[HN Gopher] The teen mental illness epidemic is international - ...
___________________________________________________________________
The teen mental illness epidemic is international - Part 1: The
Anglosphere
Author : paulpauper
Score : 223 points
Date : 2023-03-29 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jonathanhaidt.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonathanhaidt.substack.com)
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Note that this isn't an unbiased source. This is working with
| Jon, the co-writer of The Coddling Of The American Mind, which
| uhhh is not without its critics for inaccuracies and stretching
| of truth. Check it out:
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-am...
| censor_me wrote:
| Linking a podcast isn't very good sourcing. I'm very intrigued
| to hear how the cuddling that's happening college campuses
| isn't happening, since anyone can see it in real time.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > I'm very intrigued to hear how the cuddling that's
| happening college campuses isn't happening, since anyone can
| see it in real time
|
| They were saying the same things when I was in college 30
| years ago.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| It can be argued that it's been getting steadily worse over
| that entire period of time.
| educaysean wrote:
| I agree. It's a natural condition of the human world and
| not directly attributable to any one specific cause. Life
| goes on.
| FredPret wrote:
| Cuddling on campus sounds like a good idea and has been par
| for the course for generations. But coddling is a problem
| eastof wrote:
| I know you're jokingly responding to GP, but I seriously
| wonder if there's a deeper point here.
|
| I feel like casual hookups are replacing cuddling and could
| be part of the issue but who knows.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Interesting reading this sentiment, after first reading the
| recent thread about Stanford's "war" on students. The
| prevailing attitude there seemed to be that Stanford was in
| fact antagonizing their students by banning drinking, when in
| fact they _should_ be providing an environment that is
| insulates students from real-world consequences to allow for
| experimentation. Now I guess this opinion is that doing so
| would be coddling, and that is a problem in itself. Seems
| like a complex issue where people can have a reasonable
| difference of opinion. So maybe it 's not that people are
| denying the coddling, but they just think it's not a problem.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Here is a list of the referred critiques in the show notes:
|
| The Miseducation of Free Speech
| (https://www.virginialawreview.org/articles/miseducation-
| free...)
|
| College and the "Culture War": Assessing Higher Education's
| Influence on Moral Attitudes (https://journals.sagepub.com/do
| i/full/10.1177/00031224211041...)
|
| The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis
| (https://academeblog.org/2018/12/28/the-myth-of-the-campus-
| co...)
|
| What 'Safe Spaces' Really Look Like on College Campuses
| (https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-safe-spaces-really-
| lo...)
|
| Are College Campuses Really in the Thrall of Leftist Censors?
| (https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/03/hypersensitive-
| camp...)
|
| Speaking Freely: What Students Think about Expression at
| American Colleges (https://www.thefire.org/research-
| learn/student-attitudes-fre...)
|
| 'Not all cultures are created equal' says Penn Law professor
| in op-ed (https://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/amy-wax-penn-
| law-cultu...) How
|
| Right Wing Media Has Tried to Stifle Student Speech at
| Evergreen State College (https://psmag.com/education/the-
| real-free-speech-story-at-ev...)
|
| I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me
| (https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-
| afrai...)
|
| In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-
| shu...)
| scythe wrote:
| It's not much easier to engage with ten articles of varying
| quality and varying levels of disagreement than with a
| podcast.
|
| >The Miseducation of Free Speech
|
| Does not focus on Haidt.
|
| >College and the "Culture War": Assessing Higher
| Education's Influence on Moral Attitudes
|
| Does not focus on Haidt.
|
| >The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis
|
| "This is not one of those laudatory reviews. Although I
| agree with many things they write, and share their general
| outlook in opposition to safetyism (protecting people from
| any possible harms, including offensive ideas) and in favor
| of free speech, I want to focus on my disagreements because
| dissent is more interesting and more important."
|
| Dissents on specific political implications while agreeing
| with the wider point.
|
| >What 'Safe Spaces' really look like on college campuses
|
| Does not mention Haidt _at all_ ; focuses mostly on "safe
| spaces" in the narrow sense of support groups.
|
| >Are College Campuses Really in the Thrall of Leftist
| Censors?
|
| Tabloid piece; focuses primarily on political bias and not
| overall censorship; does not mention Haidt.
|
| >Speaking Freely: What Students Think about Expression at
| American Colleges
|
| From FIRE, whose leadership worked with Haidt on the book;
| presumably not that critical of Haidt. Skipped.
|
| >Not all cultures are created equal' says Penn Law
| professor in op-ed
|
| Focuses on Amy Waxman, an infamously racist professor whom
| even "anti-woke" firebrand Norman Finkelstein has
| denounced. A bit of a strawman.
|
| >Right Wing Media Has Tried to Stifle Student Speech at
| Evergreen State College
|
| Does not focus on Haidt; essentially agrees by highlighting
| censorship on college campuses, but disputes whether it is
| primarily leftist.
|
| >I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify
| me
|
| Skipped. You know why.
|
| >In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas
|
| Paywall; title indicates that it agrees with Haidt.
|
| Nowhere in this Gish gallop of links is there a serious
| critique of _the analysis_ in _The Coddling of the American
| Mind_ , except in the third link, where the author is
| explicitly saying he agrees with Haidt on most points.
| Using this to discredit Haidt as he discusses a completely
| different subject is not a very helpful contribution to the
| overall discussion.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| The Amy Waxman point was explicitly used by The Coddling
| Of The American Mind to prove its point, while the book
| completely ignored the context that Amy Waxman was
| racist, which is why it's referenced here. It's clear
| _you haven 't even read the book you're trying to defend
| here, so why are you doing this?_
|
| Edited to add: A gish-gallop? I'm just linking a set of
| references that the podcast uses because of the critique
| that podcasts are apparently bad to listen to? Do you
| want a transcript or something? I'm just wanting to let
| folks have some context to this article dude, that isn't
| coming from a source without its own biases and to keep
| that in mind when reading. Why are you being weird about
| this, man?
| mehlmao wrote:
| Haidt's book argues that students and faculty denouncing
| Amy Wax is stifling a culture of freedom of speech, while
| purposefully not addressing what the students and faculty
| were denouncing. This is one of the few examples he
| provides.
| censor_me wrote:
| [dead]
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| This is just an ad hominem.
|
| Address the content/message, not the speaker.
| dang wrote:
| I agree with you about ad hominems but unfortunately your
| account has been using HN primarily for political/ideological
| battle, and also is arguably breaking the rule against
| trollish usernames here (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&
| dateRange=all&type=comme...). I've therefore banned it. If
| you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future - they're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you want
| to do that, we'll happily rename your account to something
| less trollish.
|
| (If you didn't intend your username to be trollish, I
| apologize, but I'm seeing signs that other people are taking
| it that way.)
| luckylion wrote:
| This is pretty lame, given that there's a good amount of
| users who are basically only commenting to say "capitalism
| bad, mhkay", yet for some reason that's not "primarily for
| political/ideological battle".
|
| Applying rules evenly makes the rules seem better.
| dang wrote:
| We've been applying the rules evenly for years, or at
| least have put in years' worth of effort to do so. The
| problem is that no matter how evenly one applies the
| rules, people with strong ideological passions still feel
| that we are biased against their side and secretly favor
| the other side. I think this is because everyone is more
| likely to notice and place greater weight on the cases
| that they happen to dislike.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
|
| If you're aware of accounts using HN primarily for
| ideological battle who we haven't asked to stop, the
| likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen them. We
| don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted
| here. You can help by flagging such posts or, in
| egregious cases, emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false
| &qu...
| luckylion wrote:
| I find the "both extremes are mad at me so I must be
| doing something right" defense not really useful, as it
| really doesn't say much about how evenly you apply
| moderation. You could be a hair's width away from being a
| fascist, and some full on fascist would complain that
| you're too left wing, and both a centrist and a leftist
| would complain that you're too right wing.
|
| I don't want to complain about people doing it (but I
| have commented on it, and taken the punishment), I'd just
| prefer the moderation to be "either there's none or we
| keep our hands off".
|
| I understand that it's not an easy position to be in, as
| you have to keep people happy, and enforcing the rules
| sometimes doesn't vibe with everyone, but I do believe
| that Facebook got that right (one of the few things!): if
| you say that you can't make sexist comments, you also
| can't make sexist comments about men. Twitter and Reddit
| got that wrong, and I believe you've got it wrong as
| well, as you'll ban someone like the person here, but you
| wouldn't bane someone who is the opposite.
| dang wrote:
| > "both extremes are mad at me so I must be doing
| something right"
|
| I haven't said that and try to be careful never to imply
| it. Rather, my point is that these complaints about
| moderation bias (which come in from all political angles)
| are so isomorphic that there must be a common mechanism
| underlying them.
|
| People sometimes interpret this as an argument in favor
| of centrist politics but that's a misunderstanding. It's
| an argument about social psychology on the internet.
| FuckYouDan wrote:
| > _I agree with you about ad hominems but unfortunately
| your account has been using HN primarily for political
| /ideological battle_
|
| Bullshit. It's obvious that ideological battles are fine
| here, as long as you conform to the prevailing Democrat
| narratives: https://i.imgur.com/Si183zE.jpg This painfully
| obvious to everyone that doesn't live in the same Filter
| Bubble as your tribe:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble
|
| >and also is arguably breaking the rule against trollish
| usernames here (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRan
| ge=all&type=comme...). I've therefore banned it.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/chicken-nugger
|
| Maybe stop seeking reasons to be offended and take a look
| outside your filter bubble. You know, converse curiously;
| instead of sanctimoniously out of blatant ignorance.
| dang wrote:
| First of all, I'm sorry I didn't know my meme!
|
| Second, you've linked to a photo that says something
| about Netflix, Twitter, Airbnb, Apple, Stripe, Lyft,
| Google, Salesforce, Facebook, Tesla, eBay, PayPal, and
| Microsoft. It's not clear to me what that's supposed to
| have to do with Hacker News moderation.
|
| It's not at all true that ideological battles are fine
| here for one side but not the other, as anyone can see
| for themselves if they want to look back through the
| thousands of moderation comments I've posted. You feel
| that way, not because you're perceiving moderation
| accurately, but for the same reason that led
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35238927 to say
| "Literally anything left-of-right-of-centre immediately
| gets flagged (if not outright banned by the mods)".
| [deleted]
| xupybd wrote:
| It's fair to say that this falls under the current "culture
| war". Any criticism may or may not be politically motivated.
| Any support may or may not be politically motivated.
|
| The results of this data gathering exercise is alarming
| regardless.
| detuned wrote:
| He's also known for hinging a lot of what he says on the
| concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria (the idea that kids are
| spontaneously turning trans with no previous indicators due to
| a "social contagion"). The original study for it is a survey of
| posts from parents who don't want their kids to be trans. It
| shouldn't surprise anyone that those parents weren't in the
| best position to catch any hints when their kids might have
| caught on to the idea that their parents might not like them
| being trans.
| naasking wrote:
| You are way overstating this. Haidt might have been one of
| the early ones raising alarm bells, but it's well established
| now that the cohort of people declaring themselves to be
| trans has shifted dramatically to young girls only very
| recently [1].
|
| [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p382
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Your article doesn't seem to be quite authoritative: It
| shows there's actually a lot of debate about this subject.
| There's even a responses section that shows there's some
| significant issues with the article and claiming it's not
| neutral, leaving out significant statistics like a less
| than 1% regret rate of trans affirming procedures (less
| than a knee surgery). I think it's still up in the air,
| frankly.
| naasking wrote:
| What is authoritative is the evidence. The cohort WPATH
| was familiar with before 2010 and for which we have
| considerable data was older male-to-female transitioners.
| This cohort has changed significantly per the article,
| which is why some people are raising concerns about the
| lack of quality safety data for minors.
|
| Furthermore, only the US has really pushed gender
| affirming care for minors to this degree. Every other
| country has backed away from it due to low quality
| evidence. You know what else those countries have that
| the US doesn't? Universal healthcare that creates wildly
| different healthcare priorities. Consider that when when
| evaluating neutrality.
|
| > leaving out significant statistics like a less than 1%
| regret rate of trans affirming procedures (less than a
| knee surgery)
|
| The article and the responses make clear that
| transitioners are not followed consistently, so this
| evaluation is based on very spotty data. The fact is _we
| don 't know_ how common regret is.
|
| Even the responses that are pro-gender affirming care
| acknowledge that the data supporting long-term quality of
| life improvements is poor.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I'm just saying it's still up in the air it seems.
| naasking wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're claiming is up in the air. My
| first claim was about the changing cohort, so if that's
| what you're referring to, the statistics are clear.
| Here's how it breaks down in Canada:
|
| https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-
| quotidien/220427/cg-b0...
|
| Transgender women were dominant and stable for a long
| time, as I said (male to female transitioners), and then
| trans men and non-binary cohort have shot past those
| levels like a rocket over the past few years.
|
| Some of the increases are doubtless more acceptance of
| trans people, but it's not clear why that would affect
| the genders differentially in such a dramatic fashion.
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Just like with autism, this is unlikely a change in the true rate
| of mental illness, just more awareness of and less social stigma
| against mental illness.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| My bet is that there is a bidirectional relationship between
| medication and mental health. Meaning, teenagers are over
| medicated which is messing with their heads. Some of them need
| the medicine, others are unknowingly suffering under some
| amphetamine, antidepressant, anti-anxiety etc.
|
| Would love to see mental health numbers of teenagers that:
|
| 1. Havent been medicated - I understand this
| biases the sample
|
| 2. Exercise
| taylodl wrote:
| Having been through several months of weekly group therapy
| sessions with my daughter and having seen dozens of kids
| suffering from anxiety and depression, I can tell you you're
| wrong on both counts:
|
| 1. They're not medicated. Boys are most likely to be medicated,
| but out of all these dozens of kids there was only one boy.
| Boys are so rare that one girl thought it was a girls-only
| therapy group and wondered where do guys go to get help?
|
| 2. Most of them were highly physically active - more so than
| most of the people I knew when I was growing up.
| taylodl wrote:
| Seeing as how my daughter has gone through ten years of therapy
| due to depression I'll throw my hat in the ring and tell you what
| I think at least part of the problem is:
|
| Late stage, winner-takes-all & loser-gets-nothing, Capitalism.
|
| Those of us who are well-entrenched in our careers may not
| understand how vicious the world is for the entry-level and those
| aspiring to launch careers. The secondary schools preach and harp
| about college nearly every single day. If you don't go to college
| then expect to work meaningless jobs and live in squalor. I'm
| paraphrasing, but only a bit.
|
| If you don't know anyone going through today's college admissions
| process then whoo-boy! There have been a recent spate of articles
| here on HN complaining about developer interviews and how insane
| they've become. Multiply the insanity by 10x and then re-label it
| as college admissions. You'd better have made sure you played the
| right sport, had the right extracurricular activities,
| volunteered for the right organizations, and be a candidate for
| the Nobel Peace Prize. That should _at least_ guarantee you a
| spot at your state college, maybe even a scholarship or two.
|
| And speaking of scholarships - you need money for college. Lots
| and lots of money. More money than your parents could have ever
| possibly saved - and that's if your parents are in the top 10% of
| wage earners. You're going to be taking out loans, maybe spending
| a significant part of your adult life paying back those loans.
|
| Why would you do this? You don't want to have a menial job and
| live in squalor do you?
|
| Meanwhile while killing themselves to get into college they're
| watching billionaires literally buy the government and pass the
| laws they want passed. They watch politicians gerrymander so that
| the majority doesn't actually have a say. They watch a moral
| minority strip them of every personal liberty they have and tell
| them how to live their lives.
|
| Oh, and all these assholes are completely destroying the Earth,
| and their future, without a care in the world for what will come
| after them. In fact they don't think there's going to be a future
| because Jesus Christ is going to float down on a cloud and save
| them all and leave your sorry ass behind to suffer.
|
| And we're wondering, actually wondering, why an entire generation
| is depressed and apathetic and looking at the older generations
| with derision.
|
| Meanwhile the depression will continue until they rise up and
| burn the place down. That is if they're not so downtrodden they
| can't even lift their heads any longer.
|
| But yeah, let's blame smartphones instead.
| zackmorris wrote:
| I've been trying to post less online because it's, well,
| depressing. But I agree with you 1000%.
|
| The main way to curtail late stage crony capitalism is to raise
| taxes on the wealthy. We're at about half the tax rate that
| sustains a healthy middle class, which is directly correlated
| with wages being half what they should be, the lack of personal
| savings for the bottom half of the population, etc. It's been
| well-understood since the Great Depression, but empires have
| always known that there's a limit to what workers will accept
| before they revolt. I believe that we passed the point of
| stability around the Dot Bomb and 9/11 2001. But a strong
| argument could be made that the writing was on the wall by 1990
| when the USSR separated but world powers kept funding their own
| militaries to create new bogeymen like terrorism to control the
| population.
|
| Everything since has been theater: from the way we reward
| financiers and penalize employees, to how our legal system
| protects status quo players like the RIAA/MPAA, and how threats
| to our environments are just treated as externalities and not
| addressed directly because that goes against "free market"
| capitalism.
|
| I learned about the situation we're in today with looming
| global threats like nationalism and fascism in high school AP
| government class back in maybe 1993. Back then, guys like
| Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh were curiosities,
| and Newt Gingrich was just getting started. Never in our
| wildest dreams would we have imagined that Fox News would
| dominate all media, thanks to bitter old men like Rupert
| Murdoch. They created such a dark reality that I feel awful for
| young people today who think that this is how it always was and
| always will be.
|
| The silver lining is that every bully eventually realizes that
| everyone is laughing at him. I think we're in one of those
| moments now with stuff like the TikTok ban hearings
| illustrating how comically out of touch bitter old men are.
| Their time is ending, and I still hold out hope that when Gen X
| attains power in government, we'll pull the plug on the fear
| mongering. But I'm generally wrong about these things, so I
| also expect the powers that be will prevent us from ever
| gaining any power whatsoever. Which is why it's so important to
| organize outside of whatever circles the mainstream media deems
| appropriate. Thankfully Gen Z appears to be doing just that.
| ipaddr wrote:
| This happened under Obama.
| lezojeda wrote:
| Add increasing concentration of wealth in less and less people,
| increasing job insecurity due to technological advances
| rendering many jobs completely useless (and transfers even more
| wealth to those that are already haves and removes it even more
| from have-nots), the instant access to compare yourself to
| millions of others around the world...
|
| I seriously can't understand why some people scratch their
| heads around the youth's mental health crisis. I'd be baffled
| if they weren't depresesd.
| taylodl wrote:
| These were all the things the kids were talking about in
| group therapy - and this was nearly 10 years ago!
|
| BUT - I wouldn't expect people who haven't been paying
| attention to the environment to be paying attention to their
| children. Or maybe it's the other way around?
| luckylion wrote:
| We've seen much worse wealth inequalities in history, we've
| seen _much_ worse job markets, we 've seen much worse wars
| and pandemics, history was a lot more violent.
|
| Really the only thing different there is that "instant access
| to compare yourself to millions of others". Which is
| essentially social media.
|
| I'm sure there are other factors and everyone can speculate
| what they are, but "the world is terrible today" is hard to
| argue because it was much worse before, yet this didn't
| happen.
| taylodl wrote:
| Things may have been worse in the past but in the past
| everybody was in the same boat.
|
| Famine? It affected everybody.
|
| Plague? It affected everybody.
|
| Drought? It affected everybody.
|
| War? It affected everybody.
|
| Nowadays the systemic problems that are an artifact of
| modern life _do not_ affect everybody. The richer you are,
| the less your affectation. This a winner-takes-all and
| loser-gets-nothing is a byproduct of the neocon ideology
| that has dominated our politics since the 80 's. Forty
| years on and its causing grave psychological trauma.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| You're downvoted almost to flagged, but nobody has really
| responded to what you wrote. And what you wrote amounts to:
| kids these days see multiple trends that their quality of life
| will never equal the prosperity of their predecessors, and
| they're being lied to about it, and there aren't any real ways
| out of that reality. There is no rebuttal because downvoting
| does not rebut the truth.
| ipnon wrote:
| The US is so close to a near ideal mixed economy. If the
| cartels holding oligopolies on housing, healthcare, and
| education were disbanded life would be dare I say pleasant in
| America. Today GDP keeps rising because of a few free money
| trees, while quality of life for many is deteriorating.
| Becoming middle class is stressful here, and while it shouldn't
| necessarily be easy it should at least be formulaic. Young
| people seem to sense this formula is disappearing before them.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >If the cartels holding oligopolies on housing, healthcare,
| and education were disbanded life would be dare I say
| pleasant in America.
|
| These are three of the most important things one needs in
| life, though. If there are cartels holding oligopolies on
| these, how can you possibly conclude that the US is close to
| a near ideal mixed economy?
| taylodl wrote:
| The formula is disappearing before them and the formula is
| getting harder and harder to execute. Failure, or what's
| deemed as failure, is seen to carry more dire consequences
| than ever.
|
| What we're seeing is exactly what you would expect to happen
| if the middle class is indeed disappearing.
| dw_arthur wrote:
| American society has always been ruthlessly capitalist, I don't
| think that explanation holds for why there is a recent increase
| in depression. People have gone through much tougher times and
| seemed to thrive once the bad times ended. I refuse to believe
| today is any tougher than what past generations went through.
|
| I think what is going on isn't that complicated. The biggest
| problem is that internet and smartphones have reduced the
| meaningfulness and weight of local and in person interactions.
| When we hung out as kids and teenagers the people around you
| were all you had. They mattered much more to you because what
| else was there to do?
|
| Also, we measure our social status in a relative manner and the
| comparison group is no longer the people in your town or high
| school. It's the whole country or world in some case.
|
| You meet a new person and find out they are really good at an
| instrument. In the past that would garner a decent amount of
| respect. Now using your phone you can instantly pull up
| thousands of people who are better. Thirty years ago imagine
| the ego sustenance a person would get from being the best
| guitar player or artist at their high school.
|
| Basically the social value of the younger generation to each
| other has decreased. How would that not cause widespread
| depression?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to
| thrive once the bad times ended.
|
| My theory is that in fairly recent memory, in America you had
| relatively good times that went from the '80s up to 2008,
| with the '90s being a particularly tranquil time at that (no
| major war between Desert Storm and 9/11). So to _regress_
| from a time of security and prosperity into a bad time
| provides a sort of trauma of its own. Especially since, as
| others have pointed out, there seems to be no exit condition.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to
| thrive once the bad times ended.
|
| If I were a teenager I'd wonder when the bad times were going
| to end. In most previous "bad times" we've had an exit
| condition - usually beat the bad guys. What is it now? What
| are we fighting against to rally in commonality with others?
| Also, we didn't sample mental illness previously, so we don't
| really know how teenagers weathered the great depression.
| Thriving once the bad times ends doesn't indicate how they
| were doing during the bad times either.
| taylodl wrote:
| The internet has simply exposed the BS of the ruling class.
| Their lies are plain for all to see. In the past it was much
| easier for them to use smoke and mirrors to hide what they
| were really up to.
|
| Also kids today respect the abilities of their peers, just
| like they always have. After all, mass media is over 100
| years old.
|
| How do I know? I work with kids outside of work time, and I
| have kids of my own.
| [deleted]
| ryandrake wrote:
| I agree with this take. The biggest difference I see between
| the world I grew up in in the 80s/90s and today is how
| everything has moved to this horrible "winner take all" mode.
| Not just in education, but everything. Every aspect of life has
| turned into this zero-sum slugfest where very few win the
| lottery or kill their way to the top, and the remainder are
| expected to live with nothing. Used to be there were careers
| available for A students, B students, C students, D students
| and so on. We're very quickly moving towards this bimodal:
| ultra-luxury standard of living for a tiny few elite who ended
| up #1 (or lucked into it through their parents), and squalor
| for everyone else.
|
| My kid asks me what career she should be when she grows up and
| I honestly don't know what to tell her. Every job category is
| fighting for its life against the capital ownership class's
| unquenchable need for more of the pie. The truth is that it
| probably doesn't matter. Unless I'm a multimillionaire and pay
| her way to the elite club, she doesn't really have anything
| besides downward class mobility to look forward to.
| yhavr wrote:
| Thank you, will quote this article as another great illustration
| why I don't want to have kids, or to be precise, don't want to
| expose them to the homo "civilization".
|
| It's another example that "sapiens" are so lame, so even having
| AbUNdAnCe TeCHnOlGy and PrOgResS they manage to terribly screw
| their environment. A handful of ancient greeks living in
| "undeveloped" conditions with infant mortality, slavery and no
| mcdonalds managed to produce philosophies, which are heavily
| quoted today. Take stoicism, it manages my mental health like
| charm, and I'm only shallowly practicing it. "Developed"
| countries have thousands of universities full of "educated"
| people who have access to orders of magnitude knowledge than the
| guy who taught at Stoa. They should've cured not the teenage
| depression, but the mental health issues at the scale of
| humanity. If they are _really_ developed and educated, of course
| ;-)
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| Is it possibly because they're not sleeping with each other?
| Seems to be all over the news lately, the decline of young people
| having sex. The older I get, the less I see sex as optional for
| human health and well-being. There's no time you crave it more
| than adolescence, so going without it then could be even more
| damaging. Sex is not just a fun experience, it's a basic
| psychological need. Both the left and right in the US are way too
| puritanical and I really hope there's a big shift in popular
| culture to stop censoring sex and maybe think about toning down
| the violence.
| golemotron wrote:
| Let's see.. it was simultaneous and synchronized across the
| Anglophone countries in the early 2010s.
|
| It's sort of peculiar for Puritanism to appear suddenly and
| simultaneously in widely distant countries that share a common
| language but have different cultures, right?
|
| No, I think the change in phones and what they enabled in
| social media is a better explanation.
| BryantD wrote:
| That's interesting data. I wonder: is there any possibility that
| part of the change is because we're telling kids that it's okay
| to admit to depression? I.e., are we just reporting more
| accurately now?
| at-w wrote:
| That also raises the question of whether increased focus on
| these issues can negatively affect at least a subset of people.
|
| We know that severe mental (and even physical) symptoms can
| "spread" in social groups
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness),
| particularly among young women who are now experiencing the
| sharpest rises in mental illness. There is also strong evidence
| that affective states (e.g. happiness or depression) spread
| socially, with even next-door neighbors of depressed people
| being significantly more likely to be depressed than those on
| the same block but not next-door
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830455/).
|
| While the TikTok Tourette's phenomenon is clearly an extreme
| example, it seems possible that something similar could be
| happening to kids constantly hearing about anxiety and
| depressive disorders as an immutable trait that everyone around
| them seems to have.
| stri8ed wrote:
| The authors address that by looking at hospitalizations for
| self harm.
| BryantD wrote:
| That's a powerful part of the narrative for sure. But ...
| ugh, I need to be less lazy and dig into the supporting
| material, actually, some of my questions may be answered
| there.
|
| The big one is "does that mean there's more self-harm, or
| does that mean parents are more willing to ask for emergency
| help?"
| revelio wrote:
| If the latter then it'd affect boys and girls equally. The
| simplest explanation here is likely the right one i.e. the
| increase in mental disorders is real.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| There is also a feedback cycle - people open up about it more,
| reach a larger audience who sees this modeled/discussed, making
| it more likely for them to A) be aware in their own life and B)
| mirror and amplify.
|
| Bad metaphor - if we think of ideas spreading between people
| like neurons, we have increased the interconnectedness (social
| reach) and decreased the activation energy (removed
| stigma/provided language/triggered introspection).
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| It is kind of depressing to realize we all inevitably will die,
| our world will turn to dust, the sun will expire and everything
| will freeze into a profound and eternal coldness. So, maybe
| it's Wikipedia's fault?[1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_univers...
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| beefman wrote:
| As much as I respect Haidt's other work, his recent investigation
| into teen mental health is non-rigorous. None of his conclusions
| are supported.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| [flagged]
| beefman wrote:
| Huh. My impression is that a preponderance of HN agrees with
| his conclusion. Stories about it from a variety of sources
| (not just Haidt) routinely make the front page; ditto techno-
| negative stories in general.
|
| But true or not, he hasn't come close to supporting his
| claims.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| >a preponderance of HN
|
| is exactly the bias I'm talking about:
| https://i.imgur.com/Si183zE.jpg
|
| HN is basically just reddit with slightly more dissent with
| the prevailing bias to be found in the [flagged] [dead]
| section. When the hivemind encounters data that causes
| cognitive dissonance it downvotes and flags it.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Did anyone look at the case histories? Was there a second opinion
| on the diagnosis? Maybe big pharma trying to push even more
| medication may be part of the problem. Interesting that the no
| one is mentioning this possibility...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| How would big pharma pushing medication achieve such a
| consistent and simultaneous effect across different countries
| with radically different healthcare systems and policies? And
| why would their lobbying have a greater effect on diagnoses in
| the teenager demographic, which due to the risks and side
| effects involved in psychiatric medication make youngsters less
| likely to be prescribed them than fully developed adults?
| yung_steezy wrote:
| I graduated high school around 2010, before all of these dramatic
| declines in mental health seem to take place, and even back then
| I remember there being a lot of unhappy people in my peer group.
| Maybe a certain % of miserable teenagers is guaranteed due to the
| nature of puberty (and humans).
|
| I hope we find a way to mitigate or reverse the trend these
| studies are highlighting. Schooling is essential and we can't
| allow it to become unbearable.
| nvarsj wrote:
| My experience is the same, back in the 1990s.
|
| There was a ton of depression and even suicides when I was
| growing up. I felt like 50% of teens at my large HS were
| suffering from some kind of mental issue. And then you had
| major events like Columbine. The US school system has always
| managed to produce a lot of very miserable people, and no one
| seemed to care or do anything about it.
|
| And now we have these studies all blaming social media, like
| there is some kind of epidemic that never existed before. But I
| am deeply cynical. I think these issues already existed, it's
| just there is a convenient scapegoat now.
| syzarian wrote:
| According to the article linked below teen suicide rates
| declined from 2000 to 2007 and then increased 56% in the
| following decade. It seems to me the teen suicide rate would
| serve as a useful heuristic argument in favor of thinking
| something is amiss. If there is greater mental health
| awareness today and greater acceptance of getting treatment
| then this rise is particularly alarming.
|
| I think it is undeniable that that social media is bad for
| the psyche. I can't say it is to blame for the current
| situation but I do believe if it went away we'd all be better
| off.
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/teen-suicide-rate-
| spi...
| stri8ed wrote:
| In the article, the author makes a point to include objective
| metrics like rate of hospitalizations, and the data is quite
| conclusive in showing an actual increase. So these issues
| definitely did not exist before, at the same scale.
| cornholio wrote:
| How does the rate of hospitalizations prove anything?
| Perhaps a growing awareness of mental health made people
| who were eligibile for hospitalization seek medical care,
| whereas before they would not be hospitalized for lack of a
| diagnosis? Or perhaps the same awareness made teens enact
| the pathological behavior they learned about online,
| complete with self-harm and suicide atemtps?
|
| Any measure you can think to track a condition that is
| defined, diagnosed and (especially) self-diagnosed
| subjectively, is by definition subjective.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Then you could just look at emergency admissions where
| the patients were brought in after self-harm attempts
| that left them obviously in need of immediate medical
| attention. Unless you're going to suggest our standards
| for judging whether someone might bleed to death (for
| example) have changed noticeably in recent decades. Seems
| to me the idea that teens today are no different to those
| of prior generations, we're just better at noticing when
| they've self-harmed (or indeed, committed suicide) and
| more likely to attribute that to mental health issues is
| at best wishful thinking, and at worst dangerously
| dismissive.
| yxwvut wrote:
| This unassailable conviction that everything can always
| be chalked up to "more diagnosis" for every mental health
| trend is a thought terminating cliche. What can't be
| explained away by "oh, it's because diagnosis is easier
| and/or people are more open about their problems",
| regardless of whether that's the primary cause?
| naasking wrote:
| > Or perhaps the same awareness made teens enact the
| pathological behavior they learned about online, complete
| with self-harm and suicide atemtps?
|
| That would prove the escalation we're seeing, which is
| the point.
| bawolff wrote:
| Rate of hospitalization seems like the sort of thing that
| would be affected by if society frowns upon getting help or
| not.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Indeed, but in the opposite direction. Either that or the
| sort of help that's provided to teens with mental health
| issues today is somehow causing them to be more likely to
| self-harm etc., though presumably that would show up in
| the data if true.
| izzydata wrote:
| But is schooling from 7am-4pm sitting a classroom trying to
| memorize information essential? There are probably much more
| enjoyable and engaging ways to teach children what they need to
| know to live in a society.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| I don't think it really should come down to a binary
| relationship between mental illness and "enjoyable and
| engaging", though. I do get your point. But, also, it's
| school. I don't remember always enjoying it or finding it
| engaging, but that didn't mean I was slipping into mental
| illness because a class was boring or didn't seem relevant
| when I was a teenager.
|
| To your point, the model of school hasn't really changed in a
| long time; but, then again, we do see rates of mental illness
| changing. So, I don't really know if you can put the blame on
| the model of schooling in that instance.
|
| As a side note, one thing that has changed in schools is the
| drop in physical fun, either in the expectations of gym
| classes, or during recess, or in school sports. It's either
| study like crazy, or focus on an extracurricular (possibly a
| sport) as if it's a second job to get into a good college; a
| lot of kids just aren't having good old physical fun as much
| as they used to, at least from my observation.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| My experience was the same in the early 1980s. There was a
| string of suicides at my high school.
| grammers wrote:
| The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect.
|
| A completely different explanation could be that our societies
| are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental
| illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just
| had to 'function', no matter what.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Just like divorce rates in some ways. It's because it wasn't
| really an option for many (typically women) until recently. The
| social and financial repercussions were too severe.
| scythe wrote:
| >A completely different explanation could be that [...] we can
| finally listen
|
| The article references massive increases in _ER admits for
| self-harm_ , among similar data. That isn't a matter of
| "listening".
|
| Haidt continually publishes detailed analyses and meets with
| retorts like this that obviously didn't engage at all with the
| content.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Statistics like that don't always make sense. Prior to the
| 1960s you will barely find incest in any official report
| because society wasn't ready to talk about it.
| cornholio wrote:
| While I agree there is no statistical proof in the article,
| it's a very strong hypothesis: we somehow only 'listen' to the
| mental problems of female teens, who see geometric increases in
| self harm, suicide and various disorders, twice or three times
| the pre-social media levels. Yet other categories see linear or
| token increases.
|
| Could it be just a coincidence that young females are exactly
| the demographic that is constrained by a gender role where
| aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable
| assets? And those are exactly the type of things that social
| networks exploited, monetized and massively gamified in the
| last decade?
|
| What's more likely: a rapid change of the cultural norms and
| roles associated with growing up as a woman or of those related
| to recognizing and treating mental health issues (all in a
| single decade!); OR: a purely technical revolution that put
| interactive screens in the hands of each kid and made the
| former much more effective in harming their development and
| leading to the latter?
|
| At least for the young female demographic, I think there is a
| massive burden of proof for anyone claiming the epidemics _is
| not social-media induced_.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal
| and social interactions are the most valuable assets?"
|
| In theory we should have seen a spike and then slow decline
| as gender norms and roles continue to become less
| segregating.
|
| "Yet other categories see linear or token increases."
|
| Yeah, because other categories may manifest their problems
| differently. Such as young men turning to violence and drugs
| more than intentional self-harm (almost the inverse of young
| women). That doesn't mean it's not the problem, just that
| it's not such a great proof.
| cornholio wrote:
| [flagged]
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _A significant part of the trans movement is a
| reactionary reinforcement of rigid gender roles:_
|
| Perhaps you're referring to the transmedicalist position?
| That's rather disapproved of in the trans movement as a
| whole, from what I've seen.
|
| > _gender as a social construct_
|
| Have you not seen the memes? https://libreddit.eu.org/r/t
| raaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/search?q=gen...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Hmm, I was going to write something that disagreed, but I
| do see a point there. Although you left out some of the
| connections and it's not specifically what we're talking
| about. I'm not sure that it was this article, but a
| different one mentioned that the self harm and suicides
| were 2x-3x higher for LGBTQ teens. Basically, we're
| seeing a much higher rate in one subgroup which could
| account for the bulk of the increase as their
| representation in the overall group rises.
|
| So I can see the pressures associated with _acceptance or
| challenges_ of LGBTQ teens as a possible increase as they
| make up an increasing part of that demographic. However,
| I don 't think that _gender roles_ specifically play a
| part since more things are continuously becoming
| available and accepted regardless of gender.
| banannaise wrote:
| > A significant part of the trans movement is a
| reactionary reinforcement of rigid gender roles
|
| This is an anti-trans talking point and not remotely
| representative of actual trans communities.
|
| Source: am trans and nonbinary, and I have never heard
| another trans person complain about me not fitting into
| specific gender roles. The only people who complain are
| cis people who think my gender or lack thereof is either
| a ruse or a mental illness.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| > And it's no coincidence young female teens are by far
| the most susceptible to transition to the opposite role:
| social media tells them "they were born in the wrong
| bodies".
|
| Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans
| men.
| cornholio wrote:
| Not for teenagers, not anymore; there was a striking
| trend reversal exactly around 2010:
| https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/tavistock-
| transg...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Um, statistically, trans women are more common than
| trans men.
|
| I think it is somewhat more common for people who are
| AFAB to identify as non-binary than for people who are
| AMAB to do so, which if you consider it part of the same
| broad class of things might be sufficient to tip the
| balance back to that side.
|
| Not that I endorse the "social contagion" theory GP is
| spouting, in the least.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Yeah I googled around more and saw its a 1:1:1 (trans
| man, trans woman, nonbinary). Still doesn't really follow
| the stated narrative though.
| notch898a wrote:
| In the old days trans people weren't shooting up
| christian schools out of frustration. I wonder if perhaps
| society made a mistake by so many members giving them the
| false impression that society should accept them for who
| they identify as. In the old days they pretty much had to
| learn to accept themselves for who they were and not
| worry about what other people thought, both because no
| one was encouraging them they deserved acceptance and
| because few would have budged.
|
| Young white progressive teens in general seem to be
| following a path that advances the idea society should be
| progressing towards acceptance, inclusion and mutual
| progress. Sadly lip service doesn't overturn human
| nature. Boomers for better or worse seem to take an
| attitude of "fuck you, on your own" and at some point
| perhaps it's lower stress just to not be thinking at all
| times you can control the thoughts of others.
|
| re: minortom
|
| Not an advocate against those able to consent doing
| whatever want with their bodies. Don't think my argument
| works against that. Although it would be a fallacy to
| suggest anything other than the current medical standard
| results in more deaths and thus advocating otherwise is
| advocation for suffering; the medical studies never claim
| it's impossible to achieve less suffering some other way.
|
| I'm hopefully wrong but it seems like you may have made
| some assumptions that I want to control treatment options
| for trans people. It feels like I've wrongly been
| presumed as wanting suffering for trans people; in fact
| my whole premise was to find out why they are frustrated
| this way indeed with the hopes they can find new coping
| strategies.
|
| To note, I don't see why justification is even needed for
| transition surgery. The (hopefully) wrong assumption I
| made here is that you stated it like it was relevant in
| the decision as to whether I should be in favor of it
| being an option. Even if it made them worse off, they
| shouldn't be stopped. It's a bit terrifying one even has
| to include efficacy to justify whether a consenting adult
| is allowed to modify their body, and worrying comment
| you've made IMO that presents exactly the kind of
| problems we have with hyper concern over the opinion of
| others on what we do with our bodies.
| thelopa wrote:
| This narrative about trans shooters is disconnected from
| reality. If you take every trans shooter in the last
| decade, you get less than 10... out of thousands. For
| context, last year America has nearly 700 mass shootings.
| Trans people are actually _under_ represented in mass
| shootings. Estimates put trans people at up to 1% of the
| population. We would naively expect 7 shooters last year
| to be trans, but none were. Saying that the recent
| shooter is part of a trend of transgender shooters
| requires outright ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
| notch898a wrote:
| The desperation to argue against a straw man is real. If
| trans people went from no school shootings to one in 2020
| and one in 2023 there may or may not be a "trend" but
| it's still worth finding out why that is happening.
|
| Edit:
|
| re pupptailwags: Yes we should be examining whenever
| people are engaging in violence, factors behind that
| happening. I'm quite certain, unlike assertion made
| below, that people indeed have studied the qualities of
| males in particular engaging in this kind of violence.
|
| rethelopa: I was replying to a comment talking about why
| something (male disposition to this kind of violence)
| hadn't been studied; it has.
|
| [note I'm rate limited, which is reason for replying this
| way]
| thelopa wrote:
| I'm assuming I'm the "assertion made below". I made no
| such claim. Let me rephrase it.
|
| There have been 8 mass shootings in America in the last 7
| days. No one was running to twitter to speculate about
| their causes. No politicians were raising concerns about
| troubling trends. The shootings were going completely
| unremarked on in national politics... until a shooter
| happened to be trans.
|
| If you want to speculate that commentators and
| politicians are giving the other incidents the same
| attention, we would _literally_ never hear the end of it.
| On average, almost 2 mass shootings happen _per day_.
| But, for some reason, those incidents weren't given
| national attention. Curious.
| thelopa wrote:
| You optimize for the common case, not the uncommon one.
| Shouldn't we figure out why shootings _in general_ are
| happening rather than fixating on a specific case because
| it involved an unpopular minority group?
| notch898a wrote:
| I think searching for a general common solution is
| precisely why we are getting nowhere. It may be there are
| some "unpopular" opinions that turn out to be factors.
| Many small pieces make a large one, and important hints
| often come in unexpected places.
| thelopa wrote:
| But, again, why are you focusing on a group that is
| statistically _less_ likely to commit mass shootings
| compared to the average person? Even if you find some
| root cause for trans shooters, you'd be, at best,
| eliminating what amounts to about 0.1% of cases. Why not
| look at groups that are _over_ represented?
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| We didn't apply this standard to all men when we went
| from no school shootings to one school shooting in 1840.
| I don't see a reason why we should apply it to another
| gender.
| MinorTom wrote:
| (I'm not trying to convince you of anything, just making
| this clear for anyone else reading. also: comment talks
| about suicide)
|
| > In the old days they pretty much had to learn to accept
| themselves for who they were and not worry about what
| other people thought, both because no one was encouraging
| them they deserved acceptance and because few would have
| budged.
|
| According to scientific research, around 1/3 of patients
| with gender dysphoria have attempted suicide in the past.
| The only medically accepted treatment for gender
| dysphoria is transition. If you're advocating against
| that then you're advocating in favor of preventable
| suffering & deaths.
|
| Also, using human nature as an argument is fallacious.
|
| https://www.psicothema.com/pdf/4483.pdf
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9501960/
|
| re re:
|
| I understood your comment to be against social acceptance
| of trans people, (and honestly still do. Admittedly this
| isn't a best-faith interpretation of your comment, but it
| made sense in the context I read it in. )
|
| Therefore, my comment wasn't intended to be only about
| available medical treatment options (including surgical),
| but also about social acceptance of trans people, which
| is a kinda important part of all of this.
|
| If that's not how you intended to mean your comment,
| that's great, because I agree with you on the
| medial/surgical side of things.
| notch898a wrote:
| I've replied above (due to rate-limiting timeout, had to
| capture my thoughts there earlier).
|
| I have no interest in stopping consenting adult trans or
| any other person from any surgery/treatment, regardless
| of how efficacious or not it is. But do not make the
| mistake of believing because it is the only medically
| accepted treatment of gender dysphoria (which is
| curiously a treatment for something that is not even a
| disorder or illness), that it must be the path to least
| suffering and death.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I actually don't think it's wise to make a claim that
| more than one trans person has shot up more than one
| christian school at this point, or even to attribute the
| terrorist act by a single trans person to the acceptance
| of transgender people more broadly.
| notch898a wrote:
| I've specifically said they weren't shooting up christian
| schools in the old days, with no commentary on the (non-
| zero) number of schools shot in modern days, so I have no
| idea what you're even arguing against. Your whole comment
| is a side-step strawman.
|
| Although for the record it doesn't even make sense to say
| "trans person wasn't shooting school in the old days."
| Pluralization is an appropriate use of English here.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| My comment is that I don't think its reasonable to
| attribute a terrorist action to the lessening of
| oppression that that demographic has received overall.
| thelopa wrote:
| Citation needed. Everything I've seen indicates that
| transition rates are roughly equal.
| faddly wrote:
| > Beauvoir
|
| It's funny when they bring up that Simone de Beauvoir
| quote "one is not born a woman, but becomes one", as the
| rest of the passage it is from completely undermines what
| they assume it's about - Beauvoir talks about "the figure
| that _the human female_ presents in society " and then
| goes on to critique this:
|
| _<< On ne nait pas femme : on le devient. Aucun destin
| biologique, psychique, economique ne definit la figure
| que revet au sein de la societe_ la femelle humaine _; c
| 'est l'ensemble de la civilisation qui elabore ce produit
| intermediaire entre le male et le castrat qu'on qualifie
| de feminin. Seule la mediation d'autrui peut constituer
| un individu comme un Autre. En tant qu'il existe pour
| soi, l'enfant ne saurait se saisir comme sexuellement
| differencie. >>_
|
| To Beauvoir, "woman" is a harmful social construct that
| is forced upon all females, so this doesn't apply to
| males who call themselves women, because firstly, they
| are not female, and secondly, they are not forced into
| womanhood. It's comical how so fundamentally they've
| misunderstood her point.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > as gender norms and roles continue to become less
| segregating
|
| But, gender roles and stereotypes are being more forcibly
| institutionalized, not becoming less segregating.
| _Particularly_ in the US.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How so?
|
| In my opinion it seems like there is more
| institutionalize going on, but that's only a subset of
| restrictions that are being rolled back. Eg. If 25 states
| roll back restrictions (or implement protections) and the
| other 25 reinforce those restrictions, then you still
| have a 50% reduction. On the corporate side, I've seen a
| ton of protections/benefits being increased which didn't
| exist anywhere even 10 years ago.
| extasia wrote:
| That wouldn't explain such a drastic rise in one demographic
| (teenagers)
| izzydata wrote:
| Teenagers are yet to be broken in adults who accept things
| aren't going to change.
| TylerE wrote:
| Everything has changed. You can't look at one thing in
| isolation. Todays teens are not the teens of the Boomer
| generation. Was t that long enough that many were married by
| the time they hit 20.
| onos wrote:
| Nor the sudden increase among this demographic.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| It might, since "teenager" is about a decade, and the opening
| paragraph cites... about a decade ago.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Your argument also applies to toddlers (1-10), Young
| students & workers (20-30), established workers (30-40)...
| pretty much any decade actually.
|
| So no. It might not. Not for the reason you say at least.
| Improvements in diagnosis, self awareness _and_
| hospitalisation rates would have to happen _specifically_
| to teenagers, and unless someone can cite a specific reason
| why this is the case I just don 't believe it. The increase
| is real.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Not necessarily; teenagers are 1) still under parental
| health insurance and therefore can get medical care, 2)
| broadly have adults looking out for them in a way adults
| don't look out for other adults, 3) are capable of self-
| introspection and increased communication capacity as
| well as self-identification in a way children are not, 4)
| have the agency to advocate for their mental health needs
| in a way children cannot..
|
| Broadly if we are going to respect mental health more,
| the one cohort that is broadly capable of receiving
| mental health assessment medically, has enough agency to
| introspect to their own mental health, and still
| generally have adults responsible for their wellbeing,
| aka teenagers, are most likely to reveal this.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| I guess it makes sense... the difference in how much
| other people are affected however is so stark that this
| does suggest a generational thing.
|
| And then there are the hospitalisation rates. Did we
| lower the seriousness threshold to get our kids to the
| hospital? Unless they were talking about _psychiatry_
| hospitals that doesn 't seem likely.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Frankly it might just be that children's desire to kill
| themselves wasn't considered something to hospitalize for
| in the past. I knew when I was a teenager I participated
| in all sorts of nonsense and said all sorts of shit to
| adults around me, and most of the adults just told me to
| man up and stop being a pussy about it. Now that I'm an
| adult, I can see times where I definitely should've been
| considered to evaluation as a suicide risk.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Take away the social media, and I suspect the teens would
| have far fewer mental health problems.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| or would they just be less visible and less talked about?
| ilammy wrote:
| Explains it rather well: older people dismiss their symptoms
| as "not real illness" because that's what society taught them
| when they were kids.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Would a decrease in such dismissal would also explain the
| increase in hospitalisation rates for self harm? I
| personally doubt it.
|
| _(Edit: and whoever downvoted me would help a great deal
| by explaining how exactly an increase in hospitalisation
| rates are an indication that we take this stuff more
| seriously. A wound remains a wound.)_
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| To me that seems like a purely post-hoc argument with no
| evidence to justify it.
|
| For instance, imagine that the data were showing the
| opposite effect, that is, adults having a significantly
| greater increase in depression and anxiety than teenagers.
|
| If that were the case, one could just as easily argue that
| it fits with the _" our societies are so advanced that we
| can listen to mental illnesses"_ hypothesis quite well,
| because adults have the autonomy, resources, and maturity
| to get the attention they need to tackle their issues and
| symptoms. Teenagers don't, on the other hand, as they
| depend on their teachers and guardians and older adults
| often dismiss kids' symptoms as "not real illness" and just
| angst and moodiness.
| frumper wrote:
| In my experience, adults seem just as quick to dismiss
| other adults issues as "not real problems"
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| That being the case, the point remains that a dismissive
| adult is much more likely to get in the way of a teenager
| from getting a diagnosis than that of another adult.
| Furthermore, the fact that doctors are more likely to
| take men seriously than they do women _would explain why
| the increase in diagnoses is so much higher in male
| adults than in female adults, even though the base rate
| of women suffering from mental health issues is actually
| the same as that of men._
|
| Obviously, the part in italics is fiction. It is
| referring to the alternate world I mentioned in my
| comment above where the effect was the the opposite of
| what we're seeing (with the added extra of adult men
| appearing to be seeing a greater increase than adult
| women) and how it's so easy to come up with post-hoc
| explanations using what seem like reasonable and factual
| premises.
| paganel wrote:
| > A completely different explanation could be that our
| societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to
| mental illnesses and take them seriously
|
| I lived in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and the 1990s, not
| the best of times, economically speaking. I used to play
| football with Rroma children that were walking strange, at
| least that's how it looked to child-me, only later to find out
| that most probably they had been afflicted by polio in the
| past. All this to say that things were tough.
|
| Even so, as a kid back then I had no acquaintances of my age
| who were harming themselves or, the worst of all, who were off-
| ing themselves. We would have known, kids used to know this
| sort of stuff because we were almost always outside, playing
| together.
|
| Suffice is to say that things are now totally different. I've
| heard of kids harming themselves at 11-12 years of age and I
| know of a young lady who took her own life (at 16 or 17).
| Again, that was unimaginable 30 to 40 years ago.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Is it at least partly a case of getting what you incentivize?
|
| I was a teen in the 1980s, never knew of anyone who harmed
| himself other than accidentally. But we also didn't have
| doctors and counselors incessantly asking if we were
| depressed, or thinking of hurting ourselves. A kid today who
| says "yes" to either of those questions is going to find he's
| getting heaps of attention all of a sudden.
|
| I have been thinking about this because I was at an
| orthopedist this week for an orthopedic isssue and I had to
| answer their "depression screening" questions. Trying to
| decide if these are being pushed by big pharma to get more
| people on antidepression meds or where else this might be
| coming from. The whole time I'm jsut thinking "you people
| aren't mental health specialists, or even general
| practioners, why are you asking me these irrelevant
| questions"
| giantg2 wrote:
| One possible contributing explaination that I don't see
| addressed is that our lifestyles and opportunities have peaked
| in prior generations and are backsliding. Technology and
| politics are so invasive that you can't necessarily get a fresh
| start somewhere else. Young people realize this and figure "why
| even try". The difference in boys and girls with the graphs are
| that boys tend to act out and girls tend to self harm.
|
| Who knows if this is a possibile contributor or not. Would be
| interesting to look into.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Maybe we should look at ways to get back to 'just functioning'.
| vore wrote:
| It's easy to say this when you're not on the wrong end.
| brabel wrote:
| I may be old fashioned, but learning to "just function"
| instead of constantly crying and expecting the world to
| listen to me and be the way I want it to be is just called
| growing up.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My life would be so much easier if someone I know would
| just grow up.
| julosflb wrote:
| I would think this would equally affect both boys and girls.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The issue with that explanation is the synchronous timing. Why
| would it happen over the last 10 years or so, across a bunch of
| countries?
| nradov wrote:
| To some extent just functioning no matter what is protective
| against certain mental illnesses. Exhibiting the overt symptoms
| of a mental illness can sometimes cause the illness to become
| more severe in a feedback loop. Cognitive behavioral therapy
| has been proven effective in treating many mental illnesses and
| works in part by giving patients the mental tools they need to
| just function.
| zwieback wrote:
| Next step would be to de-correlate smartphone usage, the prime
| suspect right now, from other trends happening at the same time.
| I have two daughters in that age range and I don't get the
| impression that social media is a big stressor for them in
| particular but I can easily believe that it is one of the primary
| stress factors for many young women.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Easy to test, take away their phone and see if stress levels
| raise
| graypegg wrote:
| I think it's probably better to just ask them what they
| think.
|
| If you take away a teenager's phone in 2023 you're casting
| them away to a proverbial deserted island. Also not exactly
| great for mental health.
| obscurette wrote:
| I'm a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don't think
| that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things
| contribute - social media pressure, climate problems, economical
| crisis etc. But I'd like to add another one - declining quality
| of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because
| they don't have teachers and their education isn't good enough
| for jobs they'd like to get in future. And at least some of them
| are certainly right:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32539424
| WalterBright wrote:
| There's also been a corresponding dramatic drop in the number
| of teens who have had any sort of job. Not many things are as
| fulfilling as doing a job and getting paid for it.
|
| I remember when I realized I was making enough money that I
| could pay all my bills and no longer needed anything from my
| dad. It felt really good. For me that was the dividing line
| between being a child and an adult.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Kids today can have two or even three jobs and still not earn
| enough to pay the rent on a place of their own.
| gspencley wrote:
| That and there are also fewer jobs available to teens /
| young adults. The types of jobs that we are making
| obsolete, whether through automation or regulation, are the
| types of repetitive, "unskilled" jobs that were previously
| offered to people just starting out. I'll take a chance on
| my 16 year-old nephew if I can pay him $5 / hour but if I
| have to pay him $15 / hour by law I'd rather have someone
| with more references. I'm also likely to ask that person to
| take on more responsibility, too, since my overhead just
| went up and my margins were paper thin to begin with. So
| now I need someone with additional experience.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Or you get an unskilled immigrant who has his back
| against the wall. I read an article claiming this is
| where teen jobs went, not sure how well supported it is.
| voakbasda wrote:
| It is an well-known secret that the largest and most
| successful farm in my area extensively uses illegal
| immigrants for labor. They say that citizens are too
| unreliable and unproductive for them to be profitable.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It used to be good, but my guess is a modern kid,
| particularly a middle class one, doesn't get as much out of
| it. Minimum wage has stagnated, but also people these days
| have their eyes on internships that will secure a career.
| There's simply no point in pursuing burger-flipping if you
| can't find a way to hang around a law firm or a hedge fund,
| and those firms won't care at all that you worked hard in a
| menial job.
|
| When I was a kid there was never a time when I could pay for
| everything. The first time that happened was an internship I
| got during college, and then my first job right after.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Nobody pays minimum wage anymore, at least not if you want
| to hire anyone.
|
| $12/hr is the absolute lowest I've heard of in the past
| year or two.
|
| Employers do value experience at menial jobs, at least for
| their own entry level positions. Any work experience is
| better than none.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| $12/hr is at or under the minimum wage in 19 of 54 US
| jurisdictions (50 states + DC, VI, PR, CNMI), so
| depending on where you are, that's...not that
| significant.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Where I live minimum wage is the federal minimum of
| $7.25/hr. Major chain fast-food jobs are starting at
| about $14/hr here, so nearly double.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _Not many things are as fulfilling as doing a job and getting
| paid for it._
|
| Sorry, I don't get fulfillment from a job, nor do I base my
| personality on it. A job is a thing that I have to do to live
| and do some stuff I like.
|
| That's it, nothing more. I'd never do actual work unless I
| had to, and I'd never work full time if I didn't have to. I'm
| never going to be motivated to work harder for a fancy car if
| I can have a reliable, efficient car. I'd like more space,
| but it needs not be huge or pretty (though, I'd like to cook
| and make art).
|
| Making art is fulfilling. I enjoy making food - work means I
| eat more convenience foods. I don't need to be paid to help
| folks, either. I can get a sense of accomplishment by doing
| things that are difficult, from projects to playing games.
| gspencley wrote:
| I DESPISED my first job (I delivered newspapers), but the
| independence it afforded me, the ability to buy clothes I
| like, to invest in a computer of my own and to take my
| girlfriend on dates was extremely fulfilling.
|
| Productive work, in general, is fulfilling even if you
| don't happen to like your current "job." It is not the job
| itself, it is the act of taking action in order to achieve
| your values. If you value producing art, that is productive
| work even if it's not your "job" and even if it doesn't pay
| the bills. You are achieving some value from that. If you
| are truly fortunate you can find a way to monetize doing
| work that you would do even if it didn't pay ... but if
| your job is "just a means to an end", that end is clearly a
| value and the job is helping you achieve it. It's the
| achievement of the value that is rewarding.
| lordnacho wrote:
| That's a luxury, isn't it? After all you might find that
| the only jobs you are able to get actually compromise
| your values.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My first job was delivering newspapers, too. I didn't
| despise it, it was easy work, nobody looking over my
| shoulder, the pay was good enough to put money in my
| pocket.
|
| Fundamentally, people value what they work to achieve.
| Things gotten without effort are not valued.
|
| BTW, having a job does look good on a college
| application.
| anarticle wrote:
| >base my personality on it
|
| Your words, not gp. A part-time job as a teen helps you
| navigate and integrate into society. Part-time helps you
| get out of your bubble and interact with the public, who
| may be different to your upbringing.
|
| It is immediately clear to me who has had a job as a teen
| (read: service job), and who has not in my experience. This
| may be a form of reverse-classism on my part, but learning
| to sweep a floor and take out the trash for a few months
| during summer is not going to KILL YOUR DREAMS which seems
| to be the meme. In fact, you could view it as service to
| your community!
|
| While I was working 10h/w during high school, I was also
| making DOOM wads and learning BSP algo in my extremely
| ample free time.
|
| Also note, that many skills gained in these jobs can
| directly translate to irl skills. For me, working at a deli
| taught me how to make food, be on time, measure crap, clean
| things, interact with people not in my generation, and
| more!
|
| Maybe you don't get fulfillment, but as a teen with nothing
| going on it was nice to have some extra money and
| essentially a playground to learn new skills on someone
| else's time. It wasn't to live, it was to prime the pump
| for later in life.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > While I was working 10h/w during high school, I was
| also making DOOM wads and learning BSP algo in my
| extremely ample free time.
|
| I don't recall having what I would call "ample" spare
| time in high school. I recall being at school 8:30 to 4
| every day, then a few hours of homework daily and/or exam
| prep for the endless exams ("don't fail" they said, "or
| you'll never go to university and your life is ruined
| forever!"). I wasn't even that social and rarely spent
| time at friend's houses, let alone partying or clubbing.
| In fact, I had so little time I didn't explore
| "computers" as an industry until I finally did get to
| university and could actually spend 6 hours a day after
| lectures fiddling with a laptop and this thing called
| "Python".
|
| In fact probably the one thing that got me going on
| electronics and computers at university wasn't the
| lectures and assignments as much as the free time and
| ability to spend whole days on things, not to mention
| socialising freely and at length.
|
| With the min-maxing of pre-university CVs that it seems
| you need to do to get into the Right Schools (TM) and
| then into university, I'm not sure it has gotten better
| since then.
|
| In retrospect I should have told them all to do one and
| spent high school on what I wanted rather than another
| essay about WWII and the endless, endless coursework that
| would suck up any spare time ("I've got an hour, I'd
| better polish the portfolio even more"), and even if I'd
| gotten the dreaded lower grades and so not gotten into
| the same university it would probably have been better
| over all.
| WalterBright wrote:
| People also tend to die in the year after they
| retirement. They lost their purpose.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > playing games
|
| I long ago lost all interest in playing games. The problem
| with them is nothing is accomplished. Play pinball and get
| a number on the display. Play Doom and - nothing. Although
| I invented the Empire game, most of my pleasure in it was
| developing it.
| wrp wrote:
| I wonder about the timing of these social changes. My
| impression was that the tradition of high school students
| having jobs started to fade away in the 1990s.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Also the freedom a job gives a young person will be unlike
| anything they've experienced up to that point. Prior to a
| teen's first job their experience of the world outside their
| home (i.e. school) is highly regimented, with little
| opportunity to just be a normal human being around other
| humans. A job provides that outlet.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Yeah, The US education system seems to have more money than
| most countries, but we're still 37th in the world for in Math
| last I checked.
|
| Whatever is happening in public schools, you'd do well to
| increase your child's odds by putting them into something else
| if you can afford it.
|
| Private school, tutoring, homeschooling, college (dual-
| enrollment), etc..
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Middle class and above kids still do as well in math in
| public schools as they do in private schools. The problem is
| that students from more disadvantaged backgrounds don't do as
| well, and its not like they can afford private schools
| anyways.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I grew up poor, it has nothing to do with private school to
| me at all, it's all about struggling parents still
| convinced their kids to do their best, and put education
| first as a family group effort.
|
| most of the poor here still is relatively much better off
| than those from under-developed countries, plus our school
| provides free lunch, many programs will waive fees if
| you're economically disadvantaged, etc. It's not as good as
| those well-off families but it's really good enough for you
| to do fine in education.
|
| I saw so many economically challenged kids carrying new
| iphones, dressed well, yet not really into learning at
| schools, it's certainly not just an economic problem.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > most of the poor here still is relatively much better
| off than those from under-developed countries
|
| Education wise, middle class in a developing or under
| developed country will still beat poor in a developed
| country even if the latter have more money than the
| former. Culture has a lot to do with it, a lot has to do
| with the latter's parents not teaching current parents
| the same thing that the former's were taught. Home
| situation is much of the problem, and you can't just
| throw money at the problem, unfortunately.
|
| European countries might do a better job at this by
| either (a) having less poor people (immigrants) or (b)
| putting in more resources to ensure that these kids get
| more support at home and in school to make up for their
| disadvantage. But often, you'll find in European
| countries that they have the same problems with kids from
| disadvantaged background being behind middle class kids,
| they just work at solving the problem better than we do
| in the states.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I also observed there are many economically disadvantaged
| parents driving their kids to charter schools for better
| education, that made a huge difference, as their home
| campus is filled with lots of students that are not that
| into education. point is family might be the key for
| success, more than private-school or giving-more-
| money,etc.
| wrp wrote:
| > ...declining quality of education.
|
| I'd like to add some nuance to this. While student performance
| seems to be clearly declining (at least at the college level,
| which I'm familiar with), I don't know how well we can
| distinguish the contributions of poor teaching and poor student
| preparedness.
|
| I'll give a concrete example from South Korea. For several
| years, the English proficiency of incoming university students
| was so high, there was serious talk of closing English language
| programs as no longer needed. Within the last few years though,
| student ability levels have plummeted, requiring drastic
| dumbing-down of the curriculum at the school where I work. I
| know many Korean primary, secondary, and college teachers, and
| I don't think the decline in student achievement is due to
| their slacking off. It seems to be due to something going on in
| society outside the schools.
| leftareanimals wrote:
| [dead]
| another_story wrote:
| As a longtime educator, I see a lot of experienced teachers
| leaving. In fact, I'm leaving this year, though I'm unsure if
| it's permanent.
|
| It's a mixture of reasons, from low pay to high demands, but I
| think a large part is a lack of respect from students, parents
| and admin. Teachers have been stripped of most of their power
| to do anything about it. The last year I taught public school a
| student was verbally abusing others and threatening them in
| class and I couldn't get him removed. It ruined the class and
| scared other students, but because he had documented issues
| they said they couldn't do anything.
|
| I teach in overseas private schools now, and the kids are
| fantastic and the pay is decent, but the job has an increasing
| amount of non-teaching related stuff which detracts from the
| what matters, the kids. Also, the syllabus for CS is so
| outdated, and I find myself apologizing to the kids since I
| need to to teach it to them for their exams. I teach around the
| syllabus as best I can, but you still need to get results.
|
| TLDR: Experienced teachers leaving, lack of autonomy,
| curriculum suck
| seydor wrote:
| Out of those i m trying to understand climate problems. They
| dont affect daily life in a visible way. Climate anxiety
| however has become a thing because of too much media fixation
| around it. It s so prevalent that some psychologists think it
| should be classified as a disease
| falteringfalcon wrote:
| [dead]
| lordnacho wrote:
| Did that start in 2010, across several countries?
| lsllc wrote:
| I'm not sure you can blame problems such as climate change,
| economic issues -- every generation had its own existential
| crisis: WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until
| 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom
| bomb.
|
| I think it's social media, that's what's really changed: Every
| single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other
| kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a
| few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines). And of course the
| "popular" ones they're comparing to are the most successful,
| most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most "perfect" ones
| (because that's how they got to be the most popular). It's a
| terrible yardstick for _anyone_ to measure themselves against,
| let along impressionable young minds.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I think social media - which is not so much about media but
| about performative competition - is just part of the problem.
|
| Reality for kids seems so much more competitive and ruthless
| in every way. And there are so few resources available to
| them to help them deal with it.
|
| At the same time opportunities are shrinking and pressure to
| perform is increasing. It's not enough to be adequate, you
| have to be outstanding in looks, talent, ability, work ethic,
| party ethic, lifestyle, income, and education.
|
| But you can't be. Because you're not competing with a small
| group of relative peers, you're competing with the entire
| online world.
|
| At the same time there's incoming doom in the form of climate
| change, Covid mismanagement, outrageous and crippling
| economic inequality, various wars, and now the threat of AI.
|
| It would be strange if kids weren't getting depressed under
| these circumstances.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Ngl I think that's basically it. There's insane competition
| at basically all swathes of life to become elite at a young
| age, look at how far elite college acceptance rates have
| dropped. This has created generations of depressive
| workaholics and burnouts. It's a lot worse in Asian
| countries where these cultural forces are stronger.
| chasd00 wrote:
| when my kids were born i was amazed how competitive getting
| into a good pre-school was. Then i was amazed how
| competitive getting in to a good elementary school was and
| now middle school. One year out and we're already
| discussing strategy for getting in to a good high school.
|
| When I was a kid you went to whatever school was in your
| neighborhood. On the other hand, when i was a kid my
| parents had no idea what a good school event meant.
| ksrm wrote:
| Modern capitalism, basically.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > you're competing with the entire online world.
|
| It's actually even worse than that: you're competing
| separately in each field, in parallel. But you only see the
| others in the context of that which they are good at, which
| is why you see them in that space in the first place.
| gsatic wrote:
| Totally agree. Social media built on top of collecting Likes
| and Followers, causes brain damage not just in kids but in
| adults too. That architecture has to be dismantled.
|
| But parent comment abv has a point teaching is a big factor
| here. And teaching in the current environment has become much
| more complex.
|
| There is endless over stimulation and distraction which ruins
| environments where learning is possible. And secondly
| information has exploding. Kids can easily get overwhelmed
| just looking at a Wikipedia article. Teachers have a very
| hard job keeping things on track.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| [dead]
| sidfthec wrote:
| > Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against
| every other kid in the world instead of just their local
| peers
|
| This is so out of touch. You might as well be using the "It's
| the video games!" excuse of yore.
|
| Teenagers and those in their 20s see what their parents were
| able to do. They hear what their parents bought their house
| for, they know about their pensions, they see that their
| parents could afford raising a child into their teens, they
| find out that college was actually affordable. They know
| that's now all out of reach.
|
| Some even see their parents struggling, and know it's going
| to be much much worse for them.
|
| You all really think this is about influencers?
| musicale wrote:
| Huge productivity growth doesn't seem to have translated
| into commensurate wage growth. Meanwhile housing, higher
| education, and health care are increasingly unaffordable,
| as you note, and credentialism makes higher education a
| requirement for more jobs.
|
| I think you're on target about the discouraging aspects of
| being visibly worse off than your parents' generation, and
| I think that millennials have that problem as well.
|
| The situation is likely to get worse as AI-fueled
| productivity increases are unlikely to improve wages
| either.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| I had recurring nightmares about a malfunctioning nuclear
| warhead that slowed abnormally and spiraled in a flat spin
| leaving a smoke/vapor trail as it neared its ultimate
| detonation height.
|
| The movie Red Dawn was the ultimate manifestation of 80's red
| hysteria and triumphal American exceptionalism.
|
| ~625 scanlines (PAL)? We only had ~480 scan lines with NTSC.
|
| My parents had a roof-mounted VHF/UHF antenna that could be
| electrically rotated with a dial. Looking something like this
|
| Antenna:
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| Channel Master:
|
| https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WXgAAOSwGJJfoJlz/s-l640.jpg
|
| My grandparents had an analog HBO pirate cheat box with a
| fixed, directional antenna. I remember watching George Carlin
| standup specials.
| lsllc wrote:
| I couldn't remember, googled "NTSC resolution" and it said
| 525!
| carimura wrote:
| this 100x. And in the young brain, every single person looks
| amazing because that's how everyone is posturing constantly.
| Image filters can even literally make someone better looking.
| It's basically an arms race to 0 on who can posture the best.
| grog454 wrote:
| One of the most important things we can teach kids today is how
| to teach themselves. I wouldn't have graduated college over a
| decade ago without Wikipedia and there are far better resources
| now.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| I have potentially a bazillion questions:
|
| 0. How do kids socialize without devices these days?
|
| 1a-b. Do they meet new people like them and/or unlike them?
|
| 2. Do they go outside and explore the world nearby?
|
| 3a-b. Do they get in the same or different kinds of trouble as
| past generations of kids?
|
| 4a-d. What are the fundamental social values they share that
| differ from 1-4 generations ago?
|
| 5a-c. Do they have as much curiosity, work ethic, or resiliency
| to setbacks?
|
| Here's my neon fuchsia fanny-pack, old personitis for
| reference:
|
| When I was a kid, I had to wake up at 5:45 am to get ready to
| walk 1.3 mi (2 km) to a school bus stop when there was a
| perfectly good school 0.25 mi away. (Supposedly, I was denied a
| slot due to race-integration busing but I attribute it to
| paranoid parents rationalizing their lack of resolve.) The bus
| ride was 90 minutes each way for 3 hours total, depending on
| traffic. It was a magnet school where there were many kids from
| broken homes, abuse, poverty, undocumented parents hanging on,
| and situations adjacent to drug gangs. The non-IEP classroom
| material was too slow for me and I was often bored. The
| turnover of teachers was about 50%/year. Many substitute
| teachers. There were bullies, girls who behaved in age-
| inappropriate manners, carved graffiti-encased desks, and
| mountains of scantrons and dittos (spirit duplicator). No
| school uniforms, but gang colors and teen pregnancy were
| omnipresent concerns. Hardcover textbooks were worn to where
| bindings had saggy wrinkles. No computers and no cell phones.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| I can answer a some those. Have family members who are
| teachers, friends who work with youth, etc and this whole
| thing comes up a lot.
|
| I've used your numbering system to organize answers.
|
| 2. Less than previous generations.
|
| There's simply far less places that will let kids just hang
| out.
|
| Until a certain age its likely CPS will be called and police
| will be involved if your kids are out exploring, and after
| that age said kids hanging out is deemed antisocial and
| undesirable... So private security or the police hassle them.
|
| 3a-b: some the same, some different. Underage
| drinking/smoking/fucking is down, illicit drug use is down
| somewhat, but smoking's been replaced by vapes, and the drugs
| are different - often pharmaceuticals (real or counterfeit)
| such as xanax, etc.
|
| Actual antisocial behavior is way down, but perceived
| antisocial behavior is up. Behaviours that previously were
| deemed largely benign (kids hanging out) are deemed unwanted.
| As per answer 2.
|
| 4a-d: the kids tend to be significantly more "tolerant" than
| previous generations. Make of that what you will.
|
| 5a-c: yes? They are still curious as all fuck, but work ethic
| is a funny animal.
|
| Most traditional avenues for teenagers to "work" (outside of
| academics) are being closed off due to labour rules,
| liability, etc.
|
| So a lot of younger people try make money online, have some
| kind of hustle. This ranges across the board of legality,
| morality, etc. Be it flipping clothes on Depop, dubious
| schemes involving dropshipping or selling knockoff designer
| gear online, selling artwork/crafts, trying to become an
| influencer/streamer/whatever... There's massive pressure to
| try monetize any hobby.
|
| Resilience? Its teenagers. Some are hard as nails, some are
| drips.
| crsv wrote:
| The main cause is the proliferation of social media. There's
| other factors of course, and I'm not dismissing any of the depth
| of nuance of all the externalities acting on that generation, but
| it's undoubtedly the thing that our societies and social
| structures aren't designed for: facebook and instagram.
| [deleted]
| alecnotthompson wrote:
| The answer is obvious: life without agency thanks to capitalism
| with the increased ability to watch the planet deteriorate in
| front of our eyes.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| World: Am I out of touch? No it's the children who are wrong.
| threads2 wrote:
| Maybe it's economics.
| EntrePrescott wrote:
| That article (i.e. the author) seems to have a weird
| understanding of mathematics:
|
| > "Note that there are two ways to calculate increases. We can
| measure an increase in absolute terms, e.g., a rise from 5% to
| 15% of teens with a diagnosis is a ten percentage-point increase,
| or we can report it in relative terms, e.g., a rise from 5% to
| 15% is a 300% increase, relative to the anchor point"
|
| Uhm... maybe in an "alternative mathematics" universe? Where I
| learned math, an increase from 100% of the anchor value to 300%
| of the anchor value is not a relative increase of 300% but of
| 300%-100%=200%.
|
| In contrast, A "300% increase, relative to the anchor point"
| would be adding 300% of the anchor value to the 100% of it that
| it already has, i.e. resulting in an end value of 400% of the
| anchor value. So in the case presented by the article quote, to
| come back to the absolute terms, it would be a rise from 5% to
| 20%, not to 15%.
| sbirch wrote:
| I think you've mixed up relative and absolute differences. Both
| of your examples are in terms of absolute percentage points
| (pp, sometimes ambiguously labeled %), but relative changes are
| measured in percent (%). 300% relative difference just means
| 300/100 = 3x.
| EntrePrescott wrote:
| > Both of your examples are in terms of absolute percentage
| points
|
| no, in absolute percentage points, a rise from 5% to 15%
| would be an increase by 10% (absolute)... just like the
| article says. The part about absolute increases is the part
| that the article got right, as opposed to that about relative
| increases.
|
| > 300% relative difference just means 300/100 = 3x
|
| ...My point was: 300% relative DIFFERENCE (increase in this
| case) means that the DIFFERENCE (increase) between the
| initial value and the end value is 300% RELATIVE TO the
| initial value i.e. the DIFFERENCE is 3x the initial value
| (thus the end value being 400% of the initial value), not
| that the end value is 300% of the initial value.
|
| Let's take an example with 40% relative increase instead of
| 300% relative increase:
|
| Let's say your company made last year a profit of 5 million
| dollars out of a revenue of 100 million dollars, i.e. a
| profit margin of 5%. This year it still made a revenue of 100
| million dollars but managed to be more profitable, making a
| profit of 7 million dollars i.e. a profit margin of 7%.
|
| The ABSOLUTE increase of the profit margin is (7%-5%)=2%,
|
| The RELATIVE increase of profit margin is the absolute
| increase divided by the initial reference value i.e.
| (7%-5%)/5% = 40%.
|
| And my point is: having a 40% relative increase of profit
| margin means that your end profit margin is 40% higher
| relative to your initial reference profit margin and is thus
| (100%+40%)=140% of your initial reference profit margin, not
| that your end profit margin is 40% of your initial profit
| margin... which would be a 60% relative DECREASE (i.e. -60%
| relative increase) of the profit margin.
| wpwpwpw wrote:
| Can't this just be the effect of teens being more aware of their
| own mental health issues and reporting them more?
| tempsy wrote:
| No
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| wpwpwpw wrote:
| These one word proofs everyone makes use of nowadays might be
| one of the reasons mental health is not in as good shape as
| it could be.
| [deleted]
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Its interesting that this cites a "mental illness epidemic" but
| _only_ seems to cover anxiety /depression. I want statistics on
| ADHD, PTSD, autism, eating disorders, psychosis, and personality
| disorders too! If there is a major rise in ED (primarily women)
| it would explain why there are so many hospitalizations, because
| EDs are deadly.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Sorry, what is ED in this context?
| [deleted]
| notacoward wrote:
| Eating Disorder, but in general it's more commonly used to
| mean Executive Dysfunction and (in a different context)
| Erectile Dysfunction. Bad idea IMO to use it without first-
| time expansion in such an ambiguous context.
| amilios wrote:
| eating disorder
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Eating Disorder.
| CaptainNemo17 wrote:
| Erectile Dysfunction. It's gotten so bad it's hitting our
| women!
| spiralx wrote:
| I assume that would undermine the argument, as ADHD and other
| disorders are underdiagnosed in girls and women compared to
| men. And in fact anxiety and depression are most likely
| underdiagnosed in boys and men, which also helps their argument
| even more. Both of these make me sceptical of this "epidemic",
| plus Haidt isn't someone I trust to be impartial or accurate
| nowadays.
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| To me the theory seems to not fully explain the data, at least
| not the switch in phone types and instagram. IMHO it takes some
| time for a mental illness to form and the right circumstances are
| needed. It's nothing you catch like a cold.
|
| I think the causes are multifactorial. First, you need a social
| structure that promotes or at least not inhibits mental illness.
| That I think is given in industrialized countries because of high
| stress for parents, little commitment among people and always
| increasing speed of life. In addition the middle class got
| smaller and smaller. Three are only two outcomes, poor or rich
| with little in-between. Then you need some awareness of mental
| illness. Even today mental illness is highly stigmatized, but
| back then it was even worse. There are a lot of older people who
| are visibly not well but won't get treatment for whatever reason
| and thus won't show up in statistics. And then, yes the media in
| general. My mum told me that back when she was young the
| sentiment of the media was more positive, there were articles
| about achievements without a critical differentiation. More
| negative news more frequently. All of that set the stage for
| young people to feel the need to get ahead to survive combined
| with a larger group for comparison results in a feeling of
| hopelessness in many.
| zug_zug wrote:
| These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter
| tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-
| RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is
| fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once.
|
| But it's really just a hypothesis.
|
| Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of
| research showing depression and stress are correlated with
| inflammation. There are a number of other health biomarkers that
| are going bad fast (sperm-count, testosterone) and it's known
| testosterone levels inversely correlate with depression for
| example. Pollution is also correlated with health and mood.
|
| So rather than declaring it over before the research even begins,
| let's at least consider environment.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > There are a number of other health biomarkers that are going
| bad fast (sperm-count, testosterone)
|
| Which one caused which? Does hanging out on Reddit 8 hours a
| day not have an effect on sperm-count; or is the decline in
| sperm-count part of the reason you are on Reddit?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Or there are confounders, like environmental effects are
| wrecking hormones. That would cause both of those things.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Unfortunately, you have now stumbled on the extremely
| politically sensitive elephant in the room.
|
| If it is environmental (microplastics anyone)... do we need
| to stop producing certain clothes (stretch clothing is
| particularly bad)? Could this actually be _part_ of the
| increase in youth identifying as LGBTQ [1]? Is it a greater
| threat to our survival, health, and well-being than the
| more palatable issue (but still an issue) of climate
| change?
|
| [1] Note, I'm not making a hypothesis or taking a position
| here. However, just admitting that these microplastics and
| other things _are_ having effects on humans could easily
| lead to "were these people _born this way_ , or were many
| of them _poisoned that way_ "? And so, no surprise, nobody
| wants to talk about it and so the question of _if it could_
| just remains unanswered.
| ctoth wrote:
| It's such a shame that scientists were figuring this out
| but the wrong person[0] spoke up and now it's a
| conspiracy theory. That's a weird dynamic. Wonder if it
| possibly happened with anything else we now call a
| "conspiracy theory."
|
| [0]:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/04/respectability-
| cascade...
| erichocean wrote:
| > _Even beyond the strategic perspective, it's just sort
| of embarrassing to have two good theories of how society
| and politics work that make opposite predictions from
| each other. What are some heuristics for when one would
| work rather than another?_
|
| What's embarrassing is that Scott Alexander is unable to
| answer that question himself. Maybe he should ask
| ChatGPT?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| The phrase "positive feedback loop" seems relevant.
| version_five wrote:
| Another hypothesis is electromagnetic fields. There are more
| now than ever. Cell phones, 5G, Wifi
|
| Sounds stupid right? There's a plausibility scale, and despite
| various hypotheses being possible, it's reasonable to rank them
| by what fits best with out prior knowledge, and social media is
| way more plausible than some post 2010 rise in inflammation,
| even if that could causally lead to depression in the first
| place.
| zug_zug wrote:
| > post 2010 rise in inflammation
|
| You're assuming that depression and other mental illnesses
| only started in 2010, which is theoretically possible, but
| not an established fact.
|
| We've actually seen a drastic rise in most mental illnesses
| diagnosed going back at least 50 years. There is a hypothesis
| that it's diagnosis, but again, merely a hypothesis.
|
| Some of the cases which clearly aren't "diagnosis" (e.g.
| nearsightedness) we have no explanation for.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Speaking from my family history, bipolar just wasn't
| diagnosed or treated unless it was quite severe. It's
| unlikely I'd have been diagnosed 50 years ago.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's also possible that there are multiple confounding
| factors at play. It's reasonable to investigate multiple
| angles as well as how they interact with each other.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean "RELIGION" in and of how it normally goes hand in hand
| with stronger and closer communities it disappearing is
| probably a large factor in the current issues. I'm not
| religious but even I can recognize that for the vast majority
| of the population this support structure going away with
| nothing to replace it hasn't been great for a lot of people.
| twic wrote:
| > sperm-count
|
| Or maybe not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34830936
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Another hypothesis is: *waves at general state of things since
| the mid 2000s*
| johnfn wrote:
| You'd have to show that the "general state of things since
| the mid 2000s" has gotten appreciably worse than the time
| period prior to 2012. Rewind a decade and we had 9/11 and the
| Iraq war, so it doesn't seem immediately obvious that things
| got significantly worse.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| At least in the US, the public was more united in its
| support for the wars in the middle east at their outset in
| the early 2000s than they have been for anything since. The
| war in Afghanistan initially had 88% support[1] and the war
| in Iraq had 76%, though it fell to 72% shortly after[2].
|
| [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-
| afghani... [2]
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-
| america...
| bittercynic wrote:
| I suppose there are different pollutants all the time, but the
| areas I'm familiar with (SF Bay and LA) have gotten much less
| polluted in the last few decades, at least by how they look and
| smell. I suspect our air and water is safer now than 20 years
| ago, and much safer than 40 years ago.
|
| Solitary entertainment has grown drastically more engaging in
| the last few decades, and it seems reasonable to think that it
| has contributed to increased isolation and sedentary behavior.
|
| Even though it's not absolutely certainly the cause of all ills
| in the world, I think it's worthwhile to be cautious about
| digital entertainment.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The first thing I thought of when they said pollution in this
| context was plastics. That's something that people have an
| increasing exposure to that also has a history of chemicals
| that are hormone disruptors. I don't think it covers the
| entire increase. But it could be one of many factors on the
| longer scale (not just the shorter term increase).
| luckylion wrote:
| Humans might be fine with some form of pollution but not
| others, so "there's less trash and the factory isn't dumping
| glowing sludge into the bay" doesn't really rule out that
| there's some pollution that's less visible but problematic
| for a subset of people (or problematic when combined with
| other factors, e.g. veganism or listening to mumble rap).
| zug_zug wrote:
| > I suppose there are different pollutants all the time, but
| the areas I'm familiar with (SF Bay and LA) have gotten much
| less polluted in the last few decades, at least by how they
| look and smell
|
| I want to point out that pollution can be invisible. As a
| thought experiment - the amount of lead in your water it
| would take to permanently damage your brain would be
| invisible, untasteable, and miniscule. It's worth remembering
| how fragile we really are.
|
| Is it water? Most water supplies only test for about 8-10
| chemicals. Who knows? Is it the microplastics we eat?
|
| As for why it would be worse now when our environment is
| getting better -- perhaps the damage is accumulating each
| generation (like sperm counts are going down each
| generation). There are a lot of cases where pregnant mother
| being exposed to something can have severe effects on the
| child, and sometimes even the grandchild (look up
| diethystylbestrol).
|
| Anyways, this is just a hypothesis, but it seems to me it
| should be given as strong a starting consideration as
| anything else. I'm sure it's not too hard to take blood
| samples from a few thousand people to look for health
| correlations to these mood issues.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Reminder that in 2016, 93% of test subjects who were US
| Adults tested positive for BPA in their urine.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22363351/
| naasking wrote:
| > Another hypothesis is that it's environmental
|
| Social media and phones are environmental factors. Increasing
| obesity is definitely a factor. Whether sperm and testosterone
| are decreasing is still speculative because the old data being
| used for comparisons is pretty poor. I think air pollution has
| actually gotten better since the 80s last I checked. Maybe
| increases in 'forever chemicals' are having some effect.
| Aunche wrote:
| Nothing dramatic has changed in terms of pollution in 2010
| though, especially in developed western nations. If anything,
| it's been getting better as we've been transitioning to cleaner
| burning natural gas and renewables.
| carimura wrote:
| It's very likely both with the rise of processed food, hormone
| disruptors, and the "app explosion" where negativity gets
| engagement/clicks.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Why hasn't anyone asked those affected what they are anxious and
| depressed about?
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Because kids don't know anything, least of all about
| themselves, of course. /s
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| They probably have no idea, or will give generic responses
| because that's the best they can figure.
| marze wrote:
| Besides the hypothesis in the essay, an undetermined link to
| smartphone use, proposed causes from the comments include:
|
| -declining quality of education
|
| -poor sleep from late-evening screen use
|
| -social media use
|
| -influencer culture makes ones own situation look dull
|
| -overmedication
|
| -state of world (wars, ecological risks etc)
|
| -measurement artifact
|
| -electromagnetic fields
|
| -health issues that cause inflammation
|
| -junk food/poor nutrition
|
| Did I miss any others?
| Eumenes wrote:
| I had no phone as a kid, I tinkered with PCs and programming, but
| spent most of my time outside, with friends. Riding our bikes or
| skateboarding till the sun came down. We played basketball and
| met new friends at the mall. We explored abandon buildings and
| found places on the map we wanted to visit when we got cars. None
| of us had ADHD, depression, or were on SSRIs. Nobody made up
| mental illness or gender identity. This is so obviously a result
| of our screwed up culture and social media, and prevalence of
| phone usage from a young age. I have several young cousins and
| they are in bad shape. Fat (like real fat), sedentary, addicted
| to anime, rarely play outside, and of course, have all the mental
| illness acronyms.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Saw a post on Paul Graham's twitter about this, turns out white,
| liberal female teens were the most depressed, for whatever
| reason, that's a strange specific group to be extremely depressed
| imho.
| IKLOL wrote:
| Huge overlap of social media use in that demographic I'm sure
| chasd00 wrote:
| therapy got really trendy with that group and a therapist
| labeling you depressed ensures more visits.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| White liberals are the only demographic with an out-group bias,
| and women rate higher in negative emotion, so this makes
| perfect sense to me.
|
| out-group bias:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1074524252638982144.html
| kevviiinn wrote:
| [flagged]
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| I don't know how you leapt from the only group with a
| negative in-group bias to wanting to expand the in-group.
| Hating yourself isn't intrinsically inclusivity.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Not all leftists, though, based on the link.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| but it seems that only happens at the cost of shitting on
| people who are like them. Who would have expected this
| could lead to depression?
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Saw a post on Paul Graham's twitter about this, turns out
| white, liberal female teens were the most depressed, for
| whatever reason, that's a strange specific group to be
| extremely depressed imho.
|
| That's...honestly, exactly the combination of race and gender I
| would expect to be most depressed right now, even thinking
| _only_ about expectations people have been raised with about
| the direction of progress _for their own conditions_ and how
| the reality currently manifesting clashes with it, and that's
| _without_ considering how concerns for conditions other than
| their own might play into it.
| YellOh wrote:
| Can you expand on your thoughts here? This is not a group
| whose lives I generally expect to be getting worse (in day-
| to-day life, barring social media effects).
| [deleted]
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Huge expectations around women "having it all" clashing
| into economic uncertainty and the revocation of rights.
| YellOh wrote:
| I'm not trying to be annoying, but I genuinely don't
| understand what you mean by huge expectations of "having
| it all" for women (at least insofar as it relates to any
| trend starting ~2012, when the large growth in depression
| and self-harm among teen girls seems to have started).
|
| The only "revocation of rights" I can think of would be
| Dobbs - which also does not fit the trend (see my
| response to the other comment).
|
| If (white liberal) teen girls are supposed to actually
| see their real lives getting worse, I still don't see any
| reason for this to have become a problem in the early
| 2010s.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > The only "revocation of rights" I can think of would be
| Dobbs - which also does not fit the trend (see my
| response to the other comment).
|
| Dobbs didn't just happen. It took decades to take those
| rights away from women, and there was incremental
| (anti)progress along the way. In those decades, a massive
| political project was created specifically to message
| that women who get abortions (a lifesaving medical
| procedure) are murderers, and they should be accordingly
| punished (life in jail). The result of this political
| campaign is that women in America have the worst medical
| outcomes in the developed world, and in some cases it's
| worse than the developing world. Infant mortality is on
| the rise, giving birth can put you into debt tens of
| thousands of dollars, and if there are complications you
| now have to be literally on your last thread of life
| before doctors will feel comfortable trying to save you.
|
| So I guess you can see why women in America might feel
| under threat. There is one political party in America who
| has been telling women for decades that their goal is to
| use their power and influence to turn the clock back on
| women in America.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| It does fit the trend. These issues are stacking. You can
| fool yourself into dismissing it if you split it into
| pieces. In 2012 you can write it off as fear mongering
| the media. In 2018 you can write it off as "how does this
| affect your day to day life?". In 2022 you can say that
| Dobbs "doesn't fit the trend" since it started in 2012.
|
| I'm not saying this is the whole story, but it's possibly
| part.
|
| "Having it all" is a blessing and curse. The choice to do
| more, the burden to do more. Now you need a career,
| family, insta following. And it's quite likely you're
| going to have a hard time finding that perfect husband
| since men 18-30 as a demographic are doing _horribly_.
| What would normally be the backbone of a society is just
| not functioning well right now.
| YellOh wrote:
| As far as "having it all" -- female employment has
| basically not changed since 1990[0], and given the
| decline in the US birth rate, expectations of motherhood
| have probably decreased as well. I could see "having it
| all" increasing stress as, for example, more women were
| being introduced into the work force, but that seems
| entirely uncorrelated to the 2010s.
|
| Insta following could be a new pressure and I agree it
| would fit the timeline, but that'd be a social media
| effect and not a decrease in real-life quality of living
| for white liberal girls.
|
| [0] https://genderdata.worldbank.org/indicators/sl-tlf-
| acti-zs/?...
| travisjungroth wrote:
| When it comes to emotional well being, "real life" is
| what's in your head. If people are experiencing
| unattainable pressures and that's causing them stress,
| it's real. I guess you could make a distinction for
| dreams, hallucinations, etc. But social media isn't that.
|
| It's actually dangerous to think it's "too pretend". My
| bank account is just squiggles on the screen, but I can
| somehow buy stuff. Same thing that online relationships
| can have physical outcomes, even if just by turning it
| into cash first.
| naasking wrote:
| > I genuinely don't understand what you mean by huge
| expectations of "having it all" for women
|
| I think the OP meant the whole "lean in" movement. I'm
| not sure why that would affect teen girls though. Social
| media and decreased socialization seem like much more
| plausible factors.
| notch898a wrote:
| Social rank is zero-sum. Better positioning for previously
| unfavored group/races is the right thing but lowers
| relative social rank of those above.
| YellOh wrote:
| I feel like this could be a reasonable explanation for
| the race piece, but I'm unsure how it connects to the
| female & liberal pieces. I'm not sure being a
| conservative male has gained a lot of social status in
| the past decade, though I suppose it's definitely
| possible.
| muffinman26 wrote:
| Not sure if this aligns with what the GP was trying to say,
| but this is also one of the groups I would expect to be the
| most depressed, although I would expect white, middle-aged,
| middle-classed women to be an even larger demographic.
| Chemicals/genetics have a lot to do with depression, but
| for other cases I think depression comes from a feeling of
| uselessness/lack of purpose.
|
| White liberal women have a lot of incompatible expectations
| placed on them. If they stay home to raise children,
| they're labeled as lazy, "betraying the feminist cause",
| etc. for not participating in the workforce. If they work,
| they're labeled as neglectful of their children (if they
| have them) or told they're going to regret their choices.
| They have to outpace their male coworkers to be respected
| at work, but their career is also seen as a "nice to have".
| So the standards for women are impossible, but
| simultaneously so low that achieving them doesn't earn
| respect.
|
| In a strange way, the group's relative privilege is a
| contributing factor to depression. If you're a member of a
| group that is violently oppressed, the act of protest and
| standing up to oppressors provides a sense of purpose.
| Because white women's position isn't "that bad," though,
| attempts to improve their situation are considered too
| small to celebrate at best and entitled whining at worse.
| Further, there's been a movement, particularly in liberal
| spaces over the past few years, to lift up the voices of
| the most oppressed. So liberal white women have pressure to
| just shut up and swallow their concerns from both sides of
| the political aisle.
|
| None of this is to advocate drowning out the concerns of
| other groups to prioritize the mental health of white
| women, only a recognition that a seemingly easier life
| doesn't necessarily mean a happier one. In fact, an easier
| life can be more depressing.
| YellOh wrote:
| I could see this being a major factor. It reminds me of
| wealthy white women's "hysteria" / other mental health
| issues of the past (ex.
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/01/16/eternal-
| hypochondria-o...). Being neither particularly oppressed
| nor in the most priveleged group is an interesting
| position, and I could see this being an important mental
| health factor. I don't have a strong enough sociological
| background to connect any shift in social position for
| white women to the correct time frame in the original
| post, but it's certainly possible.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I would imagine it parallels the plight of growing up a
| middle child. Or another analogy from The Simpsons, "but
| what to do with poor hugo. Too crazy for Boys Town, too
| much of a boy for crazy town." - Dr. Hibert
| rpjt wrote:
| I tend to agree with. A lack of purpose is a big deal for
| lots of depressed people. Humans need a purpose or they
| can go down a dark path quite quickly.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| One key element (though not the only one) is _Dobbs v.
| Jackson_ , subsequent legislation encouraged by it, and the
| _highly visible_ effects that this has had on reproductive
| healthcare _even where no actual elective abortion is
| involved_.
|
| In terms of cultural expectations of progress _and_ very
| visceral potential personal impact _and_ perceived position
| in society, this is a radical reverse for that group (on
| the second point probably less than for non-whites, but the
| first and third points probably bite white liberals
| harder.)
| YellOh wrote:
| Notably, though, the charts start showing massive growth
| in depression around 2012, which was long before Dobbs.
|
| And there are some trends in the opposite direction -
| iirc hormonal birth control used to be much harder to get
| (telehealth has made the prescription requirement much
| less onerous), and anecdotally nowadays it seems a lot
| easier to get info on sterilization or methods for
| intentionally changing menstruation (ex. skipping the
| placebo week).
|
| I'm not saying Dobbs doesn't matter, only that I both 1)
| doubt it's a central driver of the trend, and 2) think
| [outside the world of news/social media] _most_ women can
| still expect more rights & a higher quality of care in
| _most_ US locations than they could a decade or two ago.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm not saying Dobbs doesn't matter, only that I both
| 1) doubt it's a central driver of the trend
|
| Yeah, I'm not saying it (or reproductive rights & health
| care more generally) is the central driver of the trend,
| I'm saying its one of the key reasons why if someone
| asked me, today, what group in American society would be
| most depressed, my intuitive response would be "white
| liberal teen girls" (particularly, its a key reason why
| "female, white, and liberal" are parts of that) - why
| that _element_ that was called out as surprising upthread
| would not be.
|
| Though _Dobbs_ didn't just appear _ex nihilo_ without
| many years of clear lead up to it that reflected a change
| in the direction of society, so I wouldn't dismiss the
| issue being deeply connected to an important part of the
| broader, earlier trend.
| YellOh wrote:
| Interesting. I would much rather be a (white liberal)
| teen girl today than in ~2012, but I can see how insofar
| as Dobbs is only a manifestation of existing trends, I
| might be in the minority.
|
| It's just hard to wrap my head around what this trend
| would be, or why teens started picking up on it in 2012.
| I am not conscious of any major modern debates around
| women's rights except abortion/birth control, and I see
| no particular link between the causes of Dobbs and that
| generic time period.
|
| Also, possibly as proof that I'm not a great commenter on
| the issue, I thought only ~8% of women had abortions, but
| in looking it up while writing this comment apparently
| it's more like 25% (so abortion & related issues affect
| way more women/girls than I expected).
| ModernMech wrote:
| > It's just hard to wrap my head around what this trend
| would be, or why teens started picking up on it in 2012.
|
| One reason could be they started talking to each other
| more. Women and girls who had similar life experience
| shared them on the internet. This is how the whole Me Too
| movement started; the experiences shared during the Me
| Too movement were old, but it was the internet and social
| media which acted as a catalyst to dislodge them from the
| past and bring them into the present.
|
| > I am not conscious of any major modern debates around
| women's rights except abortion/birth control
|
| Don't you recall the 2016 Presidential election? There
| was a huge debate about whether or not a woman was ready
| to be President of the United States. I don't know about
| your family, but in my family people thought it very
| clever to say that a woman could never become president,
| because her period would make her too volatile. This kind
| of rhetoric may have flowed right past you, but it wasn't
| lost on women (especially the very cogent point that men
| have in fact started most wars in all of human history).
|
| The outcome of that election was that America chose a
| serial sexual predator who has admitted to spying on
| women in changing rooms, has raped women, and who has
| admitted to using his power and prestige to assault
| women. It wasn't lost on women that this man, with a
| famously volatile temper, was chosen over a women because
| he was viewed as more trustworthy and more stable than
| her.
|
| That man ended his term by waging a violent coup against
| the United States government with his supporters, who
| themselves made an effort assassinate the vice president.
| Yet it was the _female_ candidate that America considered
| a priori too "volatile".
|
| > I thought only ~8% of women had abortions, but in
| looking it up while writing this comment apparently it's
| more like 25% (so abortion & related issues affect way
| more women/girls than I expected).
|
| As with rape, the number of women who have abortions and
| the number of women who report abortions are quite
| different. That number is going to diverge even more now
| that it's illegal and criminalized in many jurisdictions.
| YellOh wrote:
| I could definitely see something like MeToo being a
| cause, but I still would put that as a "social media"
| effect and not a "women's/girl's irl day-to-day lives get
| worse" effect.
|
| Most of my family voted for Trump, but mostly for
| immigration & military reasons. I don't remember anyone I
| knew in real life saying anything negative about Hillary
| on the basis of her gender -- though, as always, there
| was plenty of it online. Pretty much all of the negative
| talk I heard about her (irl) was about her emails, her
| policies, or her party.
|
| (My mother is _still_ angry about Hillary 's "there's a
| cold place in hell for women who don't vote for a woman"
| thing, but that wasn't the main reason for her vote.)
|
| The presidents bracketing Trump (Obama & Biden) seem
| generally feminist, so I'd be surprised that the trend
| started during Obama and continued to accelerate during
| Biden if something like Trump / related to Trumpism was a
| big cause. Maybe the SCOTUS justices he left behind could
| be pointed to as a continuing political pain point now?
|
| I agree that our abortion statistics will become less
| indicative of the actual rate now that we're post-Dobbs;
| this'll be a very interesting time to look back on.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I am not conscious of any major modern debates around
| women's rights except abortion/birth control, and I see
| no particular link between the causes of Dobbs and that
| generic time period.
|
| 2011-2012 was when the major wave of state anti-abortion
| laws (135 in those two years) and the first notable state
| executive measure defunding Planned Parent that
| represented the beginning (well, the visible conversion
| to a major active push rather than mere rhetoric) of the
| anti-abortion push by the Republican Party that led to
| _Dobbs_ occurred.
| notch898a wrote:
| And yet fertility rates had another strong step down
| around that time.
|
| One conjecture could be that fewer young women with
| children is correlated with higher rates of diagnosis of
| mental illness. And if I know I had mental illness, I'd
| be scared shitless to let it known on the record I had a
| disorder that a CPS worker or family courts could use
| against me -- without a child those concerns are
| lessened. I can also attest having a child means you have
| way less time for your own personal care, which means
| perhaps these women now have more time for their own
| care.
| YellOh wrote:
| The abortion changes don't seem to have been major enough
| for me to easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abor
| tion_in_the_United_States), but I've definitely become a
| lot less confident in my initial opinion that it's
| nearly-universally better to be a white liberal teen girl
| today, so thank you for the interesting conversation.
|
| I still think social media / smartphones / etc as an
| explanation fits the trend more simply & cleanly, but I'm
| much more open to the idea that I could be wrong.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The abortion changes don't seem to have been major
| enough for me to easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Abortion_in_the_United_States), but I've definitely
| become a lot less confident in my initial opinion that
| it's nearly-universally better to be a white liberal teen
| girl today, so thank you for the interesting
| conversation.
|
| Prior to the Texas private-enforcement-only hack that
| occurred just before _Dobbs_ (and was huge news before
| _Dobbs_ eclipsed it), most of them were either funding
| /access restrictions that didn't directly target the
| Constitutional right just made it difficult to exercise
| in practice (because that had some chance of surviving
| the courts), while the rest were struck down (or
| enjoined, and then struck down later) before going into
| effect and never enforced, serving primarily as strong
| social messaging rather than enforced law.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Note that miscarriages are counted as spontaneous
| abortions in most medical statistics, which was super
| confusing to me when I first saw similar data.
| KMag wrote:
| In this case, the "spontaneous" means naturally
| occurring. Spontaneous abortion is the medical term for
| what's commonly called a miscarriage.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Miscarriages _are_ abortions. Often times if the
| miscarriage happens late enough, a doctor must intervene
| to assist in the removal of the dead fetus, which is the
| same medical procedure as one may remove a viable one.
| thesausageking wrote:
| That doesn't fit the data though. Dobbs v Jackson was in
| 2022. The increase starts in around 2012. That's before
| Trump and the current wave of politicians who are behind
| Dobbs, etc. In 2012, Obama was President, the Paycheck
| Fairness Act was passed, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of
| State, Pelosi had recently been the first woman to be
| speaker of the house, two women were added to the supreme
| court, etc.
| jfengel wrote:
| That's just it: 2012 was the high point, from which the
| decline is measured. Focus turned to Hillary Clinton, and
| began the long train of abuse that led to her losing in
| 2016.
|
| Much of that abuse was explicitly misogynist. Misogyny
| had been deprecated for a long time, but had a resurgence
| starting right around 2012.
| extasia wrote:
| This argument is US-centric and in no way explains the
| trends seen in the rest of the anglosphere shown in the
| article..
|
| Why would a teen in Australia care about US law?
|
| Maybe I'm missing something.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This argument is US-centric and in no way explains the
| trends seen in the rest of the anglosphere shown in the
| article..
|
| The US culture war is a significant cultural export,
| _especially_ to the rest of the Anglosphere.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Those are the demographic criteria that I'd expect to maximize
| time spent on social media. White + liberal => probably middle
| class & have some time for leisure; girls => see the number of
| likes as a measure of their worth, i.e. "girls are pretty"
| ideology
| bakugo wrote:
| [flagged]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| One of the odder changes in the behavior of people on the
| left in recent times is going from "I'm a person, not a
| label" to "Look at all the labels I have!"
| colpabar wrote:
| "My disability doesn't define me, but I'm still going to
| put it as the first thing in my twitter bio."
|
| We had a real chance to get something going with occupy and
| now we aren't allowed to clap at events because clapping is
| too violent.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| >aren't allowed to clap at events because clapping is too
| violent
|
| This is the first I'm hearing about this, where did you
| see it?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Replacing applause with Jazz Hands was a remarkably big
| topic a few years ago.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/4512283/jazz-hands-to-replace-
| cla...
|
| For one example.
|
| I don't think it ever got to the point of "we aren't ever
| allowed to clap at events", but it certainly seems like
| there were people who were pushing for that
| kevviiinn wrote:
| >In a statement, the University of Manchester Students'
| Union said that they are not outright banning audible
| clapping at all school events, and are instead
| encouraging "the use of British Sign Language (BSL)
| clapping during our democratic events." These events
| include meetings where members are invited to participate
| in decision making, the union said.
| ssully wrote:
| They made it up.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It started (in modern times) in the 60's at poetry jams.
| You can do it one-handed (i.e. while holding a drink) and
| you can also do it during a particularly impressive part
| of a performance, rather than waiting until the end.
|
| Some groups have definitely taken it as a preference
| (sorry for the daily mail link, but it was the most
| succinct):
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323166/Some-
| colleg... and tried to tie it to clapping as
| "triggering", but they're pretty uncommon.
|
| One example of someone not-ironically actually stating
| that jazz-hands is better than the "triggering" clapping
| is the Oxford SU Woman's Campaign:
| https://twitter.com/womcam/status/580389025892175872
|
| You can also
| ssully wrote:
| Yeah I've definitely been to events where quiet or no
| clapping is preferred (ex: poetry readings) but the OP
| claiming we aren't aloud to clap at events anymore
| because it's too violent sounds like someone who hasn't
| actually been to a public event in the last year.
| colpabar wrote:
| I'm sorry you misinterpreted my comment to mean all
| public events in existence.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Meh.
|
| In fairness, there are a lot of people, making up a lot
| of things on this discussion thread. It's kind of
| disingenuous to only call this poster out.
|
| I mean, ideologues are gonna ideologue.
| colpabar wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious - what kind of ideologue am I?
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| It's hardly widespread, but it's absolutely happened:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moWe3rk7LzQ
| ssully wrote:
| It happening in rare instances isn't sufficient for the
| OP to claim "we aren't allowed to clap at events because
| clapping is too violent".
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| I was replying to this statement, "They made it up."
|
| They didn't make it up, proof was provided that they
| didn't make it up.
| ssully wrote:
| They made it up, because we are certainly still allowed
| to clap at events.
| w3454 wrote:
| [flagged]
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I would love to explore Reddit's influence on this phenomenon.
| The timelines seem to sync somewhat and it seems like a perfect
| vehicle for adversarial nation states to use to influence
| public opinion.
| naasking wrote:
| I can't imagine Reddit userbase having enough teen girls in
| 2012 to cause this, especially as compared to Instagram.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Wasn't Tumblr confusing teenage brains well before Reddit
| really took off?
|
| But yeah, social media sites should be treated as the
| powerful propaganda weapons that they have become, not just a
| casual way to pass the time.
| tenpies wrote:
| Also falls perfectly within what Yuri Bezmenov (the KGB
| defector who explained the Soviet's plan to take down the
| West through ideological subversion) laid out.
|
| At around that time, you would have the first batch of fully
| indoctrinated (trained by Socialists from childhood to
| adulthood, with no oversight or counterbalance) graduating.
|
| That is also the group that sets the stage for the
| demoralisation phase of the plan and allows for the next
| phase: destabilisation.
|
| Good summary here:
| https://www.oaoa.com/opinion/columnists/hart-kgb-defector-
| re...
|
| And the original interview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA
|
| I don't think this is purely a Soviet ploy working out, but
| you can't help but look at the Western education system and
| realise that's a big part of the problem.
| Daishiman wrote:
| You haven't even a shred of understanding of social
| radicalism in the 60s and 70s.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| In that interview he also talked about how the USSR was
| imminently going to take over the West because everyone had
| been indoctrinated to communism, so he's not exactly
| batting 1000. It seems to me he lays out a culture
| bleakness Rorschach test about "kids these days" that's
| easy to see ourselves in, and will be able to any point.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I highly doubt that Reddit _per se_ has any significant
| effect whatsoever--which is not to say that it can 't be an
| instance of the overarching platforms that cause the
| phenomenon.
|
| The reason I'm disregarding Reddit as a significant cause is
| threefold:
|
| a) Reddit is overwhelmingly male, and the most affected group
| are teenage girls
|
| b) Reddit is not _that_ big of a platform in the teenage
| demographic
|
| c) Even if it were, its popularity is not in any way
| homogeneous across countries. If Reddit itself had an effect,
| the USA would be much more affected by the phenomenon than
| the UK, for instance.
| jwineinger wrote:
| Do you have sources for the first two?
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I was speaking mostly based on intuitions, but here are
| two quick sources I found which illustrate it:
|
| a) Reddit is overwhelmingly male:
|
| - Distribution of Reddit users by gender:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255182/distribution-
| of-...
|
| b) Reddit is not _that_ big of a platform in the teenage
| demographic:
|
| - Distribution of Reddit app users by age group:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125159/reddit-us-
| app-us...
|
| - Popularity of Reddit in teenagers as compared to other
| social media platforms:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/250172/social-
| network-us...
| [deleted]
| steele wrote:
| Ah yes, his very area of expertise and authority. Did
| commentary include "interesting" and/or "looking into it"?
| sdwr wrote:
| Gotta look at which way the cookie crumbles or the beam shears
| - how stress is distributed in a system.
|
| If you take for granted that there is a large amount of
| emotional strain floating around, where are the outlets?
|
| Men bottle it up and retake control (school shootings, as an
| extreme).
|
| People with precarious lives can express the stress as worry
| and fear (mostly women).
|
| Depression is a luxury version of stress - not happy, but also
| physically safe and not worried for your well-being. "White
| liberal female teens" = privilege.
| w3454 wrote:
| [flagged]
| kevviiinn wrote:
| What are you talking about? The person you're replying to
| didn't mention any of those things
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > How did you become so misinformed?
|
| Personal attacks are against the site rules. Don't post
| like this here.
| w3454 wrote:
| [flagged]
| notch898a wrote:
| Suicide also appears to be a"luxury":
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/401-450/db450-fig.
| ..
|
| I'd be interested in the explanation behind the
| aforementioned.
| incone123 wrote:
| Depression is a spectrum of presentations, and severe cases
| render you entirely unable to work. In turn that means your
| physical well being is at risk if you depend on salary to
| keep yourself housed and fed.
| Arrath wrote:
| > Depression is a luxury version of stress - not happy, but
| also physically safe and not worried for your well-being.
|
| That certainly is A Take on Depression.
| ModernMech wrote:
| One of the main attitudes that perpetuates and exacerbates
| depression, imo.
|
| Let's not forget that depression can end in death through
| suicide. It's a serious life-threatening illness.
| nradov wrote:
| We discussed that issue here a few weeks ago.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35005368
| kerpotgh wrote:
| [dead]
| Juliate wrote:
| Why strange?
| ericmay wrote:
| Do you think it's normal or expected? If so, why?
| revelio wrote:
| Yes. A lot of depression about the world is driven by left
| wing views. Women are more left wing than men, liberals are
| obviously more left wing than conservatives, and young
| people are more left wing than older people. So being young
| liberal and female is the intersection of all those
| categories.
|
| I don't know how important being white is there, but I also
| don't see much discussion of race in this line of articles,
| only gender geography age and politics.
| Juliate wrote:
| Precisely, I don't know. I would not expect such a specific
| group, or any other, to significantly differ (might be a
| sampling issue, or something with a reason). Hence my
| question, but that may also be a translation issue.
|
| One could form hypotheses of course, but they won't be much
| of relevance here I think :)
| ericmay wrote:
| > Precisely, I don't know. I would not expect such a
| specific group, or any other, to significantly differ
|
| Do you mean for this specific item or in general? The
| former makes sense, but the latter I'd find a little
| weird given how publically well-known it is that there
| are group differences (take educational attainment in the
| United States for example).
| auganov wrote:
| Mainstream psychology is basically a more popular version of
| scientology with "therapy" instead of "auditing". Can you guess
| what my politics are more likely to be based off that
| sentiment? If so, then that tells you all you need to know.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Give me an angenda you want to promote and a segment of the
| population you want to propagandize to and I can intersect the
| population by age/race/wealth in such a way that the statistics
| work and it helps you signal all the virtues at once.
| tekla wrote:
| This sounds EXACTLY the group to have an outsized
| representation.
| bradDonniger wrote:
| [flagged]
| rayiner wrote:
| That's not surprising at all. Each of those groups (white,
| liberal, female) is individually correlated with being more
| depressed. It's not surprising at the intersection of those
| groups is the least depressed:
| https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand...
| tstrimple wrote:
| These statistics are almost useless for determining rates of
| mental health issues. They measure mental health as reported by
| mental health professionals. Of course groups which are
| antagonistic or dismissive of mental health will be
| underrepresented. Folks who receive counseling for mental
| health issues at their Church will also not be represented in
| these numbers. That doesn't mean these other groups don't have
| mental health issues. It means they don't seek help for it or
| get help via resources that don't report these stats. All this
| tells me is that young liberal women are the most likely to
| seek help for themselves from professionals.
| daltont wrote:
| The subpopulation that uses alcohol to deal with life stress
| likely skews male and more conservative.
|
| I recently had a conversation with late '20s guy from a small
| town in Illinois who said guys in his town at any point in
| time were either working, hunting or drunk. He felt the need
| to get out of there.
| incone123 wrote:
| Guys in his town were either working, pursuing a hobby, or
| socialising?
| ssully wrote:
| Being drunk during all of your free time is socializing?
| stametseater wrote:
| That account is only the perspective of somebody who
| obviously didn't feel included and left the town. I bet
| people who like living in that town would describe it
| differently.
|
| What else do we really know? For all we know, the guy who
| left was a teetotaler and would characterize any social
| gathering with a few beers present as "everybody getting
| drunk."
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I had this conversation with friends. I wondered if they
| were snorting cocaine because it was fun or if it was a
| medication to get through the stress of life.
| luckylion wrote:
| Drinking is the hobby, shooting up the forest with
| friends is the socializing!
| waboremo wrote:
| Fantastic point, and I believe the only comment in this
| entire thread to accurately assess the discrepancy between
| the groups mental health professionals have a
| disproportionate access to.
|
| I would be more interested in seeing the rates of mental
| health professional access regarding these girls, what's the
| rate both parents are also talking to their own mental health
| professionals, their male siblings too, how often do they
| talk to them, etc. If I were to guess, it would still
| disproportionately skew towards these girls primarily because
| of how mental health professionals are viewed as "problem
| fixers". You go to them, they fix your problem so people
| assume. I can see many parents encouraging their daughters to
| speak to one ("fix her depression"), but never seeking help
| themselves while simultaneously being ignorant to problems
| their stoic male offspring are dealing with.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| [flagged]
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| We have no longer any "great struggle" to concern ourselves
| with. Recommended film: Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Not sure I understand you. Nor do I understand why I've
| been downvoted into oblivion.
|
| Also - I have watched Hypernormalization. Found the facts
| that it presented to be highly interesting. Worth watching
| just for that. But the overall narrative I found to be
| pretty unconvincing.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's funny. Somehow I don't think the standard of evidence[RCTs]
| we get calls for in nutrition studies(for example), will be
| applied equally here. It's an epistemological double-standard
| that's rarely given serious consideration.
|
| I wouldn't give correlative studies much thought. It could be
| just as likely that people who were more anxious or depressed
| were found to be mobile phone users or any number of other things
| causing both anxiety and depression and increased mobile phone
| use. Critique of causal errors should be no different here than
| any other conclusion made from correlations.
| ouid wrote:
| Psychology is fundamentally not science. I don't mean to
| devalue it as a discipline, but it is incorrect to call it
| science for a pretty simple epistemological reason.
|
| Science depends upon the reproducibility of experiments. This
| means if I perform an experiment twice, then the second
| experiment (up to relativity) is done in the context of the
| experiment having already been done once, so the outcome of
| these experiments can be thought of as a fixed point of
| performing applying the have-done-the-experiment context (often
| with respect to all other experiments). Science is made up of
| these fixed points, which we can think of as the "set" of
| properties of the capital-W World.
|
| Fundamentally, however, what it means to observe the outcome of
| an experiment, is to be able to condition your behavior upon
| that outcome, so if _your own behavior_ is the thing that you
| are observing, there aren 't necessarily any fixed points of
| this process.
|
| This isn't merely a technicality either. For example: I measure
| that people experiencing insecurity about their performance are
| mostly pessimistic, and dub this phenomenon "impostor
| syndrome". I publish my results and, as a result, people assume
| that the insecurity they feel about their performance is
| explained by impostor syndrome, rather than being an honest
| evaluation of their performance. The next time I try to measure
| this phenomenon in the population, I might indeed find that
| it's the other way around, that people are optimistic about
| their performance, as a result of the previous experiment.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm straying a bit off topic, but while agree on some of the
| premises, I reach a different conclusion.
|
| I agree with you, and probably more broadly that studying
| systems which aren't fully isolatable is particularly
| challenging, but I think there is more than a single simple
| explanation for this. One we need to get out of the way is
| that there are things under the psychology umbrella that are
| science and ones that aren't and what is and isn't science
| isn't simply topic-based, it's approach-based.
|
| For example, reaction-time is a psychological measurement. Is
| reaction time scientific? I think that's an ill-posed
| question. It's, like you mentioned, an epistomological
| question: specifically an ontological question[1]. In the
| sense that reaction-time is measurable and largely repeatable
| with respect to specific stimulus, yes, measuring it and
| analyzing the results can be a step in the scientific path
| toward knowledge. I'd find it surprising if most people
| disagreed with this.
|
| Let's take a more difficult example, is behavioral psychology
| science? Again, an ill-posed question. Can we ask scientific
| question of behavioral psychology? Sure; Does the
| intervention of CBT in anxiety-diagnosed subjects (as opposed
| to a non-intervention control) result in lower post-treatment
| hospital admittance? That's a valid scientific question. Does
| it say anything about how CBT works? No. It relates a
| treatment to a result, and if we want to be more specific, a
| treatment at a point in time, for a specific group.
|
| Anticipating the test-retest issue you mentioned above, it's
| being loose with assumptions and isolation. These things can
| either be controlled for, or assumed. We should be honest
| with ourselves that far too many times, they haven't been in
| practice, but let's not conclude from that that psychology
| has an essential characteristic of not being scientific. It
| has a social problem instead.
|
| I think we can all be more transparent about assumptions,
| conditions, and generalization, but I think that's a benefit,
| not a disadvantage. It enables us to be more precise in our
| ideas, concepts, and language and that's a good thing.
|
| Specifically regarding the fixed-point framing. It's an
| assumption of time-invariance. I'm not exactly an expert on
| the philosophy of science, but I'd be surprised not to find
| stronger and weaker versions of that assumption and that's a
| reasonable thing to be transparent about when communicating
| validity.
|
| 1. As an aside, it's funny that "Is reaction time
| scientific?" is itself _not_ a scientific question.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| How do you propose to use RCTs to test the claim?
|
| As an aside, do you think that the data, not the hypothesis, is
| accurate (i.e., that mental health has declined in teens)?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > How do you propose to use RCTs to test the claim?
|
| I'm not proposing to use RCTs to test the claim. I'm
| proposing that the conclusions be scrutinized to the same
| degree we scruitinize other claims made without RCTs.
| Nutrition studies are a great example that get routinely
| criticized here because they also rarely backed by RCTs. I'm
| proposing the same standard of critique.
|
| > As an aside, do you think that the data, not the
| hypothesis, is accurate (i.e., that mental health has
| declined in teens)?
|
| I haven't seen the data nor the data collection methodology.
| Even so, there are basic concerns that relate to health and
| specifically mental health that we can ask.
|
| Did reporting standards remain consistent throughout the
| study period? If we assume they did, this assumption becomes
| "baked" into the conclusions. Assumptions don't merely vanish
| once we reach a conclusion.
|
| Secondly, mental health(/illness) is both an umbrella term
| and one subject to operationalization errors more than
| say(extending the analogy) weight is. We would be suspicious
| if a nutritional study measuring health outcomes relied on
| self-reported bodyweight. We should be equally suspicious
| when mental health studies rely on self-reporting. I'm not
| arguing here that we should instead fMRI subjects, just that
| having an appropriate level of self-reporting suspicion is
| healthy, rational, skepticism.
|
| Finally, unlike weight, measuring mental health has unique
| and different operationalization characteristics. The
| connection between weight and physical health, as far as we
| can both agree, has a different associative-conceptual
| connection than self-harm admittance and mental health. We
| should reasonably rule out basic alternative hypotheses. Were
| there factors (economic, social, institutional) that could
| explain(even partially) the change in admittance rates? Did
| admittance standards change during the timeframe? Even a
| beneficial change, like awareness-raising campaigns could
| result in increased admittence. See Logic's song
| "1-800-273-8255"[1] as a good reason hotline calls increased
| after it's release that is arguably a good thing rather than
| indicative of a negative effect.
|
| At the end of the day, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit
| left to explore. Coupled with the previously mentioned
| skepticism, I wouldn't exactly put my faith in this. Let's be
| mature and say that's different from saying it's wrong. We're
| all invested in finding out the exact nature of this
| phenomenon.
|
| 1. https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-
| healt...
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Well, it also has been a tough decade - global financial crisis,
| wars and flood of refugees, political turmoil partially as a
| result of these, worries about climate change. Social media
| certainly amplifies these news and makes it hard to ever unplug,
| but we could also use better news. As for progressive teens, well
| their ideology is getting some serious pushback worldwide, so
| that's one reason to get depressed. Another is that their
| ideology is degenerating into self hatred and catastrophizing. To
| be fair Florida is going in much the same direction about
| different things these days, so I expect conservative teens to
| get depressed as well.
| ipnon wrote:
| Before there were good times and bad times. The 40s saw the
| worst destruction imaginable, practically apocalyptic, while
| the 50s were all sunshine and automobiles (depending on who you
| ask of course). Now we live in a world of constant low level
| turmoil, never disrupting the flow of information and goods,
| but seemingly irresolvable too.
| em500 wrote:
| Pretty much every decade could be called tough. Post-WW II in
| the US we had:
|
| - 1950s: Civil Rights, Korean war, dawn of the Cold War
|
| - 1960s: Vietnam war, more Cold War
|
| - 1970s: stagflation (high unemployment + high inflation),
| Watergate, even more Cold War
|
| - 1980s: more stagflation, worries about AIDS, environment
| (ozone layer, acid rain), urban decay and crack epidemic, rise
| of Japan, Greed is Good
|
| - 1990s: amongst the more optimistic decades in the US, but
| there was still lingering AIDS anxiety, dim employment
| prospects for the over-educated coming off age ("Generation
| X"), domestic terrorism bracketed by Waco and Columbine High.
| Abroad there were the Rwanda and Yugoslavia wars.
|
| - 2000s: 9-11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial crisis
|
| And there's probably tons more anxiety inducing events in each
| decade that I forgot.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| This is true, times are always hard for those living in them.
| Life is hard, after all.
|
| Which lends credence to Haidt's suggestion that
| smartphones/widespread Internet is a primary factor. People
| tend to associate that with social media, which I would think
| is certainly part of it, but simply just being exposed to
| ideas can inculcate sympathetic ideas in people.
|
| All your friends are depressed? Hey, life is hard for me too,
| and I'm kinda sad, maybe I'm depressed too. It sounds trite,
| but people en masse do work that way.
|
| Social contagions were around before the Internet, but the
| Internet is an excellent medium for social contagions to grow
| quickly and spread widely.
| examplary_cable wrote:
| If this is true, then I believe it will unfortunately get worse.
| Given the curve of technological progress and social media trends
| and the overall turn humanity is going right now I believe the
| future is going to be increasing polarized in terms of happiness.
| Half of the popular will be extremely happy while the other half
| will be extremely depressed. Not exactly like this but the
| psychological well-being bell curve is going to get away from a
| normal distribution and become more distorted.
| sircastor wrote:
| I recall seeing commentary recently from mental health
| specialists that noted that young people are increasingly facing
| a sense of existential dread over climate change - that there's
| nothing they can do to stop it, and will feel the impact more
| heavily than previous generations.
|
| I wouldn't discount social media and related issues out of hand,
| but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a contributing factor. I
| understand there was a similar sentiment in the 70s and 80s where
| there was a certainty that nuclear war was going to happen.
| version_five wrote:
| Existential dread over climate change is a symptom, not a cause
| of mental health problems.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Why would this be? It is obvious the existentially
| complicated things create anxiety.
| majormajor wrote:
| Is that obvious? Or do the immediate, simple things - I
| have to see everyone at school tomorrow and they all think
| [something bad about me] - create anxiety more? I think
| it's probably easier to distract yourself from "ice is
| going to melt into the ocean and kill a bunch of people
| eventually" than from "people are having fun and didn't
| invite me RIGHT NOW"
| naasking wrote:
| Learned helplessness is a thing that leads to depression,
| and depression in turns demotivates and deepens sense of
| helplessness. They do mutually reinforce, and either
| could be the starting point.
| erfgh wrote:
| Where do you live where young people give a damn about the
| climate? I find this amazing.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| I'm a college professor in VT. They care a lot around here,
| anyway.
| ccity88 wrote:
| You don't just develop existential dread about climate change
| out of nowhere. First comes awareness, in this case the younger
| generation grew up being educated about climate change. Then
| you get exacerbation/increased attention - in this case social
| media and traditional media which have fuelled doomsday
| rhetoric and alarmism in general. Not to say that it isn't a
| big issue, it's massive; but doesn't help that we're feeding
| young minds with constant negative stimuli about how we're all
| going to die and there's nothing we can do about the problem.
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| The evolutionary purpose of dread is to motivate people to
| leave dangerous situations. When you hear about people
| surviving dangerous animal encounters, they tend to notice that
| something is "off" before they actually spot the hungry bear or
| mountain lion. Feeling dread for something you can't control is
| completely irrational, however. It's inevitable that you'll
| succumb to age related illness, so it's logical to be concerned
| about it to a certain extent, and it can be good to channel
| that into motivating you to be healthy. However, the fear of
| death is motivating you to doomscroll WebMD and causing pain in
| your daily life, you have a psychological problem. The same
| goes for human climate change. Unless if you live in a place
| like Micronesia, climate doomerism is a product of social media
| more than actual climate change.
| ouid wrote:
| Coming to the conclusion that there is nothing you can do
| serves no evolutionary purpose either. You should continue
| looking for an out as long as any possibility remains, no
| matter how remote.
| Aunche wrote:
| What gave you the impression that I think nothing can be
| done? You can drive less, eat less meat, vote for certain
| politicians etc. What's a waste of mental energy is
| worrying that everyone else is going to do the same thing.
| This is often counterproductive to the problem it's trying
| to solve, like Greta Thunberg inspiring millions of kids to
| skip school in the name of "raising awareness."
| jacooper wrote:
| And all of the things you just listed, do absolutely
| nothing compared to demonstrating against using oil and
| coal. Instead they just make your life worse, much more
| than it helps the environment. Virtue signaling if you
| will.
| Aunche wrote:
| >And all of the things you just listed, do absolutely
| nothing compared to demonstrating against using oil and
| coal
|
| Says who? What's the marginal reduction of CO2 for
| skipping a day of school in the name of climate change
| awareness?
| ouid wrote:
| What do you think mental energy is for? If none of those
| things seems like solutions to the existential threat,
| which, let's be honest, they don't. Then the problem is
| not yet solved.
|
| In any robust system, components are responsible for
| _more than just their own personal contribution_ to
| failure. There needs to be a certain amount of
| redundancy.
|
| Convincing other people to care more about climate
| change, and to be more willing to force society into
| common sacrifices for aggregate benefit takes a lot of
| footwork. It is not mental illness to participate in this
| process.
| Aunche wrote:
| > Convincing other people to care more about climate
| change, and to be more willing to force society into
| common sacrifices for aggregate benefit takes a lot of
| footwork.
|
| If they actually worked to make progress on this aspect,
| they would feel a sense of purpose rather than dread.
| Instead, what you're mostly seeing is virtue signalling
| that targets their own in-group and then being
| disappointed when that doesn't accomplish anything.
|
| Climate activists can learn a lot by looking at the Civil
| Rights movement in the past. Before the big wins, there
| were voting drives, legal challenges, and organized
| carpools to encourage participation in the bus protests.
| This costs a lot more energy than telling people to skip
| school on social media, but participation is also
| significantly more fulfilling.
| ipaddr wrote:
| There is a big divide between the young who think the world is
| over climate and the older who know better
| carimura wrote:
| now imagine spamming their phones with tik tok videos about the
| end of the world due to ____________. In your example, it's
| climate change. Maybe it's that, but it could also be that we
| can now mainline hours and hours of highly provocative content
| directly into a growing brain.
| stuaxo wrote:
| We grew up with the threat of nuclear destruction, as well as
| global warming, in the 1980s.
| evanmoran wrote:
| We did, but we didn't have endless short videos to scroll
| through.
| zamnos wrote:
| Yeah, instead we had our teachers reassure us that if we
| saw a nuclear explosion that we should hid under our
| desks and that would protect us. We ran drills practicing
| this, as if it were expected to happen any moment now.
|
| I agree with you that it's worse these days. Now, the
| kids practice active shooter drills. It turns out the
| USSR never did launch the missiles, but kids shooting up
| their school is so common it barely makes the news
| anymore.
| joenot443 wrote:
| The example you're referencing was mentioned in the
| article, and I think is part of the reason Haidt took the
| time to prove that this phenomenon is _not_ isolated to
| the US, and that US specific issues (like school
| shootings) are unlikely to have an effect elsewhere.
|
| > And it certainly can't be caused by the most popular
| theory we hear in the USA: school shootings and other
| stress-inducing events. Why would school shootings or
| active shooter drills implemented only in the USA lead to
| an immediate epidemic across the entire English-speaking
| world?
| carimura wrote:
| It surprises me that folks (presumably technical) regress
| to the "same thing as the old thing" logic. I'm not
| downplaying the end-of-times drama every generation
| surely went through, but whatever drill you can think of,
| it ended, and kids went home, and they most likely played
| outside. At worst they sat in front of the news which
| didn't have to compete with the Internet and YouTube thus
| was very different.
|
| Now? They go through a drill, leave, check their phone
| 4,000 times between that drill and dinner time which
| gives them a constant stream of a) the world is terrible,
| b) the other side is evil, c) your peers are all better
| looking, smarter, richer, and more popular than you.
| mantas wrote:
| Drills at least give you an action to do and a hope it
| will work out.
|
| Meanwhile global warming propaganda does neither. There's
| no easy to do action and no realistic hope it will be
| fixed.
| revelio wrote:
| Nuclear destruction wasn't the same in key ways:
|
| - It was only a possibility. You also knew the nukes might
| not launch, the world might not end.
|
| - If the nukes did launch, it wouldn't be due to a moral
| failure of your own.
|
| - Although you may sometimes have felt scared or depressed
| about the USSR and MAD, you weren't being constantly told
| by your society that optimism was illegitimate
| thoughtcrime.
|
| Climate doomerism is pretty much ideal for creating mental
| health issues. It tells adherents that they have no future
| outside of some hellscape, that it's all their own fault or
| maybe their parents fault, the root cause is moral failure,
| that maybe it can be stopped except SURPRISE no it can't
| really, and that any deviation from any of these beliefs
| makes you utterly evil and depraved, absolutely worth of
| immediate and total ex-communication from your friendship
| groups.
|
| Personally I think it's more likely to be the phones, but
| there are enough anecdotes about real young people whose
| thought processes around the future have been totally
| broken by climate propaganda, that it's worth taking
| seriously.
| Daishiman wrote:
| I have no idea what you mean by "climate propaganda".
|
| I just lived in a place that experienced 8 consecutive
| heat waves that shattered all known records in the area
| and which will destroy the regional economic livelihood.
|
| A totally unprecedented event, which we know with quite a
| bit of certainty will begin to occur frequently.
|
| I have no idea how you expect polite society to accept
| that without distress.
| [deleted]
| dumbaccount123 wrote:
| I care more about hypergamy and dying alone than climate change
| as a young person.
| tempsy wrote:
| No you read that from a "some experts are saying" article.
| [deleted]
| bentt wrote:
| I would like to see this conversation turn from "Did phones cause
| these problems" to "Here's exactly how phones caused these
| problems". There are many ways to use technology, some better
| than others. We need literacy in these areas for both parents and
| children, and things are moving so fast, it's the companies that
| are getting to write the rules, not the culture. It's time for
| the culture to push back but we need to know how, specifically,
| the harm is being caused.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| First though, we need to establish with enough certainty that
| whatever we are doing with phones is indeed the main culprit. I
| don't find it hard to believe to be honest, but we need
| something a bit more solid that this one correlation.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's a multipart series, I'm hopeful the evidence will be
| presented in the next parts.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If it is phones, we'd have to have different experiments to
| investigate different possible methods of action. Is the
| content being consumed, is it something related to lack of
| physical interaction, is the anonymity promoting more
| hostility, etc.
| jl6 wrote:
| If we take the approach of not overthinking it, we might notice
| that many of these mental illnesses feature dissociation, and
| what does an iPhone do if not dissociate you from your physical
| being?
|
| Teenagers (and younger) in their formative years are pouring a
| significant part of their lives into virtual environments and
| identities. Their digital lives are literally disconnected from
| their physical lives. Their sense of self is tied up in a
| system that has completely different rules and exists in some
| nebulous otherworld.
|
| The physical basis for being is deprioritized and a new way of
| being is sitting uncomfortably alongside it.
|
| Why doesn't this affect everyone the same way? Some people are
| able to keep a lid on it, and reintegrate their iPhone lives
| into their real lives. Some people are not.
| [deleted]
| scohesc wrote:
| I can relate - in my late 20's and spent my teens and most of
| my early 20's online-only, just going outside long enough to
| go to college courses for IT.
|
| I don't really know who I am as a person because I spent all
| my time online and not spending a lot of time with people.
| Not developing as a person, not realizing who I am and what I
| want to be. No social skills, etc.
|
| Is it some kind of ego-death or personality-death? If not
| death, then something that hadn't been developed and is now
| far out of my grasp as my brain cements itself as I head into
| my 30's?
|
| It sucks and I constantly remind myself of it, but maybe
| there's hope for the younger generations now that we've lived
| through the early stages of social media and know how it can
| harm the younger ones.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Not entirely scientific, but I am sure you know many parents
| with kids. Mentally split them into 2 groups - those who let
| digital and social entertainment run free so they don't have to
| raise kids because its annoying and hard for them (any fool
| claiming raising kids today isn't hard didn't actually raise
| his/her kids) and those who often painstakingly severely
| limit/block screen time.
|
| My friend, I can tell you from my personal perspective that the
| difference is staggering and very consistent. Anybody I ever
| talked about this shared same opinion. So there you have it,
| some opinions.
|
| I want more specifics too, it would help tremendously to fight
| against it compared to 'technology=bad', but we still have no
| fucking clue how our brain works, how our personalities form
| etc. Without time machine, I don't think we get much further in
| this century (nor millennium). Just bunch of theories, some
| wilder than others, with variable amount of proofs out there in
| the wild. While people often can't have rational debate about
| basic aspects of life.
| joshlemer wrote:
| In your first paragraph you say that there is a huge
| difference but don't say what those differences are, which
| approach is better and what are the differences?
| amilios wrote:
| (Seemingly) Inevitable climate change and ecological destruction,
| growing income inequality and falling standards of living, a
| deathly pandemic that's still killing people while we pretend
| everything is back to normal (+ long covid probably bringing
| about a disability crisis in 3-5 years), increasing tensions
| between various nuclear-capable states (Russia, China) and the
| West, changes in the age distribution in most western states
| meaning that most young people will probably work until they die
| (retirement? lol) etc. etc.
|
| This is a multi-faceted issue and let's face it, part of the
| problem is that the world is just getting depressing as hell for
| young people who see less and less of a future for themselves.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the world is just getting depressing as hell for young people
| who see less and less of a future for themselves
|
| I heard exactly the same thing in the 1970s.
| amilios wrote:
| Compare housing costs in the 1970s vs now.
| leftareanimals wrote:
| [dead]
| deepsun wrote:
| > less and less of a future
|
| Everything is relative. My grandfather's biggest dream was to
| live in a city, that's it. Now young people dream (and envy) of
| way more.
|
| So I'd say there's more and more future for youth. They can
| afford, at least once in one's life: travel abroad, snow
| skiing, parachuting, going to a restaurant. It's just baseline
| jumped.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Living in a cosmopolitan city is a pretty unrealistic dream
| for many people now that housing prices have gone off the
| charts.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| The disconnect might be wasting young peoples lives having
| them spend hours looking at influencers, reminding them of
| all the ways they might die from things, and keeping them
| busy scrolling and up on the latest trends of today.
|
| When you stop paying attention to the deluge of alerts and
| articles, you can focus on your own tasks and get to
| experience some neat stuff and wonderful people in this
| world.
| tayo42 wrote:
| My grandparent's traveled the world and the US. Bought a big
| house and well obviously had a family.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| How do we fix this complete disconnect from reality? I guess in
| the same vein how did they get such a incorrect view of the
| world state in the first place?
| revelio wrote:
| Teenagers are impressionable and exist in an environment
| where they aren't allowed to seriously disagree with their
| teachers. They're also under huge pressure to conform to what
| seems popular.
|
| A lot of unrealistic climate doomerism is however created by
| adults. Even climatologists are now realizing they've badly
| overdone it, but of course the monster they created just
| turns on them when they try to restrain it. See the fun Zeke
| Hausfather has been having lately with being called a climate
| denier.
|
| For teenagers to get restored perspective and realize the
| future isn't going to end, and will in fact be pretty
| awesome, it is required first that their parents give up the
| doomer beliefs too. And that in turn requires people to get
| skeptical, to start seriously pushing back on those who tell
| people to never think for themselves. It's a hard social
| problem that goes well beyond teenagers.
| ttt3ts wrote:
| Or the world has always had issues and the lense through which
| we now view the world is an everpresent fear coaster.
|
| Step away from the news & social media for a few months. You
| can't effect the outcome anyway and you might find you're
| happier.
| mxkopy wrote:
| This is really easy to say for someone who doesn't experience
| these issues firsthand. Not reading the news isn't going to
| make your existential anxiety go away if you or your parents
| give it to you, either by helicoptering or living paycheck to
| paycheck.
|
| Also, you really don't think that, in between building
| aqueducts and nuclear missiles, nothing has changed? You
| really think we have the same problems today as we did N
| years ago?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Relative, not an absence.
|
| History and geography.
|
| We can look back at history and say that there are times
| that are worse than now. For example, the second world war
| was worse than now. Cuban missile crisis also.
|
| We can look at other countries and see that being in Syria
| or Ukraine right now is worse than in my more peaceful
| country.
|
| By looking this way we literally gain new perspectives.
| Perhaps part of today's crisis is one of perspective maybe
| the internet narrows our vision.
| mxkopy wrote:
| I don't know which reductionist framework you're working
| with to make these comparisons, but they're wrong,
| because they're reductionist. Some people like war, maybe
| things were awesome for them? Not to mention that humans
| are very social creatures. You can't just say 'medicine
| is better', 'crime is down' and neglect the
| erosion/transmogrification of every single social
| institution that has been around for XYZ decades just
| because there isn't a number or well-defined historical
| analysis associated with it.
|
| I'll put it this way. We know exactly what happens when
| wars are started. We know very little about the effects
| of having an attention economy. For every thing you can
| give me that we know has changed for the better, I can
| give you another thing that's changed probably for the
| worse but we really have no clue. If people are living
| longer, more miserable lives, is that really an
| improvement?
| irq wrote:
| Ignorance is indeed bliss, right up until they're at your
| door. I like to have advance warning.
| ttt3ts wrote:
| So you can? (serious question not sarcastic)
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| Well, if you had completely ignored the news circa Feb
| 2020, you would have had an unpleasant shock when you ran
| out of toilet paper and tried to buy more.
|
| Forewarned is forearmed.
| yayr wrote:
| to contribute to the architecture of solutions is hard
| indeed... However, to contribute small everyone in most
| countries can, simply by choosing what and how to consume
| and by voting, wherever that is possible
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Isn't it the opposite? For all those topics with even a bit
| of research they are not even close to as concerning as the
| media presents it as. If people were more informed they'd
| have less issue it's this weird in-between state where they
| know about the issue but don't know enough to understand
| it's not really that big of a deal.
| thaw13579 wrote:
| Agreed the world has always had problems, but it feels more
| like a megaphone than a lens these days (found not only
| online, but also at work, school, and among friends). These
| problems also eventually reach people's doorsteps where they
| cannot be ignored by disconnecting from social media or
| socially isolating.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| If long covid was real it would have happened already. I had
| covid a year and a half ago, and am fine as is everyone I know
| (who have almost all had it at some point). At some point it's
| the flip side of the vaccine side effects that antivaxxers keep
| insisting will emerge at some point
| andreyk wrote:
| World events and economy aside, there are also clear trends
| with teenagers (and people as a whole) having fewer close
| friends than ever - loneliness is more common than ever. Our
| culture and society as a whole is declining in its ability to
| foster community and friendship, which really is deadly in its
| own way.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Imagine that: a culture that promotes individualism and the
| pursuit of profit over all else leads to a generation of
| people with few close friends and lots of loneliness and
| stress.
| orangecat wrote:
| Yes, switching to capitalism in 2012 was clearly a mistake.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| The increasing lonliness trend has been going on much
| longer than that, things are just coming to a head as it
| becomes more and more obvious that kids were sold a
| future that isn't going to happen. Real wages continue to
| fall while corporations make record profits and get
| bailed out when they fuck up, a college education just
| saddles you with debt and a job as a barista, housing
| prices are completely insane, and the consistent
| messaging is that this is all your fault for not working
| hard enough somehow.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _... loneliness is more common than ever._
|
| But it's also _very_ profitable if you 're the advertising
| delivery system, or somewhere sucking money off that
| pipeline, because you can convince lonely people to spend
| money to buy things that might help with that!
|
| The whole "isolated, atomic person, only interfacing with the
| world through a screen, with every interaction intermediated
| by for-profit tech companies providing a service for a fee"
| model is _very_ profitable. It 's just horrid for everyone
| who's nothing more than a wallet and set of eyeballs to be
| tapped for as much as they're worth, then given loans to keep
| consuming.
|
| I _utterly hate_ the characterization of people as
| "consumers" these days - I'm trying to be more deliberate
| about using "citizen" or something along those lines. There's
| more to life than consuming as many "consumer goods" as
| possible.
|
| Unfortunately, the wealthy end of the tech industry makes
| their money from this sort of social destruction, and so I
| don't expect many changes while people are still willing to
| pay for the chains of their cell phone. Fortunately, I think
| that's changing.
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