Harold H. Horstmann
Lohman
Dear Editor:
I call your attention to a Sept. 11 article in the MIT Technology Review, "Teens are anxious and depressed after three hours a day on social media" (www.technologyreview.com/f/614297/teens-are-anxious-and-depressed-after-three-hours-a-day-on-social-media/).
"A study published today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (JAMA Psychiatry is a monthly, peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association) suggests that teenagers who spend more than three hours a day on social media are more likely to develop mental health problems including depression, anxiety, aggression and antisocial behavior.
"The effects of social-media consumption on teens manifest in two main ways, according to the study's authors: internally (depression and anxiety, for example) and externally (aggressive behavior or antisocial behavior). The latter were essentially nonexistent among teens who reported that they didn't use social media."
This letter is written as a follow-up to my letter published Aug. 28, 2019, "Gun control and marijuana." The article referenced above combined with the conclusions from the National Institute of Health's 2017 Monitoring as described in my Aug. 28 letter should add credence to the argument that help for teen mental illness caused by marijuana and social media should be given priority over gun control and/or confiscation as a real and legitimate solution to mass shootings.
Throughout history, disarming a nation's citizens is always a precursor to any form of tyrannical takeover of a nation. The citizens must be disarmed to eliminate any possibility of resistance. That's why socialists will never acknowledge any other solution to mass shootings other than the confiscation of our weapons. It's obvious that because social media and marijuana are critical to the socialist's takeover of our country, these findings will continue to be swept under the rug, and the march toward gun confiscation will continue with the probability of more mass shootings. In liberal leftist politics, real solutions are irrelevant, the quest for power is paramount and the ends always justify the means!
God save our nation!