The dangers of social media for young people

The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned that excessive use of social media by young people carries serious health risks.

“Teens who use social media for more than three hours a day face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms, which is particularly concerning given that the average amount of time that kids use social media is 3 1/2 hours a day,” the Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep.

According to the advisory, 95% of teenagers ages 13-17 say they use a social media app, and more than a third say they use it “almost constantly.” The Social Media and Youth Mental Health advisory says social media can perpetuate “body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, social comparison, and low self-esteem, especially among adolescent girls.”

Nearly 1 in 3 adolescents report using screens until midnight or later, the advisory says. And most are using social media during that time.

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Frederick Douglass memoir of being a slave

I recently read the memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895), who in 1838 escaped from slavery in Maryland to freedom in New York. This document’s account ends shortly after he got his freedom. While yet a slave, he had surreptitiously taught himself to read and write, an offense for which he could be severely whipped if discovered. His memoir is extremely well written, so much so that many people at that time did not believe that he could ever have been a slave.

After moving to New Bedford, Connecticut, he attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket in 1841 where he got up and spoke for the first time in a group consisting of both white and Black people. He was discovered to be a powerful orator with a compelling life story and became one of the most prominent voices for abolition. His memoir can be downloaded at Project Gutenberg and other locations.

His story of his days in slavery are harrowing. The unremitting cruelty of that institution is a reminder of how low human beings can sink once they decide that some group of people are so inferior to them that they do not deserve even the most basic of humane treatment.

He also seeks to correct some misconceptions, such as the role of singing among slaves. We know that that there is a rich tradition of Black music that came out of slavery. Apologists for slavery used the singing of slaves as an indicator that they were happy with their lot but Douglass says in Chapter II that the opposite is true, that the singing indicates deep sorrow.

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

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