Child Psychotherapist: Easy and Constant Access To the Internet Is Harming Kids 353
First time accepted submitter sharkbiter sends note that one of the UK's foremost psychotherapists has concerns that smartphones may be harmful to the mental health of children. "Julie Lynn Evans has been a child psychotherapist for 25 years, working in hospitals, schools and with families, and she says she has never been so busy. 'In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year – mainly teenaged girls taking overdoses, the things that don't get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.'.... Issues such as cyber-bullying are, of course, nothing new, and schools now all strive to develop robust policies to tackle them, but Lynn Evans’ target is both more precise and more general. She is pointing a finger of accusation at the smartphones - “pocket rockets” as she calls them – which are now routinely in the hands of over 80 per cent of secondary school age children. Their arrival has been, she notes, a key change since 2010. 'It’s a simplistic view, but I think it is the ubiquity of broadband and smartphones that has changed the pace and the power and the drama of mental illness in young people.'”
Gordon Neufeld, developmental psychologist (Score:2, Interesting)
has some very insightful things to say about children and social media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq8ULEfvF78
He has also written a very good book about child raising in general. I had good parents, but even so, I wish they'd had that book, or at least the insights in it, when I grew up.
Re:Gordon Neufeld, developmental psychologist (Score:4, Interesting)
I watched your video, but I am still not convinced.
He basically has two arguments: access to information just causes information overload and does not lead to development of a curious and critical self, and that kids with access to so much information changes the authority structure and social interactions so much that former techniques of raising children don't apply.
The second problem is a non-problem, as society changes, the way to raise children must change as well. Relying on the fact that your children are ignorant is not a good approach to enforce your authority anyway.
As to the first problem, it's just not true, as is evidenced in the talk itself. The speaker complains that kids can learn about sex on their own before their parents think they're ready. This is basically admitting they can inquire about things they don't know and make opinions by themselves instead of relying on someone else, which is pretty much the same thing as building their own curious and critical self.
The only real problem with the information age is that you can't so easily indoctrinate your children to your own beliefs anymore, but that's arguably a good thing.
this person is full of shit. (Score:4, Interesting)
In New Zealand, we haven't seen any change in the data for the last 20 years.
In the States the rate has gone down
In the UK , it has gone down.
In Wales it has gone down.
In Scotland it has gone down.
In North Ireland it has gone up.
TLDR: This person is full of shit.
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I guess she got tired of blaming weed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Today's youth collapsed the Roman Empire! (Score:5, Insightful)
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And he blamed that dratted new technology, writing.
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That's a common misattribution [wikiquote.org]. As that link notes, however, it is aa paraphrasing of a comedic play from 400 BC in which Socrates was caricatured:
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I've got a therapist who is helping my kids, and I'm having a hard time justifying all the practices she is promoting. But since we are getting the input -- I've got to at least try what she recommends.
But the "put all the violent video games away -- it will hurt their minds" really irks me. I know too many violent brats who aren't allowed to even play with toy guns, much less violent games. There's no damn serious studies that link the two; as if violence arose with a First Person Shooter.
The main downside
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rock'n'roll is a big problem that is dramatically increasing.. oh wait.. equal civil rights is a big problem that is dramatically increasing.. oh wait, abolishing segregation is a big problem that is.. kids reading other books than the bible is a big problem that is..
now, having a talidome baby that's a big problem. having your kid in a catholic summer camp with pervs is a big problem. lead paint is a big problem. WORLD FRIGGIN WAR is a big problem, having your brother conscripted to die on the other side o
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"talidome baby"? I have no idea what you mean by that. Google couldn't find anything either.
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Try googling for "thalidomide baby"
Re:I guess she got tired of blaming weed... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no need for corporal punishment, just bring back "punishment" in general, and make it consistent and fitting. Why is it okay to hit children when it's not okay to hit anyone else, and generally not even okay to hit animals? Especially when, honestly, most of the hitting is done out of anger/frustration rather than "teaching".
I also have two children that are extraordinarily well-behaved (comments from teachers, other parents, etc), and I've never once hit them. I've yelled at them few enough times that I could count it on one hand. However,they know that no matter what situation we're in, no matter how inconvenient it is for me or how tired I am, if they misbehave they will be punished. Time outs, loss of toys or privileges, whatever makes sense for the situation. No yelling or hitting. In fact, most punishment ends with hugs and calm talking about why what they did was wrong.
It's usually enough to either say "One..." (counting to three) or even to say "I'm starting to get upset" and my almost-four-year old will stop and say "I'm sorry, I don't want you to be mad!" and come hug me instead of doing whatever she was doing wrong.
Re:I guess she got tired of blaming weed... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no need for corporal punishment, just bring back "punishment" in general, and make it consistent and fitting
This. My daughter knows that when Daddy starts counting down from 5 that she had better clean up her act NOW before the counter runs out. She knows this because I've consistently used that as a message to her that she has crossed the line since she was 2. Typically I only need to say 5, or hold up 5 fingers, and she changes her behavior (often she decides she needs a timeout and takes herself to her room).
That having been said, this is a technique that works with MY kid. Just like adults are different and if you interact with them assuming otherwise you're going to have issues, so are kids. Figure out what makes yours tick and use that knowledge and you'll both have an easier time of it.
Min
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DING DING DING. Thank you. It feels like everyone with a public voice on the matter is a complete moron. Children don't come off an assembly line. You cannot use the same technique and strategy for every person and to demand so basically means you have a pathetically narrow image of what constitutes a human being.
Ask any teacher, any performance artist, they will tell you, "You play the room. Every grou
Re:I guess she got tired of blaming weed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Physical violence as a behavioral teaching mechanism is both lazy and bad parenting.
If you use it frequently I agree.
I've had to use it precisely once. It's fine for establishing a baseline in young children, because they don't accept abstract arguments. If they ever question another punishment regime like the naughty step, that's where you have to go - you'll have to deploy some sort of violence, even if it's physically restraining them so they stay put on the naughty step.
Consistency is key. If you arbitrarily deal out physical violence you'll find your kids doing it too. If you make it the ultimate sanction, you'll rarely have to use it.
I suspect most of the problems with the use of violence are not with it's use as a discipline, but as an emotional outlet for the frustration of the parent.
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It may have worked for you in the circumstances that you chose to use it, that doesn't make it something that everyone has to use at some stage to draw a line. If you'd used physical violence, then your child had done the same thing again would you have done it again? What wo
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Which is why kids long ago frequently committed suicide and hide the truth from their parents. That is why sucicde rates have dropped off dramatically. The other point is we stop to listen now as opposed to saying suck it up or die. Like they did before
Correlation is not causation people! (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a massive decrease in street violence.
There is an overwhelming rise in the availability of EVERYTHING on the internet.
Go figure.
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What if therapy doesn't work, what's the correlation between the age of these school kids and the first appearance of therapists as a regular presence in schools?
Is she good at her job ? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year â" mainly teenaged girls taking overdoses, the things that don't get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.
Perhaps pver the last 25 years she become good at her job, and gets more referals because of that, or maybe there is some other explanation as to why she as an individual has seen more attempted suicides.
I think i know why she isnt a computer programmer
Right from the article you didn't read... (Score:2, Informative)
And it’s not, she notes, simply a question of her reputation as both a practitioner and a writer drawing so many people to the door of her cosy consulting rooms in west London where we meet. “If I try to refer people on, everyone else is choc-a-bloc too. We are all saying the same thing. There has been an explosion in numbers in mental health problems amongst youngsters.”
Try reading. It's fairly painless and might make you look less like an arrogant computer programmer...
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> I think i know why she isnt a computer programmer
She's a psychologist. That's pretty close to a computer programmer. Psychologists do their work on a biological computer and without the aid of a debugger and without the programmer's greatest tool: the reboot. But in both cases, it is trying to work out where the logical inconsistencies are and apply code patches to get the system to respond correctly to input.
Progress but... (Score:5, Interesting)
When people migrate from a small village to the city, they can't go on treating strangers with contempt and fear, instead, they have to learn to live being surrounded by thousands of strangers everyday. There is some suggestion that it's the move to cities which has something to do with the civilising process (ie. a reduction in common violence), although it also has its own kinds of stresses.
Likewise, the internet allows people to interact across cities and nations and with thousands of people and frequently, and so it may be that it is a new challenge to our social behaviour. It isn't that cell phones are the problem, it may just be that the new complexity of a wider-connected environment means people have to learn new ways of dealing with it, mainly because everyone is going to be a victim to it, so everyone will need to start extending their empathy much further, not just to their village neighbour, not just the the stranger on the city bus next to you, but to "abstract" "avatars", human beings, out there. And also learn new skills for coping.
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Well, or you could say that technologies and their impact on people, just like laws (or any change in the environment), can have unexpected consequences and, when they occur, one should still do something about it rather than stuffing fingers in your ears and yelling "La, la, la... Bright, shiny, new technology! Yum! You people cope!"
Just sayin'.
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And also learn new skills for coping.
But this is what gets the conservatives panties in a bunch. They don't want to teach kids critical thinking skills. They just want times to go back to the way they were when a small town's culture was taught by the local preacher. And they could control the populations belief systems by instilling a sense of fear of 'outsiders'.
That Interweb is nothing but a bunch of outsiders.
WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! (Score:3, Informative)
1) These violent movies are harming children...
2) These violent video games are harming children...
3) These violent websites are harming children..
4) These Social networks are harming children...
5) These Smartphones are harming children...
Do they have any evidence to back this up which doesn't draw conclusions without a control and without drawing conclusions they pluck from the air???
could be right (Score:2)
There's no reason for most children to have pocket Internet connected computers.
Heck, we have our family computer in the living room. So a pocket Internet connected computer would kind of defeat the point ...
Re:could be right (Score:5, Insightful)
When my kid reaches secondary school (aka High School), she will no longer be a "child", she will be a young adult. The idea that a 15+ year old can not be trusted with a smartphone, when they drinking, having sex, and in all likelihood doing drugs from time to time, is ridiculous.
People need to stop coddling their kids so much. Maybe that is the indirect cause of some of these issues, kids now unable to deal with the realities of the world as they get older because their helicopter parents never exposed them to it.
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For my generation it was too much TV causing these issues.
What I see now are children who have zero social skills because their parents don't enforce any minimum standard of behavior. They get nowhere near enough exercise, nowhere near enough unsupervised time to just be kids and do stupid shit, far too much poor quality food, and are completely over-indulged.
My kids weren't allowed in the house after school unless it was pissing it down with rain, in which case, they were
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I agree with that -- because, really, how can we police them all the time?
The only real solution is to educate kids on good internet practices -- and most parents aren't using them either, nor know what to do, or what to teach.
There is a vacuum here and nature or spam will fill it.
As someone who is fairly tech savvy, it's getting harder for me to detect the scams. Just forwarded a decent sounding job opportunity because I knew someone it fit, and then noticed the same text for a different company -- because
Re:could be right (Score:5, Insightful)
My dad was reluctant to buy my brother and I a computer when we were kids in the mid 80s. "What do we need a computer for? What do we compute? And if you want to play with one, isn't there one in the school library?" But we whined and whined and begged and he gave in.
Big mistake. We spent all our time on that thing, taking it apart, putting it back together, programming it, instead of doing good, wholesome American activities like sportsball and racism. Now we're both screwed-up adults with engineering and computer science degrees, stuck in the dead-end tech industry.
Psychotherapists not Statistician (Score:3)
'In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year – mainly teenaged girls taking overdoses, the things that don't get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.'
It's not exactly thorough from a statistical point of view to jump to her conclusion. There could be all kinds of reasons, for her localised increase in cases, even if the change is national.
I could easily pull a counter argument from thin air if no one is going to bother doing studies... for instance phones and increased internet access could be making children more likely to reach out for help when they would not have before.
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SMH! (Score:3)
"“When they are 15, you don’t, for example, let them go to pub..."
She's saying that our kids are killing themselves because they aren't drinking enough ... and they're depressed because they know what wanking looks like. You know, I think any kid with a mirror already knows that.
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Oops, misread >.>
Chill (Score:5, Funny)
In 80 years (Score:2)
There will be articles saying that our kids are sick because they don't troll enough on the internet, see enough porn or play enough video games.
I'm glad I taught my daughter to be careful ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad I taught my daughter to be careful/paranoid. I'm also glad she listened.
What we're observing here and in many other different places is the classic problem of technological advancement: Powerful tools in untrained/unexperienced hands. Each of us here has seen the internet/web grow and trivial-to-stupid data-collection services come over us like the plaque. We have a natural negative reaction to post non-anonymous content online or giving some corporation or the public all our data just because they offer a flaky lock-in version of IRC or microblogging. For most users however, that is a very normal thing to do. I cringe each time I see others exposing themselves to abuse and fraud by posting everything under their real name and data. They are one identity theft or one online stalker away from having their entire life turned into living hell.
I set up my daughters Ubuntu Netbook with two mailaccounts, one fake on with a pseudonym and one with her name. I told her to specifically use the latter only for official real-world stuff - sending in homework, applying for some course, etc. and the other for everthing else.
When she went off for a student exchange in Malaysia, she set up a another seperate pseudonymed online Facebook account for the occasion, to be able to cut it lose should things get out of hand. That's daddys smart girl.
Fake/pseudonymed accounts and a general base paranoia about all things online is a must these days if you don't want to be over-exposed to crap from immature teenagers.
I'm glad my daughter caught the drift and didn't wave off her daddys advice on this matter.
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My hat is off to you, sir. Particularly since girls have to deal some of the most vile abuse and comments from trolls. I don't have kids, but I shudder to think of what they would see in the comments of otherwise innocuous youtube videos. And that's just one example. This is proactive - you teach her about the danger, teach her the unfortunate reality of the ephemeral and idiotic nature of a mob - and teach her how to outsmart it.
I hate to say it, but if I ever have a daughter, I'm going to spend way more t
As a parent, I find it's power kind of scary (Score:2)
I have a 10 year old son and as much as I hate alarmism, I do find the allure of technology kind of scary.
We give our son "screen time" (PC, XBox or iPad) but we usually limit it to an hour per day. But if given the ability, he would play much more than that. It's like a compulsion. And it's often a struggle when his hour is up to get him to quit.
When we go places, I see lots of younger kids absolutely glued to a screen (iPad, iPhone usually). The touchscreen devices seem to have some kind of extra allu
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That's the problem, though, the allure overpowers any sense of self-control.
Glad I'm not a kid now (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Greed (Score:2)
I am not a parent myself but the majority of kids of friends and family around me are good kids that I think and hope will grow up to be well-balanced individuals.
The common factors amongst all of them are moderation, and exposure to adults other than their parents who take a genuine interest in them, as well as parents who make time for them. When socialising with other adults who talk to them and listen to them, they feel valued and get self-respect and self-worth.
The problem with bad kids are the parents
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Actually, I make a point of having a lot of good and useful contact with kids. I have great nephews and nieces, plus I have over three decades experience in telecoms and IT and a total passion for passing my knowledge on to kids - to the point where I even volunteer my time teaching kids to program Python on Raspberry Pi at after school clubs.
Please do not believe that you can "know" someone based on a couple of paragraphs they typed onto a public forum. It could be, for example, that I or my partner are in
Any nutjob with a PHd (Score:2)
Has the right to their opinion, and will find an audience simply to pay the bills. Psychotherapists practice psychobabble, purely and simply.
An example of cognitive bias. (Score:2)
There are many issues for concern
IDTIMWYTIM (Score:2)
post 60's generation (Score:2)
all the crazy stuff the parents went through — and now the kids are screwed up.
is this really surprising?
I think I know her fashion sense (Score:2)
She habitually wears pearls. And she's clutching them right now.
Here's proof: (Score:2)
http://8ch.net/gamergate/index... [8ch.net]
This is not science (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why it seems psychologists are prone to this, or if it's just the nature of media and headline-grabbing pop-psychology, but I see these sorts of statements pretty often from this sector.
It's so very very hard to figure out what is making a person do what they're doing. We have problems figuring it out with rats in labs, and the best we have there is usually speculation and strong correlation. Humans are a whole other degree of complexity. Of course, with the rats, people are trying to do actual science: coming up with experimentally verifiable hypotheses, providing proper control and test groups, eliminating variables, and performing proper scientific testing. It's very hard to do well, and you rarely get more than confirmation of a component of a behavior.
Yet you see psychologists with years in their field making professional statements on to the nature of culture and individuals with absolutely no rigorous scientific study, with only their personally experienced anecdotal data and an obviously heavily biased opinion to support them.
There are a lot of things that have changed in the last 10, 20, 30 ... etc years when it comes the environment, manner, and culture in which children are raised. The internet and smart phones are just one part. Western nations have steadily been nurturing a culture of entitlement while removing sources of apparent confrontation and competition, which together may result in children who lack the ability to cope with difficult situations. Maybe the fact that it's now considered child abuse to spank (beat) your child? Perhaps the increased likelihood for parents to seek psychological help for their children along with a chemical fix? How about the longer and longer workday, or the increase in divorce rates? All the news about the low salaries and lack of jobs coupled with the price of education and the blame and mistrust of government and businesses, broadcast back at us 24/7 on every media available might affect one's behavior.
If we're going to claim it's cell phones, there's an awful lot of work that needs to be done to eliminate every other possibility - or at least the reasonable ones - first, and that's just not being done.
Perhaps it's unfair to label all of them, but this is one reason why people don't consider psychologists "real doctors". You see them make asinine statements like this.
More likely ..... (Score:3)
Kids with pre-existing mental health conditions find their problems amplified by the use of smartphones and the various social media tools typically used on them?
My 12 year old daughter has a few issues (anxiety, depression, mood swings) and we wound up taking away her smartphone after it seemed to keep causing problems. (Everything from a constant stress inducer when she "forgot to charge it and it was almost dead" when we were out someplace, to forgetting where she put it, to fights over putting the phone away while we were eating at the table, to eventually catching her sexting a guy on it and having inappropriate IM chats using it.)
On the other hand, I don't see why for many kids, a smartphone is anything more than another useful tool to carry around in one's pocket?
Re:"Drama of mental illness" (Score:5, Interesting)
is a concise summary of SJW-ism.
Not SJW-ism at all. Somebody is finally saying what many of us already knew.
I go to the mall and and every kid I see is staring at their phone, not looking at anyone around them, not even their friends who walking next to them. I go a restaurant and there are parents with children. And the kids stare at their phone the entire time, never looking at or talking to anyone around them.
It seems very abnormal and unhealthy.
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well, perhaps due to the constant internet people are more aware - and as a result of that she is getting more BUSINESS which she equates to more suicide attempts and just randomly chooses smartphones as the "thing" that causes them.
because you know why? it makes for damn easy counseling for her. just tell the parents to ban the smartphone and boom problem solved.
you know, doing like that you were thought of as a FRIGGIN NERD AND GEEK just 15 years ago if you spent as much time as you could "online" or usi
Re:"Drama of mental illness" (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing we tend to forget as 'geeks' is that new technologies have to be examined across the ENTIRE population, not just 'people like us'. Like it or not, there are potential problems that can not simply be written off by accusing anyone who brings them up as a 'dinosaur'. Technological shifts have consequences, and sticking your head in the sand never helps, it just makes you look blind and weakens your argument.
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but the stresses were always there and the statistics about actual events don't show them to be causing more suicides to happen. cyberbullying is bad yeah, but not as bad as getting hit with a baseball bat. or shot.
on the opposite they help make it easier to make others aware of what's happening.
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on the opposite they help make it easier to make others aware of what's happening.
Although this is indeed the case, it is not always an unmixed blessing.
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The problem is not the that the technology is harmful. It is not. The problem is that people are harmful.
On thing I do not like is this idea of schools as police. If a child bullies another child outside of school why is it any of the schools business?
The problem all comes down to manners, ethics, and morality which should be taught by the parents. The problem is how do you force parents to be parents? If a child is being a bully it should be the parents of the bully that puts a stop to it. A far too large
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I've always felt that complaining how "X was cool in the past, but now they say that X is out/dangerous/harmful" is a bit of an argumentation error. The people who embraced the technology 15 years ago are not the same people who are complaining about it now. They were probably complaining about some other technological advancement then.
You can't hold the society in general accountable for the contradictory actions of its members.
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She wants to be part of a narrative that spreads. e.g. Phones were good, but now they're bad, all these bad things happen because of phones.
In short, with some people I believe that the details of the story are irrelevant, the direction of the story is irrelevant. Negative stories are good because FUD spreads with ease.
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well, perhaps due to the constant internet people are more aware - and as a result of that she is getting more BUSINESS which she equates to more suicide attempts and just randomly chooses smartphones as the "thing" that causes them.
The issue isn't that constant Internet makes people more aware. The issue is that constant Internet means people are more prone to be constantly subjected to the factors which are the source of stress which are common causes of adolescent suicide. Previously to the ubiquity of smartphones a bullied individual was safe and free from the bully when not in the bully's presence. The bullied is safe. The bullied can let his or her guard down. Smartphones change this dynamic. Now the bully can bully remotely and
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It seems very abnormal and unhealthy.
So is eating grains in large amounts, just ask your dentist. Damned Neolithic Revolution.
I wonder how the society of distant future will look like. If I were to extrapolate from your experiences, being a schizoid, I may find myself increasingly more accepted.
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http://www.today.com/health/te... [today.com]
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Re: "Drama of mental illness" (Score:3)
I went to a library the other day, and all the kids stared at their books the entire time, never looking at or talking to anyone around them.
At least the kids on phones were constantly chatting with friends elsewhere via texts & IM. Sounds much healthier than hiding from the world with your nose in a book..
Or maybe I should just learn to stop judging them by my own preconceived notions.
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Could this be the "new normal" and just as healthy as the past?
Not taking sides, just asking the question.
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I go a restaurant and there are parents with children. And the kids stare at their phone the entire time, never looking at or talking to anyone around them...It seems very abnormal and unhealthy.
I don't really have a problem with that per se.
I think the real issue is that kids are spending an even larger percentage of their time interacting with their peers and not with adults. I don't think that is healthy. If they were on their phones interacting with adults I think they'd be fine.
I think kids do need to spend time socializing with others their own age, but I think that they'd be better off spending more time with adults. After all, the goal is to get them to be more like adults and less like
Re:"Drama of mental illness" (Score:4, Informative)
I cannot find a reliable recent source on this. However, older data suggests that the suicide rates for older people has been going down, but there is an uptick in rates for younger people. For instance, see Suicide rates by age from American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (based on CDC figures) [afsp.org]
Re:"Drama of mental illness" (Score:5, Informative)
"Official figures confirm the picture she paints, with emergency admissions to child psychiatric wards doubling in four years, and those young adults hospitalised for self-harm up by 70 per cent in a decade."
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An uptick in emergency admissions doesn't mean more children need care, it means more are getting care.
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A pointless distinction given that it also highlighted a 70% increase in hospital admissions due to self-harm over a decade. Unless we have a plausible alternate theory for why there's such an increase in that time period then it's compelling evidence to start from.
"Self harm" is something that has a much higher profile than in the past. Until a few years ago, I had never heard of it. Today, there are on-line groups to promote it. There are other on-line groups to discourage it. My daughter's high school hands out pamphlets, and offers counseling on self-harm. It has become a very effective way to get attention. So an obvious "plausible alternative theory" is that it has become the go-to fad for young people signalling that they need help, instead of, say, atte
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Unless we have a plausible alternate theory for why there's such an increase in that time period then it's compelling evidence to start from.
1. TV. Shows a lot of skinny chicks and athletic dudes with perfect bodies, making kids feel ugly and insecure.
2. Accelerated lifestyle. The day is still 24h, bot more activites need to be crammed into the same space, both for kids and adults alike.
3. High expectations from kids. The number of children with crushing amount of extracurricular activities (from swimming to chess club to math club to piano to ballet to football to horseriding to god-knows-what-else) is rising, because parents look at various ex
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That makes no sense. This is in the UK, where they have socialized healthcare.
Socialized medicine doesn't mean you can just walk in and get free medical care anytime you want.
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And, the only thing that is tracked is "reported suicide attempts" - how many suicidal ideation episodes went unreported before the availability of "anonymous help in your pocket?"
Suicide counselors have been wishing for decades that people would come forward earlier so they can get help - is this the manifestation of them finally getting that wish fulfilled?
Re:"Drama of mental illness" (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, she is full of shit.
Maybe her perception is subjective. But I'd imagine her to be in a position where she can corelate these cause and effects more easily as you are.
Consider that, even if her clients find her via word of mouth and hence her specialism might skew towards this one demography causing an influx, noone would make such a claim without seeing probable cause.
I imagine many of her patients will mention a lot of the social interaction on "the internet" and "mobile". Which generates the belief this is a large factor and the way her patients relate to it or shift blame.
In the past you'd have the same problems (bullying, self-image issues, displacement, projected expectations, ...) the "always on world" with "instant gratification" with constant new hypes to "belong to or not". The intensity has become higher, the barriere has lowered. So I also think children should not be exposed without supervision and also think it's not a good thing to bring up children with a sense of instant gratification at the press of a button of a flick at a screen. While the "real world" becomes replaced for flickering pixels. And identity sticks only for a single selfie and measured by the amassed likes or views.. Which often borders self-prostitution. In a way which hasn't been possible before other as being manipulated or naïvely seduced into mainstream exploitation. Where there were supervising committées guarding the "boundary of decency or exploitation". Or there were at least people stepping up for others (which - in our immer more individualized society and "personal reinterpretations", people dare not to do out of fear being out of tune or out of sync with the value-systems of others).
So, "full of shit" ? Think not.
Maybe misguided causality ? Perhaps.
Re:"Drama of mental illness" (Score:4, Informative)
Well as usual it depends upon what you choose as your baseline. By choosing the baseline year you can get either a very slight increase or more or less flat suicide rate for 15-24 year old up through 2013, the last year for which we have complete data. But it's nothing like the rate of smartphone or social media adoption.
This doesn't preclude a clinician from experiencing a dramatic trend in her practice that would alarm any reasonable person. That's why we have to look at both the statistical aggregate and clinical experience. When experience tells you there has been a dramatic change, and the statistically aggregated data say there's been no change, you put those together and what you're seeing is a change in the circumstances of suicide. That's not as alarming as a dramatic and systematic increase in rates, but it's still important.
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They don't even have to be female hookers either. Though you did say Thai so that may have been implied.
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Nah nah nah, only the part where they are using their phones to look up "top 10 ways to kill yourself discretely while at a restaurant with your parents".
Why? Is it better to kill yourself in steps or does the slow bleed-out from slit wrists put too many of them off?
:-)
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It's very helpful when you use it in reverse. If you hear someone being called a SJW you can pretty much assume that the person doing the calling exists on a spectrum starting at "can barely interact socially, and feels oppressed for not being allowed by society to be the douche they want to be" and continues down to some pretty fucking disturbing sub-humans.
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For some reason there isn't a single thing that isn't assumed to be bad for kids.
However there are plenty of changes I would roll back...
like when I was a kid, I was "free range," I decided how to spend my time, all of the time and I came and went as I pleased - that's almost considered a crime now.
I deliberately refused to join any extra classes or such organized things, which meant that I could play.
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Since over evolutionary periods we didn't have buildings or privacy, and since we evolved from apes, NOT SEEING that is what is new, different and probably harmful.
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Well, she probably wants to be a writer and knows that this is one of the most common "phone it in" articles that get printed.
And she got it printed. Good job!
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You've got a point (I agree) about the monotheistic religions: they are inherently divisive.
Of course, before that, people divided according to blood ties, clans, tribes, etc., so monotheism was in a way an improvement... 2500 years ago, if resources were scarce and tribes were fighting. (If you're on Pandora and the next tribe is a whole forest away, with plenty of luscious food available for all, fine, stay in tribes).
But today we need so much more than, my group is going to Heaven and yours is inferior a
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Weird that we disapprove of Nazis so much isn't it? Kinda like meta-bullying.
or - fuck off.
*Especially* today, where technology can magnify the effects of an individual so greatly, some population of individuals being different is essential to the progress of the species. If we're all the same, we're all doomed to die as the ocean displaces us inland and the biosphere is ruined by our over-exploitation.
It's a genuine mechanism, but one that evolved to serve the selfish gene. The problem is that your fate (a
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It exists in the animal world as well, though mostly on the more evolved species. Bullying is social hygiene.
Your point would be true genius were it not for the fact that bullies, typically, are not high-quality examples of humanity. They are typically socially repressed mental and emotional retards (much like yourself). The only reason I'm being so rude is I know you'd appreciate my efforts to socially hygienize some /. comments.
Joking aside; I wish I could say nice troll, but I can't because it's too obvious.
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Duh. Have you ever met anyone who demonizes what he actually knows?