I have suffered from severe treatment-resistant depression since childhood, but that's completely irrelevant - anecdotal experiences are no substitute for good data. The best available data suggests that social media has a mix of positive and negative effects on self-harm and suicidal behaviour, with no clear net effect. Ill-conceived policy with a poor evidence base may stifle healthy conversation and connection, while doing little or nothing to reduce harms.
PLOS One has very little reviewing standards and accepts almost all papers.
Given how strongly linked smartphones are to all aspects of life. You are vastly underestimating difficulty of taking aways someone’s smartphone. Since worst case you can ask Cops and Telecom provider for location.
I completely agree with you, except Apple indiscriminately destroyed an entire industry of parental control apps under guise of Privacy. How is a parent supposed to enforce this (blocking Instagram).
That’s false, alternatives offered by Apple don’t even come close to functionality provided by third party apps. E.g. easily using the browser instead of app.
That is not true about PLOS One and it’s not a line to just drop whenever anyone links to a study on there. Please substantiate these kinds of statements.
"Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance' required by a given journal, PLOS ONE uses peer review to determine whether a paper is technically rigorous and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record."
Taking away a teenagers phone might be an answer, but it comes with risks. Disconnecting a child from their peer group should not be done casually. (let's not kid ourselves. That's what taking a phone away means.) It may have the desired effect, but will likely have a great many unexpected effects too.
And I would bet good money that she would acquire another phone very quickly.
> Tell me when your daughter is suicidal and suffering from ED/Self Harm.
Telling their parents might make things even worse. Abusive parents are, in some cases, the cause of the child's psychological problems in the first place.
It's one of the reasons the US system seems to be working best in these times; the constitution making laws difficult to change works perfectly to stop moral outrages and controversies and make people reconsider whether that 'something' is the best solution.
The reaction seems to be concentrating power in the President who can "do something". The centralizing of power and erosion of the original US system has been monotonic for the last 200 years.
First they came for the states by broadening the interstate commerce clause far beyond any rational reading. And now congress has ceded its authority in key areas such as treaties (fast tracking), declarations of war, and in process now: the right to subpoena information (we'll see how this one turns out).
I believe 1/2 of congress is trying to subpoena information (the house) but the actual people who are responsible for obeying that subpoena are refusing to- and at the same time, those people are the people responsible to enforce any law to punish them for refusing subpoena. So they can essentially ignore congress's demands with no consequences. I think this has always been the case but hasn't happened so distinctly until now?
Congress has the power to "arrest and detain recalcitrant witnesses". The fact that this isn't being seriously considered is further evidence of the erosion of real power congress has.
I think if the current situation isn't ... resolved ... resulting in a significant transfer of power either by precedent, legislation, or judicial action away from the executive to the judicial branch, the legislative branch, and the states – I think if that doesn't happen that this will be an inflection point leading to the failure of the American Republic.
I think too many people take for granted the stability and continuation of a system of government.
In my opinion the parliamentary system has proven to be more effective. In this system the Prime Minister with a majority has near dictatorial control over both the legislature and the presidency so that he/she can move quickly.
However the backstop is the no confidence vote which operates like impeachment. This is not a theoretical power but is exercised relatively frequently in parliamentarian systems. Failure to pass a budget is also by default a no confidence vote making it very rare one isn't passed. I think deep down the US feels that as well. The democracies they have created throughout the world do not mirror the US system of government.
The problem we face today with the US centralizing power in the presidency is that impeachment is seen as a "nuclear option" and therefore is not an effective backstop.
Watching Brexit doesn't inspire me with confidence about parliamentary systems, and I think it would work much worse in America which has a different set of problems. The diverse societies and economies of the regions of the US would not be well represented by a winner-take-all approach – the founders had a lot to say about the dictatorship of the majority. They had good points and the problems they feared I think would be worse in the US than in many of the parliamentary governments of the world. People in the US often times have a hard time realizing that their society isn't universal.
The basic problem currently in the American system is overpowered political parties which didn't fit in to the original set of checks and balances. It isn't clear if there is a simple amendment which could fix the system or if it is more of a social problem.
The UK system has survived many hundreds of years and crises far more severe than the US has ever experienced (the US has never been at serious risk of a land invasion). No system of government is without its embarrassments and messes, but the UK's parliament has been battle tested and is proven.
At least in my parliamentary country, a PM with an absolute majority can also block a no confidence vote, which is why only 1 of 30 such votes in the last 45 years have actually passed. Is it different in other countries?
> I think deep down the US feels that as well. The democracies they have created throughout the world do not mirror the US system of government.
Well, that assumes those decisions are made solely with the best interests of the people in those democracies in mind.
Compare this with no US president ever being removed from office (although I will concede Nixon was pretty close). A no confidence vote passing once every 50 years is downright frequent in comparison.
No British Prime Minister has lost a confidence motion since 1979, but I think it's worth noting that a) a PM with a majority can only block a no-confidence vote with the support of their party's MPs and b) the threat of a no-confidence motion is frequently sufficient to force a resignation.
Callaghan was the last PM to lose a no-confidence vote, but that's not the full story. Major and Brown resigned after losing an election, but Thatcher, Blair and Cameron all resigned as PM. May is expected to resign before the next general election. No US president has resigned since Nixon in 1974, which suggests a marked difference in security of tenure under the different systems - we might not kick our prime minister out of office very often, but they usually leave office of their own volition.
Huh that’s a bizarre take on the situation. Try explaining this to a parent whose daughter is suffering from ED and Self Harm. The sociologist/apologists won’t let instagram do anything since it breaks their fantasy of free speech being always “net” positive. And Apple won’t let the parent monitor her own daughter because think about PRIVACY!!!! The truth is the industry optimizes for anarchy under the guise of liberal ideology and privacy. As society wises up to this ruse we will see great push back against the fake SV philosophy.
As a technologist, I don't think I have a responsibility to the daughter's parents, either to do anything about the situation or to explain anything about it. I do have a responsibility to the daughter to get her the help she needs; that help is potentially not from her parents.
Great thanks for proving my point. Let’s replace technologist by medical professionals and you can see immediately that parents consent is required for most medical procedures barring edge cases where doctors get a court order. Oh also COPPA exists for this very deluded thinking that “technologist” like you have.
> Let’s replace technologist by medical professionals and you can see immediately that parents consent is required for most medical procedures barring edge cases where doctors get a court order.
Many states allow minors to receive mental health treatment without the consent of their parents and allow those minors to retain confidentiality.
This article is from England, and the context is a person in England who died by suicide, and the English government advancing white papers that talk about online harm.
In that context, the English rules abuot medical treatment seem useful. Someone the age of 16 or over is assumed to have capacity to make medical decisions by themselves (and there's complex law to regulate if they're thought to lack that capacity). Someone under 15 or under can also have that capacity: the doctor would need to check if the patient is Gillick Competent.
Interesting! Wikipedia claims: "The House of Lords focused on the issue of consent rather than a notion of 'parental rights' or parental power. In fact, the court held that 'parental rights' did not exist, other than to safeguard the best interests of a minor."
I am of the opinion that we should give significant credence to a minor over the age of, say, eight who says "I do not trust my parents to act in my best interests." This may generally involve having a qualified doctor or social worker evaluate the child's best interests instead of making the child decide, but at least a doctor or a social worker, unlike a parent, had qualifications to evaluate the options and has no conflict of interest unlike a parent.
Medical procedures, yes. But it's standard for doctors to ask parents of minors to leave the room so the doctor can speak privately, even if they don't suspect abuse, isn't it?
It's not Instagram's problem, nor should it be made to be.
Apple could certainly do more to facilitate MDM, but a phone known for letting your parents track your GPS and MITM your communications would not prove popular with the kids.
In the end the parents are the ones provisioning the device, paying the phone bill and are ultimately responsible for both it and its user...yet they have no administrative privileges over anything of relevance.
By all logic children should never be given access to fully-encrypted black boxes.
Instagram is enabling destructive behavior hurting society, how is this NOT their problem. Sure legally maybe not but how about ethically. Unless of course if ethics cannot be codified as a crypto smart contract they don’t matter.
Giving parents unfettered ability to violate their children's privacy does not serve the children's interests.
Many parents are abusive. Many children are discovering a sexuality or identity that their parents would find unacceptable.
In these cases, and many more, ensuring that the parents can read every single message their children send—and every single website they access—is much more likely to lead to serious negative outcomes for the children (at best, a repressed identity; at worst, suicide due to having one's self rejected by one's parents).
Would such abusive parents get their child a private phone knowing it limits their power over the child?
Maybe privacy-respecting tech is one of many solutions to bad parenting. Though I suspect getting to know ones neighbors well would be a far more effective first step.
Many parents are only abusive some of the time. As I understand it, the scenario of abusive some of the time, lavishing with gifts some of the time is actually not that uncommon.
Also, if most or all phones respect the child's privacy, it becomes harder for the parents to get their child a phone that lets them micromanage the child's life.
Surely just FANG. Apple is explicitly working to preserve privacy, and has no interest in collecting databases full of information on either us or our children. Indeed, they allow limited parental restrictions on phone use that do not, if I understand correctly, let the parents see and control everything the child can access—rather, it simply restricts what apps they can use, possibly some limits on websites(?), and how much they can use their phone during set parts of the day. A reasonable compromise for most, I would guess.
And they do make one of the more popular types of phone...
I submitted it because it's currently the best available piece advancing this position. Regulation will come, and if people don't want that regulation they'll need to develop much better arguments than this.
In my Twitter timeline, posts about self harm or suicidal ideation are generally met by a supportive atmosphere of concerned people.
When there is the opportunity, I try to make comments that validate people in a way that doesn't promote or encourage self harm, suicide attempts, etc.
I've attempted suicide. I know a fair amount about such issues.
No, shutting down the conversation isn't a good move. Instead, we need to promote best practices that make such conversations more constructive.
The biggest hurdle to conversation I find in my experience is that people who have never been there find it difficult to comprehend the mental state you're in when you're depressed. At least in my experience, social media would have been just a drop in the sea. In a way, suggesting social media is a problem just reflects how little understanding people have over what is going on inside a depressed person's mind.
The moment you wake up in the morning, you have some idea whether you're going to have an 'easy day' or a 'difficult day'. From that point on, it's a constant battle against your own mind, trying to avoid letting things become a 'bad day'. If you stub your toe on the door frame leaving your bedroom, your day is now a 'bad day' and you have 12 hours of mental struggle to look forward to. You haven't even had the opportunity to find out the clothes you wanted to wear aren't clean, that you're out of milk so you have to have toast for breakfast. You haven't had a chance to drop your spoon on the floor, or accidentally slam the cupboard too loudly. You haven't made it to work or school yet where you'll have to deal with all your least favourite people. And every one of these things makes your day harder, and harder, until you can't hold it back, and all of a sudden you're being held hostage by your own mind. Shit is already hard before you get to social media. Sure, social media probably contributes, but so many things contribute, you cannot eliminate them all.
To my mind, the bigger problem is that when people talk about big feelings, especially in any strongly expressive fashion, people get sucked into talking about feelings as if feelings are the end all and be all.
Feelings come from somewhere. When I try to engage people, I try to address root causes of feelings. I don't try to massage their feelings or something like that.
Most people either try to somehow stop the outpouring of negative feelings or respond by countering it with an outpouring of positives because their entire focus is the feelings. This tends to go bad places for everyone involved and one danger is that if everyone is nice to you when you are openly whining about being suicidal, that may actively "reward" you for being suicidal.
People who are suicidal are often people who are being generally treated like shit on a routine basis by a lot of the people around them. So being nice to them only when they are openly suicidal actively encourages suicidal ideation. Most people are too clueless to make an effort to find opportunities to engage them positively that don't promote suicidal feelings.
The difficulty people have with treating the source of a feeling is probably because a lot of the time it's difficult to identify the source. I think many people often go with what their body tells them about what might resolve a symptom that they're feeling in the short term (get drunk and party), but in the long run the root cause may be something entirely different (develop relationships that are more intellectually stimulating).
In addition to positives acting in a way that can prolong a mental illness, often they can also deepen it as well. Generally you're aware of what you could be, or should be, or want to be, but can't be and don't understand why. This in itself can trigger negative thoughts and reinforce the cycle.
Oh, I spent about 3.5 in therapy. It's somewhat second nature at this point for me to wonder at root causes in myself.
But I feel like I failed to communicate something. Let me give a few examples from actual conversations I've had:
Someone was talking about having recently self harmed again after x amount of time refraining. They were saying they felt so ashamed and like such a failure, that refraining for so long had been a big accomplishment.
I told them it was still a big accomplishment. That fact remained true and was in no way diminished by their recent self harm.
Someone who is incredibly sweet and interesting and knowledgeable has a lot of baggage. When their baggage trips them up, they don't know how to stop and the kind, supportive replies they get keep the drama rolling. It is complicated by an "either/or" framing of certain things.
A couple of times, I've managed to say a thing that largely stopped the drama. They then took a break and did me time activities. When they "came back," they were much more able to focus on things other than their own baggage and emotional drama.
In short, I've put down a lot of baggage. I sometimes can help other people put down the baggage.
That's my focus. If they drop the baggage, their emotional landscape changes.
53 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadhttps://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077555
If you sincerely believe that your daughter's phone is trying to kill her, then take away her damned phone.
Given how strongly linked smartphones are to all aspects of life. You are vastly underestimating difficulty of taking aways someone’s smartphone. Since worst case you can ask Cops and Telecom provider for location.
Wanting to be a bad parent is one thing, but at least get your facts straight.
There's no need for that.
What do you have in mind that can't be done using that, and which was possible using a now-banned app?
[1] https://www.cultofmac.com/570719/block-website-iphone-ipad/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/reviewer-guidelines
"Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance' required by a given journal, PLOS ONE uses peer review to determine whether a paper is technically rigorous and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record."
And I would bet good money that she would acquire another phone very quickly.
To me this reads as a complete non-sequitur to the GP. He's pointing out how the problem manifests in the political arena.
You're suggesting they don't have enough sympathy for young girls suffering from social media related depression?
Telling their parents might make things even worse. Abusive parents are, in some cases, the cause of the child's psychological problems in the first place.
First they came for the states by broadening the interstate commerce clause far beyond any rational reading. And now congress has ceded its authority in key areas such as treaties (fast tracking), declarations of war, and in process now: the right to subpoena information (we'll see how this one turns out).
For an example of what this looks like refer to the Sargent at Arms arresting someone in possession of Facebook documents the UK parliament wanted: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize...
I think too many people take for granted the stability and continuation of a system of government.
However the backstop is the no confidence vote which operates like impeachment. This is not a theoretical power but is exercised relatively frequently in parliamentarian systems. Failure to pass a budget is also by default a no confidence vote making it very rare one isn't passed. I think deep down the US feels that as well. The democracies they have created throughout the world do not mirror the US system of government.
The problem we face today with the US centralizing power in the presidency is that impeachment is seen as a "nuclear option" and therefore is not an effective backstop.
The basic problem currently in the American system is overpowered political parties which didn't fit in to the original set of checks and balances. It isn't clear if there is a simple amendment which could fix the system or if it is more of a social problem.
> I think deep down the US feels that as well. The democracies they have created throughout the world do not mirror the US system of government.
Well, that assumes those decisions are made solely with the best interests of the people in those democracies in mind.
Callaghan was the last PM to lose a no-confidence vote, but that's not the full story. Major and Brown resigned after losing an election, but Thatcher, Blair and Cameron all resigned as PM. May is expected to resign before the next general election. No US president has resigned since Nixon in 1974, which suggests a marked difference in security of tenure under the different systems - we might not kick our prime minister out of office very often, but they usually leave office of their own volition.
Many states allow minors to receive mental health treatment without the consent of their parents and allow those minors to retain confidentiality.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1080%2F1067828X.2013.777380
In that context, the English rules abuot medical treatment seem useful. Someone the age of 16 or over is assumed to have capacity to make medical decisions by themselves (and there's complex law to regulate if they're thought to lack that capacity). Someone under 15 or under can also have that capacity: the doctor would need to check if the patient is Gillick Competent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillick_competence
I am of the opinion that we should give significant credence to a minor over the age of, say, eight who says "I do not trust my parents to act in my best interests." This may generally involve having a qualified doctor or social worker evaluate the child's best interests instead of making the child decide, but at least a doctor or a social worker, unlike a parent, had qualifications to evaluate the options and has no conflict of interest unlike a parent.
Apple could certainly do more to facilitate MDM, but a phone known for letting your parents track your GPS and MITM your communications would not prove popular with the kids.
In the end the parents are the ones provisioning the device, paying the phone bill and are ultimately responsible for both it and its user...yet they have no administrative privileges over anything of relevance.
By all logic children should never be given access to fully-encrypted black boxes.
Many parents are abusive. Many children are discovering a sexuality or identity that their parents would find unacceptable.
In these cases, and many more, ensuring that the parents can read every single message their children send—and every single website they access—is much more likely to lead to serious negative outcomes for the children (at best, a repressed identity; at worst, suicide due to having one's self rejected by one's parents).
Maybe privacy-respecting tech is one of many solutions to bad parenting. Though I suspect getting to know ones neighbors well would be a far more effective first step.
Also, if most or all phones respect the child's privacy, it becomes harder for the parents to get their child a phone that lets them micromanage the child's life.
It doesn't serve their interests either if in their search for identity, they end up bullied or exploited to suicide in secret by their peers.
Either way, I get what you're saying, it just sucks that FAANG reserves the right to know our children better than we ever will.
And they do make one of the more popular types of phone...
I submitted it because it's currently the best available piece advancing this position. Regulation will come, and if people don't want that regulation they'll need to develop much better arguments than this.
When there is the opportunity, I try to make comments that validate people in a way that doesn't promote or encourage self harm, suicide attempts, etc.
I've attempted suicide. I know a fair amount about such issues.
No, shutting down the conversation isn't a good move. Instead, we need to promote best practices that make such conversations more constructive.
It can be done.
The moment you wake up in the morning, you have some idea whether you're going to have an 'easy day' or a 'difficult day'. From that point on, it's a constant battle against your own mind, trying to avoid letting things become a 'bad day'. If you stub your toe on the door frame leaving your bedroom, your day is now a 'bad day' and you have 12 hours of mental struggle to look forward to. You haven't even had the opportunity to find out the clothes you wanted to wear aren't clean, that you're out of milk so you have to have toast for breakfast. You haven't had a chance to drop your spoon on the floor, or accidentally slam the cupboard too loudly. You haven't made it to work or school yet where you'll have to deal with all your least favourite people. And every one of these things makes your day harder, and harder, until you can't hold it back, and all of a sudden you're being held hostage by your own mind. Shit is already hard before you get to social media. Sure, social media probably contributes, but so many things contribute, you cannot eliminate them all.
Feelings come from somewhere. When I try to engage people, I try to address root causes of feelings. I don't try to massage their feelings or something like that.
Most people either try to somehow stop the outpouring of negative feelings or respond by countering it with an outpouring of positives because their entire focus is the feelings. This tends to go bad places for everyone involved and one danger is that if everyone is nice to you when you are openly whining about being suicidal, that may actively "reward" you for being suicidal.
People who are suicidal are often people who are being generally treated like shit on a routine basis by a lot of the people around them. So being nice to them only when they are openly suicidal actively encourages suicidal ideation. Most people are too clueless to make an effort to find opportunities to engage them positively that don't promote suicidal feelings.
In addition to positives acting in a way that can prolong a mental illness, often they can also deepen it as well. Generally you're aware of what you could be, or should be, or want to be, but can't be and don't understand why. This in itself can trigger negative thoughts and reinforce the cycle.
But I feel like I failed to communicate something. Let me give a few examples from actual conversations I've had:
Someone was talking about having recently self harmed again after x amount of time refraining. They were saying they felt so ashamed and like such a failure, that refraining for so long had been a big accomplishment.
I told them it was still a big accomplishment. That fact remained true and was in no way diminished by their recent self harm.
Someone who is incredibly sweet and interesting and knowledgeable has a lot of baggage. When their baggage trips them up, they don't know how to stop and the kind, supportive replies they get keep the drama rolling. It is complicated by an "either/or" framing of certain things.
A couple of times, I've managed to say a thing that largely stopped the drama. They then took a break and did me time activities. When they "came back," they were much more able to focus on things other than their own baggage and emotional drama.
In short, I've put down a lot of baggage. I sometimes can help other people put down the baggage.
That's my focus. If they drop the baggage, their emotional landscape changes.
Because feelings come from somewhere.