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Yes, Social Media Really Is a Cause of the Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness
(www.afterbabel.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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asdfasfasf
Do you mean this one?
Because that's obviously correct. I don't know where you live, but I live in continental Europe, where issues such as "opioid crisis, school shootings and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence" simply do not exist or are, at worst, not increasing. (One exception might be a very specific variant of opioids, which is gambling. Edit: Besides, gambling is also heavily promoted online, made easier to access, even packaged into video games, so it's just a further problem for defending phone-/internet-centric teenage culture.) They also frequently have little to do with how young people feel, think and live in general even in US, as far as I see from the stuff (conversations, media) that I see online. Projecting these very specific issues onto all young people all across the world looks like nothing more than American defaultism.
I've read both the review and the response, and I find the response more convincing, supported by much more explicit data and clear arguments.
Racial and sexual discrimination in schools (and elsewhere) definitely exists here in Europe too and with the rise of right-wing parties is increasing in recent years.
Racial discrimination - depends on the region. Much of Europe is still fairly homogenous, thus the racism there cannot be statistically as harmful as in the US (which is not to say that those areas can't be or aren't quite racist). And yet I don't believe those areas are exempt from the general trend with mental illnesses, as I see at least in my own country. And even in the more heterogenous areas this probably barely begins to account for the trend, the illnesses are not confined to the discriminated populations.
Sexual discrimination is what I include under things that are "at worst, not increasing". If it's not rising , it doesn't explain the rise in mental illnesses.
In the end, out of four proposed causes two are clearly irrelevant, and two can account for the trend only partially at most.
IMO many of these parties are also symptoms of phone and internet overuse too. Much of the ideas, values and language of many new European right-wing parties is clearly imported from online American conservative discourse, without regard for the reality of local society. In my country where gender transitions are very difficult to undergo, where non-binary people simply do not exist in the public sphere at all, new right-wing parties will still talk about the nefarious "gender ideology", declaring there can be only two genders, etc. This is literal Internet-induced delusion.
asdfasfasf
You're ignoring the fact I wrote "which is not to say that those areas can’t be or aren’t quite racist". The racism, no matter how heinous, if it can only affect a smaller percentage of the population, or those who aren't even the citizens of the country (as it happens with migrants from the Middle East and north Africa), cannot have much to do with the mental illnesses of European teenagers accross all social and ethnic groups.
I do not get the impression you're even trying to argue against my or Haidt's position at this point, you've simply waved away all the arguments he has brought up, and now are ignoring entire sentences from my comments.
asdfasfasf
As opposed to ignoring a whole sentence that I wrote in order to make me come off as if I deny the existence of racism?
I'm not downplaying its existence but its wider social effects. If a society of two thousand people is racist against two members of that society, that is not likely to affect the mental health of dozens of members of the society - at most only those two who are the direct victims and those who are close to them.