from Hacker News

Honestly, It's Probably the Phones

by jinjin2 on 3/2/23, 9:51 AM with 606 comments

by fleddr on 3/2/23, 4:00 PM
We're biological creatures evolved to be outside, to interact with the physical world and real people.
It's easily replicable. Go out for some more walks, plan more visits with friends, do some wood craft, gardening or whatever else physical. Your mood will instantly improve, reliably. Because this is your natural state.
At the same time, we also have the built-in tendency to optimize for convenience. That too is perfectly natural. Hence we fully embrace all technology but forget about the cost: drifting ever further away from our very being. We're our own enemy. A common example here on HN would be the excitement regarding working from home. I get it, I love it too. But let's not dismiss that this further tilts things into a flat, isolated, touchless society. You want it, but it's still really bad for you.
Further, as conscious creatures we're not designed to process the information avalanche of the modern age. We process more of it in a day than somebody did in an entire lifetime 2 centuries ago. Likewise we're not designed for the current speed of change.
And finally, we're social creatures but not designed for it at a scale of millions or billions of people. We cannot empathize with the culture, politics and differences of that scale.
by whywhywhywhy on 3/2/23, 10:58 AM
>rise of smartphones was also the rise of “phubbing”, i.e. when people go on their phones instead of paying attention to the people around them
Got a few tips for this, first obviously if you’re meeting with people never do it yourself, one person doing it always causes chain reactions.
If you’re meeting with one person and they start doing it never use it as an excuse to check your own phone just sit there in silence waiting for them if they’re distracted by it. This works surprisingly well and it’s funny how often people apologize, when if you check your own phone it’s always considered fine you don’t get the apology.
If you’re in a group and talking about something factual like when a movie came out or a directors name and someone reaches for their phone to google because of the compulsion and just desire to stare into their phone is getting too much, just say “it’s not important” and move on or actually I’m going to start just lying I mean it doesn’t really matter we gain nothing from having the exact answer and actually sometimes the conversation is better and the answer comes to you if you don’t check. This one bugs me a lot because like all you get is someone messing around on their phone and then announcing “it was blah blah” then everyone going “oh ok” like the act of checking the phone added nothing to the conversation, we can talk around ideas without knowing exactly who or when what happened. It just made that person addicted to their phone get their fix.
by bnralt on 3/2/23, 2:27 PM
> Side note: Interestingly, teen loneliness briefly went way down from about 1996 to about 2006. That’s consistent with the idea that the old computer-based internet was a complement to in-person interaction
That’s been my experience too. In the early year, I remember having long conversations with different friends every night on AIM. Even some casual acquaintances ended up being good friends because of the conversation we had. I kept up with people all over the world with personal e-mail, sometimes for years.
It does seems that between 2010-14 or so, people disappeared en masse from AIM. People stopped writing back to personal e-mail. Everyone migrated to social media, even though social media wasn’t a replacement. Every thing was public, good friend and strangers being in the same bucket. Long form conversations between two people disappeared. Someone would through out something to everyone they were connected to, and you could comment or ignore it. Communication just became very public, impersonal, and shallow.
by mydriasis on 3/2/23, 2:45 PM
Yes, it's the phones. This comment section feels a little better than the last few times this obvious idea has been pointed out -- generally when folks have blamed the phones in the past, dopamine fiends have come out of the woodwork to defend their devices and blame _everything else but the phones_.
This tech is _straight up bad for you_. We like to pretend like having the internet accessible at all times is strictly a marvel of human achievement. While it is indeed a marvel, it's also been contorted into a disgusting mess that's specifically designed to keep you coming back to it like an addict after a fix. An entire industry has been built around sucking you into your device.
The idea that we're giving something this poisonous to children -- and further, that it's a social norm to do so -- _really_ gives me pause.
by thenerdhead on 3/2/23, 11:59 AM
It's probably the phones when you zoom into the last few years. But it goes back even further.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimina...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest
The core idea is that something becomes so addicting that you lose the ability to do anything else.
Concrete example: A few years ago I decided I had enough technology usage and started to taper off and remove many devices from my living spaces. As I did this, I regained the ability to do more things. Some of those things involved writing a couple books(one on this topic specifically). Some of those things got me promoted at work. Some of those things had me present in my kids activities. Some of those things had me building a community around a new sport I've never played -- basketball.
by techstrategist on 3/2/23, 11:51 AM
My recent anecdote. Last month my phone broke: the touch screen would stop responding, but I could still connect a Bluetooth keyboard and headphones. After maybe 5 hard resets in a row, the screen would work again for a few minutes or hours.
After a few days, my head was clearer. I was sleeping better. My relationship felt better than ever, because we wouldn’t both lay next to each other on our phones before sleeping. My time with my kids was more focused, and I was more patient and fun.
In week 2, I commented to my wife that I don’t know what changed, but I felt better than ever. At the time I attributed it to a new therapy lamp.
After a few weeks, I finally acknowledged that due to my responsibilities I do need a working phone 100% of the time and I replaced it with a newer, modestly fancier one. In the month since, nothing else has changed: same therapy light (and now longer daylight hours); no dietary or outside well-being changes or adverse events. But that positivity isn’t there anymore. I don’t think I fully acknowledged that until this moment. And I’m still not sure what do do about it.
by sussexby on 3/2/23, 10:52 AM
Humanity needs constraint.
Beautiful art is created with constraint - here's a statue I carved purely out of one of the most difficult materials, marble.
The most significant speeches of our time are delivered once, not on repeat.
Even, on topic with the post, in my opinion Twitter's early attractiveness was the challenge of posting on a subject within the character limit constraint.
Our default state as a species is to find ways to survive. Constraint flexes our brains to develop innovative ways to reach a goal. Information about other people is a significant asset in survival because we're built to learn things from others and to use that knowledge to further out survival. Simply standing in my house and saying "oh wow" will make my kids run to me to ask what it is.
The current information age is tapping on all the systems we've evolved to survive in terms of information gathering, it's just that knowing that someone is eating a delicious meal in the city is not critical to survival - but once you know the information you can't unknow it leading to information overload. We're coaxed into feeling like we should care and we should know but it's a huge tax on the brain to deal with the complexity of the world.
"Could I interest you in everything all of the time." - Bo Burnham
by INTPenis on 3/2/23, 2:45 PM
I have my own hypothesis. I was born in the mid 80s, just FYI in case it makes a difference to my perspective.
It's information overload. And not just information overload, but the type of information people are consuming from online sources.
The brain is a lot better at quickly picking up subtle information than we might give it credit for. Just scrolling through a feed you see hundreds of impressions every minute, maybe thousands.
We might think we're just scrolling and we're not actually picking anything up but the brain is subtly reading all of those little messages. Not only is it hard to digest, but the type of information is often unfiltered intrusive thoughts that one wouldn't normally share IRL.
Add to that the fact that you can't just be yourself these days without someone filming you, and you become a meme. We started laughing at people for being themselves and being filmed, and now we're afraid of becoming a meme ourselves.
So two major factors for unhappiness in this age I believe are people censoring their real selves, or feeling ashamed of what's in their heads, and constantly being fed the opinions of thousands of strangers in a never ending stream.
English isn't my first language so I'm sorry if this is misunderstood by someone, please know that I'm just freely typing here with no former education or any research to back this up. It's just a gut feeling.
I just don't think the human brain was designed to cope with all this constant information. Not just news, but also psychological information about what people think or feel, all over the world. It's confusing us and distracting us from self care.
by poulpy123 on 3/2/23, 11:14 AM
> One possible reason, suggested by Taylor Lorenz, is that between climate change, inequality, precarity, and Covid, the world is just a much worse place than it was in 2011. But as I pointed out in a post last week, most of these things (except for Covid, obviously) were looking worse a decade ago:
Sorry but no. I was there ten years ago and climate change was much less clear for the average person than now.
In my country the inequalities and precarity were also less worse (I don't know for the US though)
I'm not downplaying social media and phones, they have a big responsability too
by Utkarsh_Mood on 3/2/23, 11:29 AM
Definitely agree with this article, Im a teenager(17M) who doesn't keep a smartphone(shocker, I know) and the frequency with which my friends bring its usage into conversation is definitely frustrating and awkward at times. A lot of people basically now gauge the worth of others by the followers they have and it’s ridiculous. Then there’s also the hate accounts being made to target other individuals on Instagram and the like. Social media really has made people more shallow in my opinion and reduced the chance of actually having meaningful conversations with friends.
by makeitdouble on 3/2/23, 11:03 AM
> Eric Levitz points out that life in the U.S. is much better, in terms of material standards, than it used to be back in the days when teen suicide rates were much lower. In fact, if anything, wealth seems to make teens less happy;
This point was followed about liberal politics, before diving into why it was the phone.
Couldn't there be more of an effort to find what teens care about beyond money and politics ?
I'd also give an alternative take: the state of society is horrible and teens care about the world they'll be living in.
Sure phones make these issues more apparent, info flows faster, further. School shootings don't stay local news. Olympics Committee corruption is not burtied in the 20h news. Instagram pushes our esthetics stronger than previous media.
Then can't the issue be that we're horrible and it's way more exposed than before ?
The conclusion could have been to fix the world one step at a time, instead of going for the "close your eyes, shut your ears, hold your nose and you won't be bothered by the place you stand."
by Tade0 on 3/2/23, 10:59 AM
> In any case, the data clearly shows that isolation is increasing. Teens had been getting gradually more isolated through the decades — perhaps as a result of larger houses and better entertainment options at home.
Or just the fact that according to surveys, Americans are, ahem, split on whether 12-year-old should, by law, be required to have supervision.
I don't have specific statistics on teenage suicide in the EU, but the general rate has been falling over the same period despite roughly the same level of exposure to phones and social media.
by jrochkind1 on 3/2/23, 3:59 PM
This rings so true to me.
I'm in my late 40s, so sometimes I think this is just a consequence of my age -- everyone at this age, for a thousand years, has started thinking things were better when they were kids (get off my lawn!), and the cause is technological changes.
But frequently my much younger acquaintances will agree with me... on the other handn they didn't actually experience it, maybe they just think that's what they're supposed to say.
I still suspect I'm right, and all of this OP matches my thoughts/observations.
Especially that it's about social isolation -- and that the technology of connection in our pockets, despite everything 1990s techno-utopian Mondo 2000 me would have thought -- has led to drastically increased social isolation.
Covid hasn't helped.
I really believe that if we didn't have the internet, we coudln't possibly have isolated as much as we did -- as much as we, on the whole still are, with social changes that seem permanent -- in response to covid -- no matter the dangers. (They couldn't possibly have isolated to the level we did in response to the early 20th c flu epidemic, can they?)
The internet is what made it possible to have that level of isolation.
Or to seem possible.
In fact, it is disastrous for us personally and socially and continues to be -- what seemed possible is not in fact possible as a successful way to live and have a society.
by cousin_it on 3/2/23, 11:28 AM
I never had a smartphone. My social life did get worse when everyone around started getting smartphones. You could say just make friends with other people who dislike smartphones, but it's tricky when most people I come in random contact with (at work, in other environments) use smartphones.
by app4soft on 3/2/23, 2:31 PM
> Things started getting worse around 2012 or 2013
During 2012-2013 all Symbian[0] smartphones got last updates and then was abandoned by Nokia.[1,2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian
[1] https://www.phonearena.com/news/The-last-Symbian-update-FP2-...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/13/rip-symbian/
by JPKab on 3/2/23, 5:19 PM
I'm a subscriber of Noah's, really like his writing, and think this is a pretty good take. However, he doesn't have kids, and probably doesn't get a full dose of some of the nuance as to some further observations that would give his claims higher confidence.
He misses the tipping point:
Kids on phones and highly addictive, social/collaborative video games (think Fortnite) means less kids in any given OUTSIDE space hanging out. The less kids hanging out in those spaces, the less likely a kid encounters peers their age in a given outdoor/social space. The less likely they encounter peers in those spaces, the less likely they'll even TRY to go to those spaces. It's a tipping point that executes the network effects of growth in reverse. And it's entirely a cascade caused by lazy, overly permissive parents who use screens as babysitters and rationalize it away with either learned helplessness ("I'm too old to understand this tech, how can i regulate it") or the utter BS of "they're learning technology for a future career", as if scrolling tiktok for 7 hours a day teaches kids to code.
I have a 16 year old son. It's hard to emphasize how little they socialize in person nowadays. If a kid spends the night, he'll complain about us having only one Xbox and TV, and how he can't play Fortnite at the same time as the other kid. They PREFER to be in their room at home, playing the same game while talking to my son over a headset.
by spaceman_2020 on 3/2/23, 12:17 PM
Social media is such a weird thing. You feel envy even when you're doing pretty well.
Like I would see some old school friend sharing vacation pictures on Instagram and I would somehow feel an instant pang of envy. Even though I had been on a vacation literally a month back.
I concluded that I was getting absolutely nothing out of social media. The entertainment is middling at best. The connections are shallow. And the feeling of envy can be overwhelming.
Deleted Instagram and Facebook. Kept WhatsApp because that has actual friends and family. Kept Twitter because shitposting on anonymous accounts is actually fun and has no impact on my state of wellbeing.
Also, I don't know what TikTok is like because its banned in my country, but Facebook and Instagram (especially Instagram) seem to be the most mentally damaging of all social media apps. Maybe its because of its culture or maybe its designed to be that way, but it really, truly is awful.
by Barrin92 on 3/2/23, 11:40 AM
>Eric Levitz points out that life in the U.S. is much better, in terms of material standards, than it used to be back in the days when teen suicide rates were much lower. In fact, if anything, wealth seems to make teens less happy; a new paper by Rudolf & Bethmann finds that although rich countries tend to have happier adults, their adolescents tend to have lower life satisfaction.
Noah Smith given his political persuasion dismisses the most obvious common thread, one that Robert Sapolsky has written about for decades. While absolute wealth has increased so has inequality, and there is strong empirical evidence that links relative inequality to mental and biological harm.[1]
The relationship to social media and smartphones seems intuitive. They're an amplifier and visualizer of inequality. Social media gives influencers, celebrities a gigantic platform to broadcast their unreachable lifestyles. and being a socialite/influencer is now often listed as the, or one of the, most popular 'professions' among teens. Even ordinary users constantly idealize their own appearance and circumstances.
It almost takes magical thinking to arrive at the conclusion that phones and the applications they enable have some mystical causal powers rather than accepting the most straightforward explanation. They're simply very accurate mirrors of the ever-increasing competitive and unequal social system which induces real, physiological stress in our populations.
[1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-economic-ineq...
by seydor on 3/2/23, 10:54 AM
It's like looking at their friends through a looking glass (literally) which i suppose does take some emotional toll and frustration on them
But there's also something more grave, the lack of digital skills that dumbed-down phones cannot teach. Post-millenials have just not experienced complex, hierarchical computer interfaces and it shows when they are required to use something that is complex or when they use old software. It isnt what the future was supposed to be
by api on 3/2/23, 11:32 AM
It’s not just phones. It’s social media combined with phones.
Social media is toxic but when it’s confined to a browser on a computer your use is somewhat limited. Making it so portable allows people to always be addicted.
The worst part of social media with phones is notifications. The social app literally vibrates in your pocket and demands your attention, taking it away from anyone you are with. A PC never did that.
I have no social apps on my phone and turn off most notifications. I do browse some things like this site but when I put it away it is away and doesn’t pester me.
by roca on 3/2/23, 10:53 AM
I suspect AI is going to make today's teenagers feel a lot worse. How can you imagine a future for yourself when any skill you might learn might be obsolete by the time you learn it?
by amadeuspagel on 3/2/23, 10:47 AM
> And third, in-person interaction is a network effect. If 20% of people would rather be on their phones, that reduces everyone else’s options for in-person hangouts by 20%.
That should only be a problem if you can only hang out with a fixed group. If you live in a city of five million people, it shouldn't make much of a difference if one million of them would rather be on their phones then hang out in person. That's still four million people to hang out with. The only question is how to find those people. Meetups are one way.
by superb-owl on 3/2/23, 2:29 PM
If you're looking to detox, but don't want to regress all the way to a dumbphone, Unihertz has some great tiny Android phones: https://www.unihertz.com/
Everything works (Maps, Uber, etc) but the screen is so small you won't want to use it very much.
by tgv on 3/2/23, 11:47 AM
> In fact, our best move may simply be to wait for society to adapt. In the past, humans have shown a remarkable ability to change ...
But not so much with things that fuck with our minds. Religion is a phenomenon that changes our views fundamentally, and I can't say we have overcome its influence, despite it being around for over 5000 years.
by ChaitanyaSai on 3/2/23, 11:54 AM
The liberal/conservative gap is interesting. How much of that is due to religious or spiritual practice? What do we find deep meaning in now? For so many who are drawn to movements like effective altriusm, might that meaning come from a focus on challenges the world is facing. Does that focus dwell too much on the negative?
by hn8305823 on 3/2/23, 3:27 PM
Phones are certainly a major factor but what about kids not being allowed to play outside? Numerous studies have shown spending time in nature provides significant mental health benefits, so the extreme opposite must be pretty awful.
by NoGravitas on 3/2/23, 3:58 PM
Eh, the phones don't help, and surely contribute to the problem, but fact is, young people are growing up in a cyberpunk dystopia with No Future but the Jackpot. Anxiety and depression are perfectly normal reactions to that. Trying to be a Pinker Thinker and claiming that everything is rosy is just sticking your head in the sand because you personally benefit from the status quo.
by unityByFreedom on 3/2/23, 1:16 PM
See also Jonathan Haidt's "Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence."
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
by quitit on 3/2/23, 12:37 PM
Anecdotally (i.e. the children around me and clients who have approached me with specific problems because they're not well versed with social media).
- 1. Spending a long amount of time interacting online, obviously means that what happens online is a bigger part of their world. Reducing online time is not a small feat, the child needs alternatives not just to be subjected to boredom.
- 2. Better access to information has matured a lot of the topics that children are exposed to. Young people often feel their life position is in immediate danger as they don't know how to fully interpret risks like their parents.
- 3. It's much easier to see what you do and don't have in comparison to others (a problem not unique to children.)
- 4. Online allows for more adversarial discourse (plenty here in HN too), a lot of people don't know how to disagree without involving some kind of personal and emotionally driven response. They feel that all ideas are somehow attached to and define oneself, and thus must be protected - even from new information. While this is tied to the development of the brain, parents here can impart skills to their children to better manage these situations.
- 5. Kids have found new ways to be cruel to each other that extends beyond the playground and easily supervised spaces.
- 6. Online/social media has embraced reaction/feedback systems to harvest data for algorithmically generated content and moderation. This in turn has made people accustomed to valuing their input based on how others have valued it. Unlike the past, kids can see very clearly who doesn't like them. It's also a pathway for sexual abuse as children can be coerced (i.e. groomed) into posting more and more revealing content for 'likes' - even from their peers: as they may learn to value themselves by their appearance.
- 7. Kids feel even more pressure to conform and disguise themselves. Reddit has their "hivemind" for example, and presenting counter-points must be done carefully, almost PR-like manner or risk being abused by strangers.
Parents need to find ways of disrupting these negative influences and reducing online time to deemphasise the role it has in childrens' lives. Games and activities are a good way of developing the child's interests in a way that can make online/social media feel small in comparison, while also helping them develop confidence and coping skills (such as dealing with disappointment, adversaries or those that disagree.) In general I notice that people who use online as a resource are mentally better than those who use it to fill boredom.
by boilerupnc on 3/2/23, 11:58 AM
This reminds me of that promotion for the “Offline Glass” [0]. Was a funny idea with some merit to encourage folks to either drink constantly or keep their phones down (as much as possible) “You can’t hold your phone because of the unique shape of the glass’ bottom.
The glass has a notch cut out of it so it will only stand if it’s situated on top of a phone”
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/18/the-offline-glass-ensures-...
by DeathArrow on 3/2/23, 2:47 PM
A few days ago I saw two dudes who sat at a restaurant table and were talking to each other instead of staring at their phones like normal people do. What weirdos, I thought at first. But maybe there's a better explanation, maybe their phones were broken.
by VLM on 3/2/23, 2:48 PM
Its a pity the data is so out of date in the article. Remember, things start, but they also stop. Sounds dumb but in context its insightful.
Lets take the hypothesis as true that as as smart phone use goes up 10% per year, the "Z" measure goes up 0.5. Whatever a "Z" is? Regardless, cell phone use started going up coincidentally at the same time Z started going up. Thus is astrology proven. No wait seriously the point is cell phone use can only go up to near 100% one time. So what happened to the annual 0.5 increase in "Z" after cell phone use topped out at 80% or 90% or 100% or so? Sorry, no data provided.
Another interesting idea: There's a deeper level to phone or social media use. Perhaps its Facebook. I know my kids generation has pretty much abandoned FB, so if its a FB specific problem it should reflect in "Z" levels. Or online dating. Or onlyfans as a job market.
Another interesting idea long the lines of astrology where coincidences prove cause and effect: Peak legacy style TV viewing hours per day was around 2010. Perhaps enormous amounts of professionally produced propaganda had a sedative effect on teens, or professionally produced propaganda in TV form is more effective than social media form.
by eru on 3/2/23, 3:40 PM
> One possible reason, suggested by Taylor Lorenz, is that between climate change, inequality, precarity, and Covid, the world is just a much worse place than it was in 2011. But as I pointed out in a post last week, most of these things (except for Covid, obviously) were looking worse a decade ago: [...]
Eh, what people worry about vs how bad things actually are is only weakly correlated.
by klooney on 3/2/23, 4:15 PM
> TV was despised by whole generations of educated Americans — an “idiot box” that would shorten your attention span and rot your brain.
The whole first or second chapter of Bowling Alone is about network effects causing downward spirals in socialization, with TV as the primary substitute. It's basically the same story as Haidt's. They were probably right.
by margorczynski on 3/2/23, 11:46 AM
Don't want to be a Ted Kaczynski but a lot of the tech progress we've made in the last decades was/is actually detrimental to human happiness.
We just ask ourselves "can we" instead of "should we" and the first to pay the price for that hubris are the children.
by alexb_ on 3/2/23, 2:22 PM
A part of the problem is that social media is at a point where being the 1 person to drop it as a teenager could have significant worsening effects purely because you now have absolutely no way to talk with friends outside of school (because they are all on social media)
by Havoc on 3/2/23, 1:55 PM
> Things started getting worse around 2012 or 2013:
That's easy:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=i...
by slifin on 3/2/23, 2:18 PM
Probably also from an increase in car dependency
It means kids cannot play outside or go to a friends house etc
Adults don't typically suffer the same restrictions so at least have an alternative to their phones
by epups on 3/2/23, 10:55 AM
I think we should talk more specifically than "phones" or "the Internet". For example, the rise of "phones" from 2012 onwards coincided with the dominance of social media.
I know this sounds pedantic but the author lists several studies pointing to social media impact, and still decided to go with that title and a big picture of Steve Jobs. If we forbid smartphones tomorrow and kept the rest of the Internet the same, I doubt anything would be much different at all.
by thriftwy on 3/2/23, 10:45 AM
There are the two famous Russian Questions:
"What is to be done?"[1]
"Who is to blame?"
As you have guessed correctly, the latter does not give you anything meaningful. If you take a phone off a depressed teenager, you get a suicidal teenager. What are you going to do about that?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel)
by DFHippie on 3/2/23, 5:25 PM
The people who point to the current state of material plenty and say it therefore can't be the state of the world are mistaken. If you anticipate loss, you will be unhappy. It doesn't matter how rich and comfortable you are. Anxiety is about anticipated threat. And if you believe you are powerless to counter an anticipated threat anxiety becomes despair.
As to whether it is phones, maybe. I know I have three college age kids who are all varying degrees of unhappy, aside from the one who just took his own life. The one who died had almost no presence on social media at any time in his life. The happier of the remaining two spends the most time on her phone and social media.
There must be some underlying cause or suite of causes. I know the phone doesn't fit in their cases. The ever more evident horribleness of much of humanity has clearly weighed on all three. I don't think it was the principle factor in the death of my son. And I know the "but they're rich, healthy, and safe!" argument doesn't do all the work it's supposed to do.
by XorNot on 3/2/23, 4:24 PM
I find it very hard to believe "it's the phones", when 1 in every 8 teen girls reports being a victim of rape.[1]
> Of note: 18% of teen girls said they had experienced some form of sexual violence in the past year, compared to only 5% of teen boys.
> The rate of teen girls who have experienced sexual violence has increased by 20% since 2017, when the CDC first started tracking the measure, per ABC News. "The percentage of male students who experienced sexual violence by anyone did not change," the report stated. Nearly 15% of teen girls said they had ever been forced to have sex, a 27% jump from 2019 and the first increase since the CDC began tracking the metric, per the Washington Post.
```
    4% of teen boys said they had ever been forced to have sex, with no increase reported.
```
[1] https://www.axios.com/2023/02/13/teen-girls-sadness-violence...
by tcmb on 3/2/23, 10:55 AM
The article erroneously links to a local file for a publication by Jean Twenge, which is most likely this one: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1176/appi.prcp.2...
by anonymoose33282 on 3/2/23, 5:32 PM
I think it’s also how we interact with them. I remember being “chronically online” as a teenager 15 years ago without a phone, just playing MMORPGs all day and me and my friends (all internet friends the same age, didn’t meet IRL until our early 20s) didn’t have the same issues that teenagers are dealing with now.
I think there’s something inherently comparative and consumerist to social media. I’ve travelled a lot, despite being under 30, and in the last couple years I really felt like a lot of it was just to earn some “achievement” after seeing other people I know traveling places.
I haven’t been on any social media for over a year now, and that latent background noise of “I need to do this, go there, buy that” has faded.
I’d usually consider myself pretty immune to stuff like that but social media often feels like MTV Cribs, just for every social class, and that’s maybe what’s so insidious about it.
by profstasiak on 3/2/23, 11:36 AM
gentle reminder that browsing comments on HN makes you more isolated and less happy
by crawfordcomeaux on 3/2/23, 2:59 PM
At what point does carrying around cell and wifi jammers become a public health service? What's the safest protocol for doing this? The last thing I would want is to be involved in a car accident and prevent medical personnel from being called.
by o_nate on 3/2/23, 8:28 PM
Phones may have something to do with it, but I'm surprised that nowhere in his article does Noah mention the other major change in the US social landscape over this time range: the widespread legalization of marijuana products. I realize it's not "legal" for teens but you're not living in reality if you don't think it's become much easier for teens to get ahold of potent weed and a myriad of products like weed gummies that didn't even exist before. The links between marijuana use and teen depression are well documented.
by Clent on 3/2/23, 5:58 PM
This issue isn't the device.
It's how the device is being used.
Most of this is explained by social media algorithms.
If you are a developer on these projects, it's going to be hard but you need to accept your slice of responsibility here.
by taeric on 3/2/23, 9:24 PM
Oh wow. I was all prepared to agree that it is a big smoking gun; and then I got to the "smart phones were invented in 2007."
I mean, not wrong? Ish. But phones were a much larger part of especially college age youth well before that. Were they as "smart" as what we have now? Of course not. But they still had tons of text and basic news capability for a long time.
I think it is still a strong correlation that does need to be shown as not causal. I cannot think they "sprang from nowhere" as implied by the claim, though.
by numbers_guy on 3/2/23, 7:17 PM
The "phones" aka the Internet ruined everything for me when it come to social life. It used to be, and I caught that briefly, but it used to be that if you had to do something, you had to meet up with people. Maybe we hated it at the time, but meeting up with people forces you to socialize and also keeps you grounded. And moreover it provides social opportunities. I mean, this is not just teenagers suffering from lack of opportunities to socialize.
by lubesGordi on 3/2/23, 7:10 PM
Anecdotally my anxiety and unhappiness started going way up around 2012/2013 because the loose social groups I was involved with were using facebook to organize, and I'm one of those people who is too literal or sarcastic or something to come off right on social media and so I had difficulty integrating. Previously, my socializing involved more face to face or calls or texts about what was going on, something I'm much better at.
by logicalmonster on 3/2/23, 5:02 PM
Anything complicated when it comes to society usually has more than 1 direct or indirect cause. I'm sure phones (and IMO the way online dating works) contribute heavily to some young peoples unhappiness, but there's many other potential reasons why young people might be hopeless for the future. And it might not necessarily be the phones in and of themselves, but something within social media itself.
by lampshades on 3/2/23, 5:09 PM
I know a complain about WFH frequently (maybe you’ve seen me post about it) but I’m pretty sure it’s not doing anything to help our isolation situation.
by lizard_brain on 3/2/23, 7:15 PM
Blaming the phones is like blaming Gutenberg for the Thirty Years War.
The prime issue is a lack of intentionality and discipline around how people spend their time.
by MagicMoonlight on 3/2/23, 2:23 PM
Maybe the world did end in 2012
by moving_sofa on 3/3/23, 11:09 AM
What also contributes to <18 (and the elderly) social isolation is the car-centric urban planning which denies mobility freedom to this demographics. This is even more relevant in North America
Why We Won't Raise Our Kids in Suburbia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw
by braingenious on 3/2/23, 6:11 PM
Gotta love all these articles navel-gazing about the cause of teenage depression by econ bloggers.
Has anybody done a poll and asked teens what they’re sad about?
It’s really quite funny to see somebody take Matt Yglesias seriously. The self-described “professional take-haver” looked at two graphs, nodded his head and wrote down “this is causation”, and he’s talking about people having progressive politics!
by finfrastrcuture on 3/2/23, 5:10 PM
Anecdotal, but I've noticed that the seniors in my life are often just as addicted - if not more so - than the 'youths'. Seniors not only have just as much free time as teenagers, but also nobody to tell them no / stop it!
I would love to see an article of the same caliber exploring if the data suggests a link between the rise of phones and senior depression rates.
by MBCook on 3/2/23, 9:57 PM
Yep. The phones.
Not the erosion of rights. Not the Supreme Court ignoring precedent and making partisan decisions. Not books being taken away from schools. Not a pandemic. Not seeing an attempt at overthrowing the government. Not the planet boiling and no one doing anything anything about it.
It can’t be that they can’t find jobs that treat them decently. Or even like the job wanted them to live. Or that they can’t afford school. Or a car. Or to move out. Or to have kids. Or healthcare. Or that they likely know someone crippled by medical debt. Or the opioid crisis. Or that they’ve seen police abuse of power (in person and/or the media). That no one seems accountable for anything.
Couldn’t be the fact the can’t find a counselor/psychiatrist even if they could afford it because there aren’t enough. Or there’s a war on threatening global tensions. No one is “in it together”, the pandemic proved that, so you’re on your own. Extracurriculars cost too much, so you may not even get to try. Your teachers are burnt out and leaving. Even if they aren’t and are good there is a good chance you can’t learn well thanks to disruptive students. Good luck if you’re bored because you need more challenge.
Also? School bathrooms didn’t work for months because other kids kept tearing stuff off the walls as a “prank”.
That’s all off the top of my head.
Yeah. It’s the phones. If we took the phones away everything would be peachy and kids would be happy again.
EDIT: all that and I forgot school/mass shootings and active shooter drills!
by greenhearth on 3/2/23, 4:34 PM
"News organizations and social media shouters have an incentive to show you bad news, because that’s what gets them attention and clout and/or money."
Yeah, maybe there's a lot of this stuff, e.g. Vice is the major misery fetish peddler. But can't the journalists be reporting the bad news because it's actually news and needs to be reported?
by 6_6_6 on 3/2/23, 2:05 PM
this article is a garden variety of corelations
life is more complex and intertwined
by ixtli on 3/2/23, 8:07 PM
Im really happy that people are talking about this but the article doesn't seem to consider the fact that over this period we (americans) have also dramatically increased the quality and breadth of our conversation around mental health. so it could just be that now people are reporting things
by pksebben on 3/2/23, 4:58 PM
> Industrial society itself was feared and hated for centuries by people who thought it would separate us from the land and commodify our existences. And yet very few of those panics were borne out in the long term
this was not a great point to end that list with. We are commodified to the gills.
by Name_Chawps on 3/2/23, 6:30 PM
Could a healthy middle ground between doing nothing and banning all social media be banning social media on small mobile devices?
Only allow TikTok and Instagram etc. to be installed on desktop computers, laptops, and maybe tablets?
That way people can use them without being glued to them 24/7?
by disqard on 3/2/23, 11:42 PM
> "it’s easier to just text a friend instead of going and hanging out, even if the latter would be less fulfilling"
I think that's a typo, and should be "the latter would be more fulfilling"?
Or else, I'm confused...
by mbrochh on 3/3/23, 2:43 AM
That, and the carbs. The time and attention that the phones suck up, also make everyone more likely to consume quick an easy carbs. But it's the carbs that ultimately fuck up your body and then your brain.
by TurkishPoptart on 3/2/23, 9:13 PM
I miss my old life. It feels like another world. Before Twitter took over the world and back when I saw people every day, and didn't think the world was conspiring to turn me into an API input and output.
by expazl on 3/2/23, 7:07 PM
> The most plausible explanation for teenage unhappiness.
For any explanation to be plausible it has to take into consideration that America is not the world. We don't see the same sharp rises in depression amongs teens in europe, and guess what, europe has phones too, it has social media too. The explanation has to be rooted in something that's taking into account the differences between USA and the rest of the world. One thing that comes to mind is that children likley suffer trauma when they see students murder other students or shoot their teachers, or hear news about such events. But I don't quite think the size of the problem matches the size of depression statistics, even if rampant school shootings and gun violence are a uniquely american problem.
by SilverBirch on 3/2/23, 4:33 PM
I don't know if my work is impacting how I'm viewing my procrastination from my work, but I view this the same way that I view basically everything I see at my job: "You don't have enough data to say that". Graph of depression scores between 2000-2018. Ok, that tells us...er... not much! And then to take that really limited bit of data and just pick a random technology that doesn't really line up with the timeline at all.... errr? Social media was at like 50% penetration in 2010, we know young people were early adopters, and yet the depression numbers don't break out of their normal range 2013. This is taking very little data and lining it up to things that happened in the world that sort of line up but not really. It couldn't be a better example of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
The reason I'm really pushing hard on the "It's not much data" side, is because here's a question - Is teen depression higher than normal? Or was it lower than normal during the early 2000s - a period of high economic growth, US cultural hegemony and monoculture? Who knows! It seems kind of absurd that we should argue one creaky theory should be our prior. If you don't really have enough data to strongly say something is true, your prior should be to say "We don't know". It doesn't help your reasoning to assume one theory at all, and points us in one direction where the answer maybe something completely different.
For example - what if it's actually the case that this is a function of social acceptability. In the past we saw a situation where it was socially unacceptable to be gay (and legally unacceptable worth noting), when that was the case you could survey people and find there were very few gay people. When it became more acceptable, suddenly the surveys showed far more gay people. There genuinely were people at the time this happened that were making the claim this was a conspiracy making people gay. Well, what if the destigmatization of mental health has had a similar effect? There were always depressed teens, but they never "came out" as it were. Then this whole discussion about phones is just... a weird distraction?
by fundad on 3/2/23, 6:22 PM
If the author believe the stigma against neurodivergence wasn't that bad or had some merit, then it's easy to see their perspective that something ruined our perfect society.
by iamnotsure on 3/2/23, 2:52 PM
Smartphones are one of the greatest inventions of humanity. That they democratize access to information about the unfortunate state of the world is a different matter.
by JustSomeNobody on 3/2/23, 1:52 PM
It's social media, the attention economy and fucked up algos that psychologically addict people to it. Phones just made it easier to access.
by smm11 on 3/2/23, 4:50 PM
I honestly think that if Steve Jobs were still around this phone/social media dynamic would have turned out differently.
by sublinear on 3/2/23, 11:00 PM
> the timing just lines up really well. The smartphone was invented in 2007, but it didn’t really become commonplace until the 2010s, exactly when teen happiness fell off a cliff
Oh man so trivially incorrect. Plenty of people had smartphones before that despite the iPhone. What happened in 2010 was social media getting hit by politics and marketing. This isn't even up for debate. It's straight facts.
by Workaccount2 on 3/2/23, 9:31 PM
Hah
Just wait a few years until we get AI companions, and everyone else in your life sucks by comparison.
by pohl on 3/2/23, 3:52 PM
But as I pointed out in a post last week, most of these things (except for Covid, obviously) were looking worse a decade ago
No, they weren't, because a decade ago there was still hope that democratic process could lead to sensible public policy. Now it's not even clear that we can avoid authoritarian capture.
by low_tech_love on 3/2/23, 11:53 PM
One other possible explanation is that phones are everywhere, regardless of most any other factor. Take any teenager, anywhere, in any walk of life, age, or social group, nation, etc. They very, very probably have a phone. Guess what’s also mostly everywhere, regardless of other factors?
None of these are perfect explanations, obviously, but I’ve seen what phones do to my kids (even in the limited amount of time they have) and others. It’s absurd to ignore it. Sure, I can’t prove that phones are the cause, but my son goes from the sweetest kid to an anxious, angry mess as soon as he has a phone in his hands (and before you ask, yes, sometimes it’s inevitable, I live in a capitalist society that expects me to both work my ass off and to take care of my kids at the same time. Also, I don’t have the illusion that I can stop him from ever using one, so I’d better be around and teach him how to deal with it the best way possible).
by jcadam on 3/2/23, 9:43 PM
> One possible reason, suggested by Taylor Lorenz...
Stopped reading right there.
by timbit42 on 3/2/23, 7:56 PM
Without social media, the phones would be fine.
by causality0 on 3/2/23, 11:48 AM
The smartphone was invented in 2007
Wrong. He's off by a full decade, or even more than a decade if you count the IBM Simon.
by bryananderson on 3/2/23, 6:24 PM
So my prior is definitely "it's the phones", and I am totally fine with being old-man-who-shakes-fist-at-cloud about what phones and social media are doing to kids (and all of us).
But this article does the thing that infuriates me the most about any kind of discourse in the US, across all political tribes: Ameri-solipsism.
How do youth suicide, depression, anxiety, and isolation trends in the US compare to other countries? Across countries, what's the correlation with smartphone and social media adoption? Is there a plausible causal link where we see these trends rise in each country a few years after wide adoption? If it doesn't always follow, what factors separate countries where phones seem to cause depression from those where it doesn't? How do political polarization, economic shifts, and different cultural norms correlate with these things across countries?
No idea! Because a space alien reading this article would come away thinking that Earth consists of precisely one country. Use comparative data to tease out other factors at play? Ha! As if America could have anything to learn from anyone else.
I expect this from jingoistic conservatives, but it's infuriatingly common even among progressives who supposedly reject nationalistic exceptionalism: dive deep into some big problem (which on its surface has nothing US-specific about it) without any curiosity whatsoever about how anyone who's not American deals with it.
by chadlavi on 3/2/23, 2:58 PM
People said this dumb shit about novels too. It's not the phones.
It's the dystopian late stage capitalist hell world they live in. They see no good future for themselves. They know their lives will be worse than ours, which are worse than our parents' were on average in the US.
by archarios on 3/2/23, 7:34 PM
Obligatory plug for the Light Phone 2. I have had one for two years now and I love it. I still keep a smart phone around for some things but it is generally in a drawer powered down. I have had a significant improvement in my mental health since I've gotten it.
by jeffwask on 3/2/23, 5:21 PM
Sure, it's the phones... not the non-stop barrage of psychological manipulation from the ad driven capitalist hellscape we have created that poison their underdeveloped minds in everything they interact with from websites to games to TV to movies. Never mind they live in a constant state of alertness looking for which classmates going to waltz into school one day and start shooting.
I'm sure though if they put the phone down and touch grass for 15 minutes that will all go away.
by lakomen on 3/2/23, 12:19 PM
It's not and never has been phones. It's the state of the "world", relationships or lack thereof. As if you've never been a teenager and forgot all about it. Teenagers are people who are trying to break off from parental and supervision in general. Find their path, get confronted with them being mortal, as a kid you have no idea what that means.
Personally I had a goth phase, well at first it was Rap music, then Gothic, then Techno. Music is very important when you're a teen. In my goth phase I listened to depressing music dealing with death and injustice. I wore black clothes. One day I had enough of the self torture and Techno was the new thing which I liked very much since I was also playing games on the C64 and those had great music. When I was into Rap I did scratch a lot so later I was throwing parties and was trying to make it as a DJ and music producer. But without money and false friends, my records got stolen and trackers were the only tech for cheaply creating music on the computer back then, later with windows 95 98 and so on you had actual virtual synths.
Anyhow I digress...
Even as an adult the state of our world gets me down. The white is black newspeech or let's call it the Orwellian Dystopia we live in. The wars and injustices. The corruption. The disregard for life and lack of respect and knowledge and most of all tolerance and understanding for being human and not being perfect. The do or die. The fact that this world could be a paradise but the powers that be choose that it shouldn't. The American imperialism, the Chinese lunacy, the European arrogance and fakeness and the Russian imperialism. Just stop with the world domination game and selling weapons. Stop profiting from the deaths of innocents. Why can't we all be friends?
2010 I remember very well. I had a girlfriend. She cheated on me. I was heartbroken and got abandoned by everyone. 2010-2012 I spend playing an MMORPG. It was the place where I was happy once. So I returned there. But it was changed. People were hateful and aggressive. The guild I've been a part of was no more. It got destroyed by some asshole kids, who acted like they own the place. In real life people were also worse, less understanding and more hateful. 2012 I quit playing that game, I was still hurting every day. I joined Google+ and focused on my income. I learned JS and Go. AngularJS. 2014 then financial success. And that broke the pain I felt every day in my chest since she cheated. That went until 2020. Now I'm applying for social security. That is a personal low. I always fought against being dependant on anyone. I never wanted state alms. I never had debt. I'm a proud person. This isn't easy. And I hate that it has come to this. Most job ads suck. They're essentially ads for the company. They want you to be their bitch, requiring you to be responsible for the whole process. "You will be working with our Cloud infrastructure where you will write , test, deploy and monitor the application stack, improve out infrastructure and evaluate alternative technologies, and well pay you 1/4 of an American and you'll like it". Yeah and on the side I'll save the world from famine and normalize the climate, and end all wars.
They don't want colleagues, they want slaves. And I have a problem with that.
Contract work, only with connections, which I don't have anymore. I'm in a contractor database. I ask 75€/h or 600€/day. Others ask 100€+/h. I've done PHP for 11 years, I've seen the 2001 bubble burst. I had a web hosting service, a top 1000 site on Alexa, worked freelance for national players, fixed scripts students abandoned because they were unable to do it properly. I know my stuff but I can't get in there. Those social networks are no social at all. LinkedIn sucks ass, all they do is push their tech. You search for Go jobs, they show you .net C# jobs. Mastodon sucks too. You can't have a normal conversation. Most don't even respond and if they do most of the time they're acting aggressive or ignorant. Why are they on a social network then? Should I intensify my Java knowledge? But I hate Java. Go is the way. Should I learn more about C# and .net? Should I go back to PHP where I'd work on e-commerce boredom? Meeeeh. There's only one way out, finish my projects and hope people find them usefu, meanwhile being on social security. I feel like I'm this talent that goes to waste because no one ever discovered me because I'm not in the clique and live a hermit life, but I also dislike big city life. Can't have your cake and eat it too. Or like they say in the country my mom is from, you can't clench and fart at the same time ;)
What I really want to do though is travel the world, like a digital nomad, before I die. Where are the low maintenance remote jobs?
by DeathArrow on 3/2/23, 12:22 PM
Doesn't matter. I would still blame the conservatives and Elon Musk for this!
by jhoechtl on 3/2/23, 10:32 AM
Honestly, it's probably the ecosystem which came with the ecosystems enabled by smart devices.
We have phones like 100 years now? A phone is not the problem here.
by hourago on 3/2/23, 10:52 AM
I guess that by phones it means "social media". The amount of hate poured into social media creates a false reality where many teenagers live.
The so called "free speech absolutists" that are just a facade for far-right activists looking to evade responsibilities for their xenophobic and usually violent remarks have created a hostile on-line community.
Any community that lets people spread lies, and hate without consequences is doomed to suffer from anxiety and lose trust in humanity. Teenagers are just the worst affected by this as they are still developing their personalities.
> Another adaptation is probably to take social media less seriously. Twitter isn’t a field of combat where heroes decide the fates of nations — it’s just a silly room where people scream at each other and tell a bunch of lies.
Accepting defeat is not the way. I do not want to live in a society where lies are normalized and citizens are asked to just deal with it. Fix social media or close it. To ask millions of citizens to just accept the most cynical view of the world without being affected is neither realistic nor moral.