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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

#61

Post by majormajor »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #32
somewhereoutth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has changed since the 1970s is a greater proportion of productivity improvement has gone to capital vs labour. This means working people have to work much harder for comparatively less. Ascribing the resulting unhappiness to departing from some sort of communal idyll where young people 'knew their place' is rather regressive I'd suggest.

> What has changed since the 1970s is a greater proportion of productivity improvement has gone to capital vs labour. The evidence just doesn't support this. There are analyses that purport to, but they look at wages rather than total compensation (including benefits)

Do you think adding ~10k/year/person for very good group health insurance[0] fully closes that gap? I recall the divergence being a good deal larger than that. At the median, that's about a 20% boost in wages; still doesn't close the gap here, for instance: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

[0] 2020-2021 prices from a previous employer's details

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

#62

Post by karmakaze »

I wouldn't read this unless I thought that measuring the value of my life by politics or economics was valid and complete. 'objectively' here is a qualifier used like a weasel word limiting scope in a manner that also limits the meaningfulness of the conclusion.

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

#63

Post by HDThoreaun »

green_man_lives wrote: post #50
HDThoreaun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Certainly the internet brings new problems that we have to grapple with, but overall I can't agree that it's net negative. Riffing on your phone example, are you really claiming that dealing with spam calls is bad enough to counteract the huge gains you get from being able to talk to your family and friends whenever you want? Imo that's not even close to true.

There's certainly a lot more bullshit to deal with today than there was in the past, and I can respect how leads to some level of existential angst and mental health issues, but I can't agree that it has overall made life worse.

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

#64

Post by complianceowl »

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…

I think this issue is extremely complex and not something we can just address by saying, "You make more money. You're better off." It's factually correct to say we live in much more materially-abundant times today. In that respect, I think that the easiness of life has caused many to become more mentally weak. I don't think the solution is to go back to scarcer times. I think we need to recognize this and voluntarily introduce challenges into our lives; dare say I, a little bit of adversity.

My second thought is that we have weaker homes today than we did in times past. No, I don't think our ancestors were perfect. I could go on and on about how we've improved so much on many things. But homes were more stable in the past -- and that too is factually correct. I also think this weakens a teenagers support system and overall sense of love and security.

My third thought is that even if someone comes from a good home, great parents, and well-off, today -- we have social media. Anyone can recognize the mental struggle this has catapulted humanity into. That too is factual. And for teens, they probably have it worse than anyone because the need and desire for acceptance is at the absolute strongest during these years. And being excluded or bullied is a harsh reality for many teens; not to mention being in relationships, introducing social media, and combining that with a lack of real education, experience, and emotional maturity.

I don't have the answer, but if teens are offing themselves, something is wrong. And those of us who have already passed through that age should reach out and help.

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

#65

Post by kelseyfrog »

jamincan wrote: post #26
burlesona wrote: post #4

Matthew Yglesias wrote about this today as well, and his take was interesting. Paywall though :/ https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-are-young-liberals-so-depre...

FWIW, it appears it's a free read for those of us who have never visited before. It's a very thought-provoking article and one that deserves more time than just might lunch break to ponder. In particular, this quote at the end of the article articulates an increasing discomfort I've been feeling around conversations about harm: > I am increasingly convinced that there are tremendously negative long-term consequences,…

It is different from saying, "If we teach people to recognize ways they've been harmed, then they feel bad, so we shouldn't teach them how to recognize harm"?

Framed another way, it looks like the language of harm is winning in the marketplace of ideas and the language of "those aren't actually that bad," is losing.

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

#66

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

The article is very bad. But this specific point is because it tries to say that it's not because life got materially worse. It implies the problems is with culture, socialization or something like that.

Of course, all the evidence it has is that suicide trends are not correlated with short term noise on general measurements of the economy. Or, in other words, it's bullshit. But the hypothesis itself is valid and worth looking at.

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

#67

Post by silvanus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #60
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…

> There were no federal student loans. The GI Bill from WW2 and Korea led to an explosion in college students. Before that, college was simply too expensive for anyone but the very rich to attend, and then...you get lots of people going on the military's dime.

9% of the American population served in WWII, and I'm assuming less than that took advantage of the GI Bill. So this was not universal by any means.

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

#68

Post by falcolas »

green_man_lives wrote: post #35
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…

If I was being cynical I'd say that this is just an article designed to get clicks by confirming people's biases. To anyone who disagrees with me, ask yourself. What is the most important thing in your life? I can with certainty say that it doesn't have a "price" associated with it. If you can comprehend that then you can accept the premise that life can get worse as material conditions improve, especially when the m…

> What is the most important thing in your life?

Security - food, transportation, housing. All have huge price tags associated with them.

My wife being able to follow her passion - taking care of her family. Which means I have to make enough to account for her lost income for all the above.

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

#69

Post by giraffe_lady »

Dalewyn wrote: post #54
giraffe_lady wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we're saying is that they aren't, though.

Let me put it this way then: Individualism and a community are not mutually exclusive.

When taking care of a neighbor is none of your business, what you have with them is not community.

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

#70

Post by green_man_lives »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #63
green_man_lives wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Certainly the internet brings new problems that we have to grapple with, but overall I can't agree that it's net negative. Riffing on your phone example, are you really claiming that dealing with spam calls is bad enough to counteract the huge gains you get from being able to talk to your family and friends whenever you want? Imo that's not even close to true. There's certainly a lot more bullshit to deal with today…

I do think that life is better with the internet, but a counterpoint I'd like to make is that humans are very quick to adapt to material change.

Someone who goes from making $600 to $8000 a month will see their stress levels reduced but the $8000 will quickly become just a number for them.

To use another analogy, programmers will always quickly squander the gains made by the chips. I bitch and moan about webpack and React because I've never written a GUI in C, the intermittent gains are invisible to me.

Now for kids born after the internet's invention, they don't even understand the benefits of having the internet. Those are invisible. The negative effects are crystal clear though.

In my example, I am not saying webpack made life worse, but that it's easy to see what's wrong with it and hard to see what's right.

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