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With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

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Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#391

Post by ben_w »

peoplewindow wrote: post #365
ben_w wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started looking seriously about 5 months ago. I moved back to the UK one month ago. And, hard as moving is, I see no future for me in the UK, only a dead parent.

I hate to point this out, but Germany's government collapsed last year essentially because there's no consensus there for Merkle's ultra-pro-EU ultra-pro-migrant policies. She's still struggling to form a coalition months later. This is by far the longest German government collapse in history. So if you think Germany is going to be radically different to the UK, I would suggest thinking again. Anti EU sentiment is ri…

There are several important things here:

1) All the main German federal parties support the EU.

2) The migration concerns are about asylum seekers rather than EU citizens, because (as I have discovered by trying) German bureaucracy is effective at keeping out speculative job seekers like me.

3) The UK government keeps passing surveillance laws which violate the UK implementation of the European declaration of human rights, and I don’t like that the UK will start getting away with it after they leave the relevant jurisdiction.

4) The UK government has no agreement amongst its own ministers about the strategic goals for Brexit, let alone figured out the relative costs and benefits of different ways to approach it, let alone made preparations for it.

I don’t mean small things either, May said the UK would leave the Customs Union but the Treasury doesn’t want to and nobody has even submitted planning permission for building new customs inspections points.

3 and 4 are the big problems for me. Personally staying in the EU is merely desirable, not Earth-shatteringly vital.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#392

Post by sotojuan »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #347
lsc wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, even having a handful of very wealthy friends can eventually lead to feelings of envy. I.. huh. I really don't get this. Maybe it is because I am doing better than I thought I was going to for the first half of my life? or maybe I'm just less jealous than most people? but yeah, there are a few people I follow who you could say I am envious of; people who are super successful in all the ways I want to be succes…

Perhaps there's a difference if you meet someone who is already successful or who's past accomplishments you admire versus that idiot in high school who barely passed chemistry by cheating off your answers, exibited the worst of the sexist jock/bro mentality, skated by on his good looks and is now driving a lambo and married to a supermodel.

I can't understand why someone over 25 that has a decent career (assuming you are a programmer since it's HN) would still care about what some chad from high school is doing. Worrying about how "unfair" life is is an energy and time black hole.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#393

Post by ck425 »

lsc wrote: post #67

Tuesday, this was the theme at my toastmaster's debate club[1] - I got stuck arguing that social media doesn't make you depressed. And... my problem with my argument wasn't that it was untrue, but that it was kinda mean. I don't feel jealous of the lives of almost anyone I went to high school with; quite the opposite. A lot of them post "racist memes with spelling mistakes" - which is sad on many levels; If nothing e…

Note that the article is on teens, an age group where as a general rule everyone is super hormonal and therefore emotionally changable and hyper aware of social status.

You're trying to look at this through the eyes of an adult, presumably one with a reasonably good career judging by other comments you've made.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#394

Post by jp555 »

abritinthebay wrote: post #251
jp555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“And nihilism isn't a bad thing.“ Becoming unwilling to manifest any faith in anything at all is absolutely a bad thing.

That... is not what Nihilism is though? I mean someone who is a nihilist might think that but it’s not a logical consequence of, or foundational feature of, nihilism.

Humans focus on what they look at, compounding into a perspective, belief, and actions.

You can’t work to think nothing is of any consequence and simultaneously work to build anything of value (family, friendships, business, intellect, etc). Nihilism is the abolishment of value systems. Nothing matters. Building things of value requires a system to evaluate value.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#395

Post by jrs95 »

abritinthebay wrote: post #285
jrs95 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of is, though. Nietzsche in particular didn't actually portray nihilism as a good thing, but just an inevitable stage in human development, which could be either very good or very bad depending on what kind of values system (if any) arose from that nihilism. There are in my opinion some similarities between the direction we're heading and what he called "The Last Man", which was basically the worst possible o…

There is more - a lot more - to nihilism than Nietzsche.

Of course there is. I was just trying to point out that the views on it, even from the perspective of nihilists, isn’t necessarily that nihilism is a “good thing”.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#396

Post by KozmoNau7 »

duskwuff wrote: post #346
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically cut out Reddit entirely. Subreddits quickly end up being insular groupthink echo chambers, thanks to the voting system and biased moderators. The noise:content ratio is simply skewed way towards pointless noise. It's not worth it.

I've found that Reddit improves dramatically as you move away from the huge default subreddits and into smaller, more focused subs -- for hobbies you're involved in, for instance. For that sort of thing it's not half bad.

I never visited the huge default subreddits, I stuck to the niche subjects, like audiophilia, underground metal and the like.

It was all shit.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#397

Post by whatshisface »

madaxe_again wrote: post #366
lsc wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reason is simple - if you make others feel inferior, by being better at anything in any way than them, they hate and envy you. If that were true, the sports stars would not have been popular

I think the difference is that everybody believes that they too could be a sports star, in the same way as everybody believes that they too will one day be rich - whereas intellect is a rather fixed quantity - so point taken, I was overly broad.

Physical prowess is probably just as limited as intelligence, although our culture definitely associates strength with the gym and smarts with being born that way (although both traits will be equally useless if not developed by training).

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#398

Post by gaius »

MIKarlsen wrote: post #25
deckard1 wrote: post #12

They did a study using Facebook. But I'm more curious about Instagram. "Look at all these rich beautiful people with millions of followers sailing around the world on their yachts." Ten minutes on Instagram is enough to fill any sane person with existential dread and bring about severe depression.

Not as much as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a fairytale-land for adults, and it's bizzare (to me) that anyone wants to participate. It's not even humblebragging anymore. It's "Look what I made, and what I achieved" packed into casual "Oh this thing? Yeah it's just my perfect life"-packages...

It’s amazing how many people have a “Senior” prefix that I don’t remember from when I worked with them... or are claiming sole responsibility for a team or even a different team’s project... There is also a trick used by people who attended college but never graduated, list the years and the subject and leave the reader to fill in the blanks, not technically lying but...

The average LinkedIn profile is just if not more fictitious than Facebook. And everyone knows it but plays along anyway.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#399

Post by Razengan »

abusoufiyan wrote: post #337
Razengan wrote: post #164

I think the "likely culprit" is, as it has always been, just the "human condition." The coming into an unknown world, ignorant of everything, constantly reconciling conflicting ideas, nagged by a sense of ultimate pointlessness, and the dread of inevitable mortality. However we may try to pooh-pooh these things away, they've been an incurable source of unhappiness since time immemorial. Humans cannot be truly happy u…

>Humans cannot be truly happy unless we keep ourselves seriously deluded or constantly distracted; with biosocial emotions, religion, duty, hope, ambition, goals, pleasure or whatever. Typical internet denizen idea of humanity. Religious people are not all deluding themselves into happiness. Quite a lot of them find religion to be a framework with comes with its own sources of existential dread. Emotions are a delusi…

Almost all of the things that drive us and govern our lives are based entirely on the approval of other humans or our biological needs; the approval of our parents, peer pressure, love, sex, academic grades, job, income, social/political/professional standing, or religion and the idea of deities, and even the worth/value of our contribution to society..

Would any of these matter at all to a different intelligent species? Say, a hypothetical species without any gender. Poof. More than half of human values and aspirations become meaningless.

"Happiness" that is to last for more than a fleeting moment depends entirely on what we choose to believe. That is some pretty flimsy grounds.

Re: With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit

#400

Post by Razengan »

spuz wrote: post #376
Razengan wrote: post #164

I think the "likely culprit" is, as it has always been, just the "human condition." The coming into an unknown world, ignorant of everything, constantly reconciling conflicting ideas, nagged by a sense of ultimate pointlessness, and the dread of inevitable mortality. However we may try to pooh-pooh these things away, they've been an incurable source of unhappiness since time immemorial. Humans cannot be truly happy u…

That may be the underlying cause of some suicides but it doesn't explain why depression and suicides have increased for teenagers in the last 5 years. Also, if we need distraction to survive the ultimate meaninglessness of life as you claim then why would technology make depression worse instead of better?

> why would technology make depression worse instead of better?

I can only speak for myself, of course, and in my case, the ever increasing access to information and social contacts, actually eliminates the hope of finding any large-scale meaning in this world, ever-so-gradually, when you keep failing to see any point no matter what you learn and who you meet.

Not exactly depression, maybe it falls under nihilism, but.. Everything just is, and it doesn't ultimately matter what you do.

I suspect that even if I had a starship capable of traveling to other worlds, and a long enough lifespan to see them all, I'd still find everything ultimately pointless.

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