[throwaway-0110]

The author attributes the rise in mental illness among teen girls to them "spending hours each day posting photos of themselves and scrolling through hundreds of carefully edited photos of other girls". As someone who was a teen girl suffering depression and extreme anxiety in the 2010s, the idea rings quite shallow. I can assure you I was not suicidal because ... other girls are pretty? what? ... but because of narcissistic controlling hyperreligious parents fucking me up mentally and withdrawing into a smaller and smaller fringe bubble, cutting me off from normal people and normal life. I think the main problem destroying people's mental health is social atomization/isolation/polarization/decay, and social media does have a role to play in that, but is not the problem in and of itself.

[sufehmi]

This is called "anecdotal evidence"

I have similar problem too, but then I also people got distressed over social media as well.

The existence of our problem does not mean that other people's problems are invalid / does not exist.

[throwaway-0110]

I'm not saying everyone has the same story as me, and I'm also not saying that social media has no role in depression/anxiety. I'm saying the talking point "girls' mental health is in the toilet because they're obsessed with selfies" is speculative and condescending, ignoring more serious issues that teens are struggling with, and it's valid to offer a first-hand perspective as a counterbalance to that.

[huarahuara]

It tends to be middle class young women regardless of ethnicity (though typically white) who suffer the most mentally due to social media giving them anorexia. The idea that selfies harm young women has a lot of basis in reality.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/eating-disorders-...