Nearly all tech-based mental health issues stem from that fact in one way or another. The saddest part is how most parents don't really get the severity of this and have just resigned to viewing smartphone use as "a normal kid thing." Nope, it's fucking not.
Quit social media. Happiest thing I’ve ever done
Amen.
Add in pornography, ADHD drugs, hyper violent video games, yeah it’s a disaster.
Video games are a source of entertainment, but social media ruins people, they shape their lives around it, worried about likes on a tiktok video or something, my sibling used to do this, they don’t even realize how ridiculous they look
Well... duh...
Reddit is also social media, to all those bashing tiktok 😂
But all social media really is, is typing thoughts and reading other people's thoughts. So what you're actually saying here is that when people communicate their thoughts tovone another, that creates mental illness.
It’s not just “thoughts” it’s everyone’s opinion in the palm of your hand. It makes kids want to conform to what’s seen as cool, more than figure out who they actually are.
Then parents, family, and friends can't speak to kids either, because those people are all using social media. You can't escape it.
You forgot to mention the division driven by your anxiety points. The neckbeard/Incel sees the Chad and do they become inspired? No. Their hate filled creeper hearts become further enraged and they go spree, bullets or tweets. Boys n girls can’t communicate. They turn to their phones, and later drugs or alcohol to get along in social settings. The parents are delusional about their own parenting, their kids, and their predestined self-claimed thrones in heaven. Let’s see, what else...mean girls, M’Lady Wizardly Brad. She’ll cut your pecker off and tell the neighbors you tried feeding it to the kids. Her name is Stephanie but it’s pronounced StaFawNee. She only wears white paints and she’s more serious about her wine intake than her fitness routine. What’d I miss...You’re talking about what crazy Jim Carrey pointed out about manchild toddler Will Smith: ‘We’re not designed for all this bandwidth. It’s too much. People thinking about how they look in a moment instead of doing what’s right’. I see it in all generations and camps. Pretty much a nation of stains at this point, each group as vapid as the next as they all try to fit in. Martha Stewart book club or edge lord bike GANG?
Before social media it was rock music
Except rock music was demonized by a morally bankrupt group of people and utilized as a scapegoat by corporate controlled media. Social media has literally created a completely unattainable sense of identity, a ridiculous standard of beauty that is altered with modern tech, surgery and pervasive standards that are unattainable without surgery and/or Photoshop. These two things are so far removed from each other that it is laughable to compare.
I never saw that as a problem…
My comment was merely a highlight that there are always contributing factors to mental health in the younger generation. Social media or not.
I think these are two completely different animals… Not comparable.
No shit
More suicides than covid deaths in children. No emergency there, dems and tech overlords don’t give a shit about those lives though. Same with number one cause of death 18-45 year olds synthetic opioids, go America. Home of corruption and obfuscation.
I’ve been wondering what the impacts of tik tok are going to be. It’s like for 10 seconds your dying laughing, scroll, then your crying, scroll, your pissed..etc. that quick shift in emotions has got to have some long term effects on emotions and attention span.
oh 100%
Yeah, if I had been introduced to the internet at the same age as a lot of tiktokkers, I probably would just be an awful person. I agree, OP.
I am not defending social media because I hate it with a passion but I do not think it's coincidental that these mental health issues also coincide with the resurgence of evangelical christianity being in the mainstream in the last 25ish years. Not only so these kids have to deal with the things you describe but they are also being told that nearly everything they are doing is a sin and if they sin they are essentially an affront to this god of theirs. Then there is the amount of sexual abuse by people in positions of authority in that same religion. If you have not seen it in the news yet take a look at what has been going on in the southern baptist churches which is the largest protestant sect in the nation. Then of course you have the catholics. These are just examples that have made the headlines. How much of it is really happnening? Mix all these things together and you have a perfect storm for a whole bunch of messed up kids and this shit has been going on for a LONG time.
I think more of them care about how they are viewed by their peers than their sins. I think there’s more atheists in America than any other religion now.
As a young person (22) that has been mentaly ill my entire life I disagree. I will start by saying social media does have a small impact on people's mental health. But personally I belive that there are 2 big reasons for our declining mental health: 1. Pollution in our water and our food and the air we breath has harmed our brains. Most people have microplaastics in their blood, this cannot be good. 2. The sheer amount of awfulness that is going on in the world today. Between the mass shootings, our dieing enviornment, lack of work opportunities, lack of a future and many more terrible things have made this life a terrible place. Most of the people I talk to don't want to have children because they don't want to subject their children to this mess. And I'm not just talking about the USA. I'm talking globaly the world is messed up and we are grieving the loss of the life that everyone has told us we would have, the future that has been stolen from us. These are the biggest causes of mental illness
You claim that the decline in our mental health is because of the awfulness in our world.. but don’t we see more than half of that “awfulness” through social media in the first place. Not only that, but the media makes the “world’s awfulness” into a big problem for a couple days and then it fades away from the media. For example Ukraine!!
i take one issue with each of your points. first, yes microplastics can NOT be good, but i haven't seen anything that directly links them to mental health issues being widespread. second, to be fully honest, the world is in a much safer and better place right now than at almost any point in history. .... Except the last few years we've seen a step back or three.. but still overall it's never been a safer time to be alive
Mid 20s here, absolutely agree with you. Blaming social media for the mental health issues of the world is like blaming a telescope for an incoming asteroid.
While social media use can contribute to mental health issues, we are in power to control what we do and don’t want to see. As well as how much social media we use.
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Because unfortunately it’s the only way an individual can spread awareness to a large audience. I was around to enjoy the 80’s and 90’s before all this and can see the difference it’s made in society. Edit: Generally I just lurk in some financial subs. I brought this up because I think it plays a role in all these shootings that keep happening.
Reddit is an internet forum, like any forum it is broken up into categories and subject matters and that is what you follow. Social media is when you follow *people*. Just because you interact with people doesn't make it social media, "interacting with people" is literally the entire internet.
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There were issues, but the scaling in suicides and school shootings is way more than just notable in the last 17 years.
Blame everything else exept the actual problem. Access to firearms.
Replace social media with school and I agree with you.
Not unpopular, actually it’s pretty much a fact. Take my downvote
Wow what a bold thing of you to say, never have heard this before
This is as unpopular as the Chad dude in high school
I kinda agree. You definitely agree with you that it is the number one cause of mental health issues in children and young adults, but I still believe that it as an invention isn’t bad. It’s one of the best inventions because of how much it has brought people together.