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No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

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Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#41

Post by toomuchtodo »

tomjen3 wrote: post #33
woolion wrote: post #17

The logic here is absolutely astounding. People _killing themselves_ is not an indicator that life is worse? What is it an indicator of, Mr Levitz? Are they unable to tolerate so much happiness? Are these people dumb? Defective? Arguing that life is objectively better because you are going to make a better salary than in the fifties is plain gaslighting, but I don't believe there are a lot of people who will still fa…

It could be an indicator that people are less able to cope, and there is some really good causal evidence that social media causes anxiety in young girls.

Fortitude and coping skills are learned through adversity (sometimes with the help of parents or a therapist, most often with a lot of hopefully lower cost failure), but suffering you cannot grow from is unnecessary and not of value. With that said, social media is an unnecessary toxin children and teens are exposed to. You wouldn’t let them bathe in PFAS, and social media is similar: ubiquitous but also toxic with extended exposure.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#42

Post by banannaise »

rayiner wrote: post #5

> [Lorenz] went on to suggest that the young people of the 1950s enjoyed objectively superior material prospects than young people do today This is why I think culture is more important than policy. Lorenz’s point is obviously non-sensical. She mentions the “safety net.” But Medicaid didn’t exist in the 1950s. There were no federal student loans. There were no food stamps. Almost nobody went to college. Etc. But it’s…

> We have eliminated social roles and duties and obligations that used to apply to young people. In many cases we have replaced those personal obligations (e.g. to take care of elders) with abstract government funded systems. And maybe those changes aren’t all conducive to the well being of young people.

Wait, are you trying to say that kids these days don't work hard enough?

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#43

Post by Dalewyn »

jackson1442 wrote: post #12
green_man_lives wrote: post #6

Article spends entire time "debunking" a political pundit who posts "hot takes" on Twitter, doesn't interview a single teen. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is multi-faceted. Maybe we should take the things kids say at face value if we want to pretend that we are being intellectually honest. Sure, humans are notoriously bad at describing their own qualia and reasons for why they feel the things they do, but listening s…

> see what the negative externalities are of a system that assumes the driving force between human interactions to be economic (one of which is the commodification of everything including relationships) Absolutely agreed. We've gone from a community-based culture where you took care of your neighbors because it's the right thing to do to "rugged individualism" where things like healthcare are "privileges" you have to…

Being a good neighbor is a fundamental part of being a man of good character and maintaining a working society.

Taking care of a neighbor is none of my business because other peoples' lives are none of my business.

Being a good neighbor and taking care of a neighbor are two very different things.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#44

Post by giraffe_lady »

braingenious wrote: post #15

From the article: >Lorenz isn’t wrong to suggest that economic conditions can influence the prevalence of mental distress. Unemployment and poverty are both major risk factors for depression. Recessions are associated with elevated rates of suicide. And there is some evidence that robust social-welfare states improve mental health by reducing material insecurity. It is therefore reasonable to suspect that America’s r…

Yeah I cackled. Quite literally the skinner "am I out of touch" / "no it's the children who are wrong" meme.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#45

Post by hot_gril »

scotty79 wrote: post #8
rayiner wrote: post #5

> [Lorenz] went on to suggest that the young people of the 1950s enjoyed objectively superior material prospects than young people do today This is why I think culture is more important than policy. Lorenz’s point is obviously non-sensical. She mentions the “safety net.” But Medicaid didn’t exist in the 1950s. There were no federal student loans. There were no food stamps. Almost nobody went to college. Etc. But it’s…

> So what has changed since the 1950s? Trajectory of how well off average American will be in x years?

This phenomenon is probably not unique to the USA.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#46

Post by marcinzm »

rayiner wrote: post #5

> [Lorenz] went on to suggest that the young people of the 1950s enjoyed objectively superior material prospects than young people do today This is why I think culture is more important than policy. Lorenz’s point is obviously non-sensical. She mentions the “safety net.” But Medicaid didn’t exist in the 1950s. There were no federal student loans. There were no food stamps. Almost nobody went to college. Etc. But it’s…

> So what has changed since the 1950s?

Income inequality has increased greatly from it's low in the 1950s. This means more people make less than X% of the median wage.

Housing has become much more expensive versus average wages.

Minimum wage has not increased with inflation.

Fallback jobs that require little training and can be done by most people have become fewer and fewer. The remaining jobs have less of a path upwards.

The top Federal tax bracket was 90% in the 1950s and it's under 40% now.

Etc. etc.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#47

Post by majormajor »

rayiner wrote: post #5

> [Lorenz] went on to suggest that the young people of the 1950s enjoyed objectively superior material prospects than young people do today This is why I think culture is more important than policy. Lorenz’s point is obviously non-sensical. She mentions the “safety net.” But Medicaid didn’t exist in the 1950s. There were no federal student loans. There were no food stamps. Almost nobody went to college. Etc. But it’s…

I wouldn't call most of what you're talking about "cultural" I'd put it down to relativity and zero-sum (to most players) rat-races.

No medicaid; but also health care was far simpler and cheaper. That meant some died, yes, but less of a constant weight of "because I don't have a better job I won't be protected like those higher income people are."

No student loans; less need for them. Almost nobody went to college - but they got jobs anyway.

Not having to take out a bunch of debt to go to college to do a job that doesn't require specialized knowledge is a materially better prospect even in a pure economic sense than having to do a bunch more work to get a mostly-unrelated credential for squarely-lower-middle-to-middle-class-jobs. It's simply lower personal cost.

You had much lower costs because the frontier was much more accessible and growing cheaply, too. Fewer people in the country. More un- or barely-developed land in growing areas. Less competition for more resources = lower personal cost. Materially better.

We also have new forms of peer-to-peer mass communication so any relative advantage someone has today is magnified and amplified. None of your old buddies were hopping on private jets and traveling across the world doing influencer stuff and able to shove it in your face constantly back then. We've coupled increasing inequality with increasing visibility of that inequality. I don't think you have to pull in broad cultural things beyond just (failing) keeping up with the Joneses.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#48

Post by HDThoreaun »

woolion wrote: post #17

The logic here is absolutely astounding. People _killing themselves_ is not an indicator that life is worse? What is it an indicator of, Mr Levitz? Are they unable to tolerate so much happiness? Are these people dumb? Defective? Arguing that life is objectively better because you are going to make a better salary than in the fifties is plain gaslighting, but I don't believe there are a lot of people who will still fa…

Did you even read the article? You're arguing a complete strawman. You can be materially better off while still feeling life is worse than it used to be.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#49

Post by haswell »

> The logic here is absolutely astounding. People _killing themselves_ is not an indicator that life is worse?

This is not the claim.

The word “objective” does a lot of important heavy lifting here, and there are strong arguments to be made that subjective experience has gotten significantly worse, while most “objective” factors have continued to improve as the world modernizes.

The trouble is that evolutionary psychology is such that the major changes to how humans live and communicate leave us in an environment that looks less and less like the environment we evolved in.

This is why there is so much interest in the impact of social media. There is evidence that even among those who are in an objectively “good” circumstance when defining “good” based on safety, financial security and other commons measures, individuals are just as susceptible to the negativity and distorted reality that dominates modern social life.

Re: No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Rising Because Life Got Objectively Worse

#50

Post by green_man_lives »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #30
anonuser123456 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a neoliberal/capitalist, I would suggest that capitalism is an incomplete theory and that we are still flushing things out. The huge rise in material standard of living from the 1850s to 1970s in the US made a dramatic improvement in people’s real quality of life. But since the 70s the improvements are very marginal. I speculate that’s because most of the consumer improvements are in the domain of status consumpti…

Can't agree that the improvements since the 70s have been marginal. The internet is one of the greatest quality of life improvements humanity has ever created, especially relative to its cost.

I posted this comment elsewhere, but I think the marginal utility of our advancements is definitely decreasing.

The internet itself is just a method of getting information, most of which is garbage.

To use an analogy, let's say the telephone just got invented. Hey I can call my brother in Tampa, this rocks! But now you get spam calls every day, every time you try to use your phone you have to listen to an ad to call your brother. People call you at random times of the night telling you they are going to kill you.

Hyperbole, but you can see how a QOL of life improvement can also just be another vector for the bullshit you already have to put up with every day.

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