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Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

economist.com

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Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#51

Post by throwaway413 »

watwut wrote: post #46
throwaway413 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We moved to a new city. I work full time (from home) as a SWE. She is a stay at home mom. She met new people on IG in our new city, made friends. I thought it was great. My wife has a hole deep inside her from years of childhood abuse. She has no career, is early 20s like myself, and has yet to figure herself out. As the months went by, she filled that hole more and more with her connections on IG and less with our f…

A lot of it has a lot to do with what it is like to be stay at home and being socially isolated, imo. The problem would exist without IG still, it would just manifest differently. They could be real life friends and it could be exactly the same thing. When one of you is at home and the other most of the time at work and both of you have completely different lifestyle, the relationship with people who understand you a…

You’re right. I need to just stop paying her bills. I’m worried she’s going to get nastier and keep my child from me out of spite.

And I hear you, but - I work from home. When I said “come home from work” I just meant it like...end of the day. I don’t know why I still use that phrase. Sometimes I go work at coffee shops or something, so then I’ll come home. Sure maybe I’m not as present, since I am working, but she has it so much better than so many others out there..

I’ve worked from home for years. She’s had me home. I help with our child. I cooked dinner. I did the chores. It wasn’t like she was even the only stay at home parent...

I haven’t gotten divorced yet because I hold onto that vision of her coming back and begging for forgiveness. But I should know that’s not going to happen. And even if it did, after all this, idk if I could even take her back. I should probably just file...

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#52

Post by epx »

throwaway413 wrote: post #43
rndgermandude wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, just wow. What about the kid or kids? If she got IG addicted to the point that she didn't even mind you leaving her...

Yeah I mean she wants max free time so lucky me, I get 5 evenings a week with my child and weekends. Basically a free babysitter at this point while I work. The funny thing is that the IG clique she’s in is ALL stay at home moms...being a mother is a big part of their identity. The irony that they are all completely not present in their realities with their children is totally lost on them. You really couldn’t write…

I'd have taken custody of my kid the next day she said "polyamorous".

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#53

Post by johndoe489 »

timthelion wrote: post #19

I believe that social media is a symptom, not the cause, of the great loneliness that our modern aloneness has caused. We are alone much of the time, especially in American suburbia. Even when we are in the city filled with people, these people are just blank faces whom we do not know. We are seeking any form of connection that we can get. And when the only connection to others that we have is through the computer, w…

> and I'd be confused, why people were laughing and interacting without words. It was a while till I realized that they were chatting on IRC.

Call me oldschool.. I'm just 43 and I still have that split second confusion every time I see someone speak aloud in the metro or tram here with their glassy stare, looking in front of them, while speaking to apparently no one. Every god damn time I'm like "(0.3 seconds) OH..."

But am I not wrong. I don't need to "understand" anything. My body is that through which I know myself and everything else. All of what we call "reality" is experienced through, and as, a body.

If anything technology should honor, and augment that instead of dissociating us.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#54

Post by timthelion »

taway_1212 wrote: post #50
timthelion wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I hate consumerism, I wonder why you say that it has caused our loneliness. Wouldn't it be possible to buy large numbers of board games, and other social goods while not becoming isolated? It actually seems to me that consumption is for the most part social. I mean, if I spend all day at home on reddit, what do I need to buy besides cereal and soylent powder? But if I'm going out all the time, I'll buy clothing…

Consumerism requires very high prioritisation of one’s career (as otherwise you won’t be able to afford all the nice stuff), which means working very hard, moving around the country/world for better jobs etc. This must come at the cost of friendships and family bonds.

I believe that it is actually unhappiness and loneliness which are the drivers of consumerism and not the other way around. I believe that happy people are lazy and I think that is why western civilization has outstripped the others. I think, that since our social bonds have been destroyed, we work hard to try to seek happiness that the other civilizations already have. And then our civilization spreads, like a disease, infecting other civilizations and making them unhappy and hardworking as well.

I think that this is a relatively new phenomena, which occurred during the urbanization caused by the industrial revolution. Urbanization caused social bonds to be broken, and people became unhappy and hard working.

There is a super creepy tshirt from one startup I know, which has the text "the pyramids were not built by happy people". I've always wanted to ask them about what this means. But I've never had the nerve.

But it has always haunted me.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#55

Post by timthelion »

johndoe489 wrote: post #53
timthelion wrote: post #19

I believe that social media is a symptom, not the cause, of the great loneliness that our modern aloneness has caused. We are alone much of the time, especially in American suburbia. Even when we are in the city filled with people, these people are just blank faces whom we do not know. We are seeking any form of connection that we can get. And when the only connection to others that we have is through the computer, w…

> and I'd be confused, why people were laughing and interacting without words. It was a while till I realized that they were chatting on IRC. Call me oldschool.. I'm just 43 and I still have that split second confusion every time I see someone speak aloud in the metro or tram here with their glassy stare, looking in front of them, while speaking to apparently no one. Every god damn time I'm like "(0.3 seconds) OH..."…

That's a bit of a culture shock for me. Because talking on a cell phone is taboo in the Prague mass transport system. People will occasionally have a short and apologetically whispered phone call, but if you talk out loud old people will stare at you angrily and may even psht.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#56

Post by bernardino »

genericacct wrote: post #5

As opposed to growing more anxious and depressed due to television watching?

You're right, also television! But also other things. Which makes me think of the products that I use that are algorithmically built for addictiveness - not to say all products are initially built with the intention of being addictive, but products gradually become so and a company then unethically pushes new features that will further the addictiveness since that keeps the user coming back/on the product. An example of the latter is Netflix or Spotify. Netflix, last time I checked, now auto plays previews of shows on the main page - a way to get the user to be intrigued, stay on the product, and keep watching more shows. Spotify, while a revolutionary product, I find is addictive - millions of songs a user has yet to listen to? Well, then that is more of a reason for the user to plunge into two hours of music searching and while the user is at it, why not create a playlist for every occasion that might occur.

The latter two examples being poor examples, but yet, there are products/services all around us which manipulate our mind. I have always been keen on building something, a product or service, something morally and ethically just - no advertisements, no gimmicks, etc. I.e. Spotify should have a optional pop-message say: "You have been listening to music for five hours. You should let your ears rest and make some pumpkin pie." Or from Netflix: "You have just watched the entire season of two shows. You should really go lay under a tree in a park and eat some grapes." Again, the latter two examples are not likely, they are dream-like features but this is what I dictate to be a movement towards more healthy products/services to which we need.

In modern day, we must then be extra aware of what we consciously consume and put in our head day in and day out in our everyday life. We might even decipher if this is what we want to consume, if it is healthy, if it is the way we want to lead our lives. The latter being an approach I took to deciding to stop: watching, reading, and listening to the news, bookmarking countless of articles I find (Pocket, the bookmarking saving tool, is particularly overwhelming), sticking to just a few websites I regularly visit, not using/having any social media account, etc.

Above all, I'll finish this comment off with two of my favorite quotes and a video about everyday virtue that I think is appropriate in regard to the article and something teenagers should come to know:

Thomas Merton: "The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.”

Andrei Tarkovsky from Sculpting in Time: “Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”

Everyday Virtue, an analysis of the independent film Paterson with support from ideas of David Foster Wallace (it's about awareness, normal and ordinary everyday life, etc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnGvWTRQ9j4

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#57

Post by heymijo »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #28
enord wrote: post #10

Did this trend start with social media? We are doing lots of stuff to teenagers these days that we didnt do before. They are beholden to expectations far narrower than we were. We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age, yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties. Soc…

> We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age Really? I feel like even in college students don't always feel like they are responsible for their own performance & grades (and an honest one at that). Look at all the cheating and grade inflation and grading complaints (even by parents!!) that have gone towards becoming the…

Julie Lythcott-Haims was a former Stanford Dean responsible for incoming freshmen students. From that position she likely collected many more data points than any of us on this topic, which led her to write a book called How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success [0]. I have not read the book but heard her on a podcast a few years back.

This article has some key points in it that address the comments in this thread [1].

Excerpt:

"Working with the quote-unquote best and brightest, I was seeing more and more [students] who seemed less and less capable of doing the stuff of life. They were incredibly accomplished in the transcript and GPA sense but less with their own selves, evidenced by how frequently they communicated with a parent, texting multiple times a day, needing a parent to tell them what to do."

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OO2LJS2/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-murphy-jr/want-to-raise-...?

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#58

Post by stijnh »

throwaway413 wrote: post #16
PuffinBlue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on this? I don't really understand how x lead to y as i don't have much idea about social media addiction at all or its effects.

We moved to a new city. I work full time (from home) as a SWE. She is a stay at home mom. She met new people on IG in our new city, made friends. I thought it was great. My wife has a hole deep inside her from years of childhood abuse. She has no career, is early 20s like myself, and has yet to figure herself out. As the months went by, she filled that hole more and more with her connections on IG and less with our f…

> Meanwhile I’m paying about ~$4k a month in just rent and car bills for her. Not including anything else.

You are contributing to her horrific lifestyle. You need to cut everything off. There is no other way to save her and yourself.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#59

Post by throwaway413 »

stijnh wrote: post #58
throwaway413 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We moved to a new city. I work full time (from home) as a SWE. She is a stay at home mom. She met new people on IG in our new city, made friends. I thought it was great. My wife has a hole deep inside her from years of childhood abuse. She has no career, is early 20s like myself, and has yet to figure herself out. As the months went by, she filled that hole more and more with her connections on IG and less with our f…

> Meanwhile I’m paying about ~$4k a month in just rent and car bills for her. Not including anything else. You are contributing to her horrific lifestyle. You need to cut everything off. There is no other way to save her and yourself.

You’re right. I’m an enabler. Hard reality to face. Thank you.

Its hard to effectively choose for someone you care so deeply about, to suffer. Even if they need it badly.

Re: Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

#60

Post by eternalban »

epx wrote: post #52
throwaway413 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I mean she wants max free time so lucky me, I get 5 evenings a week with my child and weekends. Basically a free babysitter at this point while I work. The funny thing is that the IG clique she’s in is ALL stay at home moms...being a mother is a big part of their identity. The irony that they are all completely not present in their realities with their children is totally lost on them. You really couldn’t write…

I'd have taken custody of my kid the next day she said "polyamorous".

How much does an initial consultation with an attorney cost? Likely less than 4K, I would assume.

I would think (not sure) that one significant contributing factor in psychological harm to children in context of divorce is the undermining of notions of love, loyalty. And I would think being front row observers of instability in human relations is also damaging to young ones.

~

My sincere condolences to OP regarding this awful situation, but please consider if continuing this situation will in fact have the same (if not worse) adverse effects on your little loved ones as a divorce.

You also mentioned your so-called-wife has broken relations with her parents. What about your parents? It is critically important that FAMILY love, fealty, support is demonstrated to your children.

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