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

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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

#41

Post by YellOh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #29
Flatcircle wrote: post #2

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.

> 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. That’s…honestly, exactly the combination of race and gender I would expect to be most depressed right now, even thinking only about expectations people have been raised with about the direction of progress for their own co…

Can you expand on your thoughts here? This is not a group whose lives I generally expect to be getting worse (in day-to-day life, barring social media effects).

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

#42

Post by gjsman-1000 »

zug_zug wrote: post #34

These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once. But it's really just a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. Ther…

> There are a number of other health biomarkers that are going bad fast (sperm-count, testosterone)

Which one caused which? Does hanging out on Reddit 8 hours a day not have an effect on sperm-count; or is the decline in sperm-count part of the reason you are on Reddit?

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

#43

Post by nvarsj »

yung_steezy wrote: post #31

I graduated high school around 2010, before all of these dramatic declines in mental health seem to take place, and even back then I remember there being a lot of unhappy people in my peer group. Maybe a certain % of miserable teenagers is guaranteed due to the nature of puberty (and humans). I hope we find a way to mitigate or reverse the trend these studies are highlighting. Schooling is essential and we can't allo…

My experience is the same, back in the 1990s.

There was a ton of depression and even suicides when I was growing up. I felt like 50% of teens at my large HS were suffering from some kind of mental issue. And then you had major events like Columbine. The US school system has always managed to produce a lot of very miserable people, and no one seemed to care or do anything about it.

And now we have these studies all blaming social media, like there is some kind of epidemic that never existed before. But I am deeply cynical. I think these issues already existed, it's just there is a convenient scapegoat now.

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

#44

Post by notch898a »

sdwr wrote: post #17
Flatcircle wrote: post #2

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…

Suicide also appears to be a"luxury":

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/401-450/db450-fig...

I'd be interested in the explanation behind the aforementioned.

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

#45

Post by kevviiinn »

colpabar wrote: post #40
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the odder changes in the behavior of people on the left in recent times is going from "I'm a person, not a label" to "Look at all the labels I have!"

"My disability doesn't define me, but I'm still going to put it as the first thing in my twitter bio." We had a real chance to get something going with occupy and now we aren't allowed to clap at events because clapping is too violent.

>aren't allowed to clap at events because clapping is too violent

This is the first I'm hearing about this, where did you see it?

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

#47

Post by version_five »

zug_zug wrote: post #34

These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once. But it's really just a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. Ther…

Another hypothesis is electromagnetic fields. There are more now than ever. Cell phones, 5G, Wifi

Sounds stupid right? There's a plausibility scale, and despite various hypotheses being possible, it's reasonable to rank them by what fits best with out prior knowledge, and social media is way more plausible than some post 2010 rise in inflammation, even if that could causally lead to depression in the first place.

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

#48

Post by travisjungroth »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #42
zug_zug wrote: post #34

These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once. But it's really just a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. Ther…

> There are a number of other health biomarkers that are going bad fast (sperm-count, testosterone) Which one caused which? Does hanging out on Reddit 8 hours a day not have an effect on sperm-count; or is the decline in sperm-count part of the reason you are on Reddit?

Or there are confounders, like environmental effects are wrecking hormones. That would cause both of those things.

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

#49

Post by commandlinefan »

kevviiinn wrote: post #36
ChickenNugger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Not all leftists, though, based on the link.

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

#50

Post by twic »

zug_zug wrote: post #34

These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once. But it's really just a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. Ther…

> sperm-count

Or maybe not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34830936

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