Relevant comic.
A report issued today by the American Association of Pediatrics is adding a new condition to the already infinite list of stuff your kid could be suffering from: Facebook depression. It’s every bit as terrible as it sounds.
“Researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “Facebook depression,” defined as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.“
Dr. Gwenn O’Queef O’Keeffe, a Boston-area pediatrician and lead author of the social media guidelines, says the Facebook depression appears when forever alone kids are exposed to interesting status updates and photos of their happy-looking “friends” having good times. She said “Facebook is where all the teens are hanging out now. It’s their corner store.” Right-o.
Now for my rant.
Is she serious about all of that? Kids getting depressed because they don’t have thousands of online friends and shit? Isn’t that because, you know, they don’t have any friends in real life to do fun stuff with? And even if I could accept that Facebook is by itself guilty of making kids feel depressed, if we go down this road we’ll soon get all sorts of new conditions like “shitty at sports depression,” “no six pack depression,” and maybe even “I can’t have a hot girlfriend depression.” Absolutely absurd.
Abby Abold, a 16-year-old from Chicago, says she never felt depressed because of Facebook but that she can see how it could affect other kids.
“If you really didn’t have that many friends and weren’t really doing much with your life, and saw other peoples’ status updates and pictures and what they were doing with friends, I could see how that would make them upset.”
I don’t know about you guys, but to me, what she’s describing doesn’t sound like “Facebook depression” at all. It sounds like a good ‘ol case of kids failing at life – Facebook or no Facebook.
Someone email the AAP and tell them that just because something reminds kids they aren’t awesome doesn’t mean it is a clinical condition. And don’t forget to show them this South Park clip.
