I appreciate the concerns around body-image and especially consent are important ones. Nonetheless I find it slightly odd that an article about how happiness has declined since specifically 2009 doesn’t mention the 13 years of Tory rule and austerity we’ve had in that time.
Wow an article pushing a shitty law like the online safety bill.
One big problem I have with online safety bills these people are proposing is that I just don’t think they’ll work. Like it’s a censorship law and politicians are rarely the sort of people who date people due to them being kind, moral, and smart. And they sure ain’t faithful to them.
Additionally I doubt that these proposed changes will improve things. Hating your belly doesn’t come from porn. It absolutely does come in part from the diet industry. But it also comes from being in a culture where “no fat chicks” was a jokey tshirt. The internet didn’t introduce girls to this culture it made it so the people who wear those shirts can talk about how it’s basic cico and mock fat women and basically be immature high schoolers talking about girls (or boys) forever including in your inbox. Meanwhile socially well adjusted adults aren’t using social media like this and are leaving the places the young and immature hang out. Seriously I don’t want to tell kids how as I get older, older women keep looking better and better. We have over a century of telling everyone that that healthy bit of belly that comes from not being starved and dehydrated is too much. And now everyone is talking all the time.
Like seriously I don’t know how we can stop the harassment and body image issues because this clearly isn’t just porn. It means that every creep from Edinburgh to Canberra to Ottawa can be in your inbox if you post a picture. It’s shit like gamergate and it’s consequences. And the whole digital editing thing? Cool but a lot can be done with practical effects and camera work. And I fear it will just be used to police women’s bodies. Does this mean that every incredibly endowed woman is going to have to repeatedly prove that no she really does just have immense back pain?
And then past it all, every hopeless young woman I’ve met isn’t hopeless because of that, she’s hopeless because the environment is fucked and nobody is fixing it. Likewise for the economy.
Unrealistic expectations are a bitch. Grab a pint and give up you hopes and dreams as the men learned long ago.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In figures that Angela Salt, the UK movement’s chief executive, said showed “girls and young women have been let down”, only 17% aged seven to 21 now feel very happy compared with 40% in 2009.
Despite multiple campaigns to change the way female body image is depicted, two-thirds of 11 to 21-year-olds “sometimes feel ashamed of the way I look because I’m not like girls and women in the media” – up from half five years ago.
In several worrying findings suggesting backsliding on gender equality, the number of girls and women who think they are mostly given the same opportunities to do things as boys and men of the same age has fallen since 2009.
“The pressures on girls, particularly in terms of appearance, online harms and sexual harassment, felt particularly resonant as I have watched multiple members in my own Girlguiding units struggle with these issues,” she said.
ChildLine, the charity which runs the 0800 1111 helpline, said the results “reinforce how essential the upcoming online safety bill will be in ensuring girls can use social media platforms without the fear of suffering sexism and abuse.”
“The findings from this survey are sobering and echo the concerns that our trained ChildLine counsellors hear on a daily basis,” said Kieran Lyons, service head.
The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This one is easy: It’s because they’re using the internet too much.
For some reason nothing is being done to this. Some psychologists even dismiss the fact. Gross incompetence that should in a sane situation lead to the overhaul of the whole field. It’s like astrology at this point.
Is it? Without a doubt the internet, and it’s overuse can be an issue, but I’m not sure it’s a great idea to minimise it down to one cause when there’s likely significantly more to it than that.
Young people are much more aware of what’s going on in the world than they were even 15 years ago when I was a teen. They understand what’s coming, they understand climate change and the other issues of the day. Is that an online issue or a societal issues that’s spewing into the lives of young people where it didn’t before?
Exactly. Growing up I knew about climate change but it seemed like something was being done slowly. I had trust in the adults running the world because they hadn’t given me too glaring of reasons not to. By the time I was 18 (2012) it was clear it was a bit of a shitshow. It wasn’t just that I was getting older, my little sister followed that path quickly. I remember explaining to my parents as a teenager that I wouldn’t be as wealthy as them despite wanting to follow the same career path. Not knowing about this doesn’t make anything better, the only solution is to fix the damn problems.
I think the Internet is playing a large part but it’s definitely not the only cause by far
How does getting chronically depressed, perhaps a decade before one even gets the power to change anything, help?
That’s the dumbest thing I have read today, good job!
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In an ideal world it would be great if we could say to people “hey, maybe you shouldn’t be a dick to people on the Internet” but that’s the same as trying to say “maybe you shouldn’t steal from people” instead of buying a burglar alarm.
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Did I say that? You can never prevent it completely, so you still need to protect people as well as educating people.
Yeah, the problem is the people being abused on the internet, not the people doing the abusing. They just need to not be on the internet, so they won’t get abused!
Come on, the Internet has plenty of stuff that makes one depressed without any need to get abused or even communicate with anyone.
You’re so smart.
Well, it’s all relative. Compared to you, for instance, certainly.
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Some psychologists even dismiss the fact.
Yeh. I don’t think you’re quite sure what the word “fact” means
I’m sure you actually know a lot about psychology and aren’t an armchair philosopher or anything. Wanna show us some of your papers? It should be easy to get published in a psych journal if it’s just astrology, right?
But I guess this partially shows that at least some psychologists are on top of the problem. Just a few years ago (and I routinely talked to a few child psychologists then) the concensus was explicitly stating that internet / smart device use is not a significant factor.
It’s good that the papers are starting to reflect what most parents of teenagers know already. Perhaps it’s possible to align the actions as well in the near future. Some generations have been and will be lost, unfortunately.
Perhaps it’s more to do with changes to the internet over the past 5 or so years? Such as the pervasive rise of algorithmic feeds designed to drive “engagement”?
So it’s not astrology when you agree with it?
