@2something @mhoye I'm a little confused here.

What I'm saying is that the mental health of young people has taken a plunge. So has the mental health of older folks, but to a much, much lesser extent. So I think the mental health of young folks is the most acute issue.

We also have a history of having tighter laws for teenagers than for older people. When it comes to the use of various forms of drugs (Alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, etc.) and tools (cars, motorcycles, fatbikes, etc.)

@paranormal_distribution @mhoye (Fwiw, I do think the scientific consensus on what to do needs to hurry, one thing there is -really- broad consensus on is that mental health among all groups of young people has regressed tremendously in the last 10-15 years, and that's extremely concerning and feels like it requires us to do *something* (tm))

@paranormal_distribution @mhoye It's good to be aware of our biases. I live almost entirely without social media (this is probably the most I've posted in months :P), and am in outstanding mental health compared to many of my peers who easily spend 2-3 hours a day on social media and their phones. That certainly creates bias.

Similarly I drink a lot, and I find whenever studies show negative effects of alcohol consumption I approach them with much more skepticism then when they are positive.

@paranormal_distribution @mhoye n=1 obviously. Although I'm happy for you.

I, fortunately, grew up in an age without social media. I'd encourage you to delve more into the studies that have been done, the results are quite interesting.

Personally I'm in particular not sure an age limit will be affective. Then again, I'm also still skeptical of us raising the drinking age from 16 to 18. And I do believe drinking is probably bad for you in some way :p. (Although it helped me tremendously :-))

@paranormal_distribution @mhoye (And digging into some of the things in the PC1 'positive outcomes' section, aren't even describing net positive outcomes, they're really not even studies at all, an example is this one, https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/13/6/78 it is in itself a qualitative reading of a selection of papers.

But to be clear, even in somewhat more focused areas there -do- exist meta-analysis which give mixed results: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40038410/)

@paranormal_distribution @mhoye Many of the studies cited here are observational, rather than experimental. I'd say the most important studies to look at when thinking about policy decisions are probably experimental. Also many of these studies don't focus on young people, and particularly not on young women where the most significant mental health decline is observed.

If you focus on those studies you get a much more homogeneous result. This meta-analysis is rather broad.

@pmdj @bri7 @mhoye Humans are just not meant to carefully curate the information they're exposed to in order to match their pre-established ideas. Of course such selection has existed to some extent in various forms through sports clubs, churches, etc. But all of those had strong regional containment which meant a certain amount of diversity of thought is statistically almost guaranteed.

The lack of geographical barriers means groups with far less thought diversity are easily formed online.

@pmdj @bri7 @mhoye While I generally agree algorithmic filtering and recommendations make things worse, and have seen some papers that confirm that, I think the problem is larger than that.

Social media, even non algorithmic ones, give unprecedented capabilities for applying similarity bias and filtering, which has been shown to reduce diversity of thought and emotional resilience. This type of self-applied filtering is present even in social media not driven by external algorithms.

@bri7 @mhoye (To be clear, there are -some- studies and metaanalysis that have less clear conclusions on short term detoxes, an example here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40038410/ so definitely more research to be done. But generally early studies indicate the likelihood of significant effect)

@bri7 @mhoye I understand the sentiment, and it's difficult to separate different causes of mental health issues in our day and age. The particularly strong body of evidence in this case focuses on the -improvement- people experience in mental health, while the whole rest of our planetary shitshow stays constant, when cutting back on social media.

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35512731/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41294782/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38481298/
- https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/13/12/1004

@paranormal_distribution @mhoye Certainly correlation and causation are hard to distinguish. And doing experimental studies forcing someone into social media use is morally questionable. However some of the higher quality studies have studied the inverse, the -improvement- in mental health from social media 'detoxes'. Just a random selection:

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35512731/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41294782/
- https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/13/12/1004
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230614220707.htm

@confuseacat @mhoye Really? Any more than the Catholic church child abuse crisis. The wide-spread abuse of Canadian Indian children, i.e. countless abuses that have been happening in the open for centuries? I don't really see anything new or shocking in the Epstein case. Some powerful people, from Diddy to JFK and Chaplin, to the 'casting couch culture' in Hollywood have always abused their power to take advantage of young people.

@fluffykittycat @mhoye I see a single mention of Haidt there, which is for an event that features a whole host of prominent folks (and many scientists). It also wasn't hosted by Epstein, the invite list was mentioned in an e-mail exchange. It isn't obvious to me that this connects Haidt to Epstein in any meaningful way.

@fluffykittycat @mhoye Presumably you are talking about Jonathan Haidt here? Is there any evidence here for a connection between Haidt and Epstein? I'm not aware of any.

@mhoye (To be clear, I'm not sure age verification laws are the solution here.

I strongly suspect social media are just as bad for mental health in adults, they just take longer to really have a measurable impact there.

I don't actually know what the solution to the problem is. But I do think that it's important to acknowledge the body of evidence that social media, unlike the Epsteins of this world, poses a unique, unprecedented threat to mental health.)

@mhoye To be completely honest. My take here is that creeps like Epstein have been around for 100s of years. Be it in churches or a variety of other institutions.

The mental health of young people (and beyond, to some extent, but let's stick to young people for now), by any objective standard that I am aware of, has taken an incredible plunge since the age of social media.