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The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

11–20 of 514 posts

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#11
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why strange?

Do you think it's normal or expected? If so, why?

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 :)

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#12

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.

[flagged]

We have no longer any "great struggle" to concern ourselves with. Recommended film: Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#13

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.

Huge overlap of social media use in that demographic I'm sure

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#14

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.

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

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#15

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.

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

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#17

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.

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.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#19

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.

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.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#20
post #11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's normal or expected? If so, why?

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 :)

> 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).

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