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

Psychology is fundamentally not science. I don't mean to devalue it as a discipline, but it is incorrect to call it science for a pretty simple epistemological reason.

Science depends upon the reproducibility of experiments. This means if I perform an experiment twice, then the second experiment (up to relativity) is done in the context of the experiment having already been done once, so the outcome of these experiments can be thought of as a fixed point of performing applying the have-done-the-experiment context (often with respect to all other experiments). Science is made up of these fixed points, which we can think of as the "set" of properties of the capital-W World.

Fundamentally, however, what it means to observe the outcome of an experiment, is to be able to condition your behavior upon that outcome, so if your own behavior is the thing that you are observing, there aren't necessarily any fixed points of this process.

This isn't merely a technicality either. For example: I measure that people experiencing insecurity about their performance are mostly pessimistic, and dub this phenomenon "impostor syndrome". I publish my results and, as a result, people assume that the insecurity they feel about their performance is explained by impostor syndrome, rather than being an honest evaluation of their performance. The next time I try to measure this phenomenon in the population, I might indeed find that it's the other way around, that people are optimistic about their performance, as a result of the previous experiment.

Seeing as how my daughter has gone through ten years of therapy due to depression I'll throw my hat in the ring and tell you what I think at least part of the problem is:

Late stage, winner-takes-all & loser-gets-nothing, Capitalism.

Those of us who are well-entrenched in our careers may not understand how vicious the world is for the entry-level and those aspiring to launch careers. The secondary schools preach and harp about college nearly every single day. If you don't go to college then expect to work meaningless jobs and live in squalor. I'm paraphrasing, but only a bit.

If you don't know anyone going through today's college admissions process then whoo-boy! There have been a recent spate of articles here on HN complaining about developer interviews and how insane they've become. Multiply the insanity by 10x and then re-label it as college admissions. You'd better have made sure you played the right sport, had the right extracurricular activities, volunteered for the right organizations, and be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. That should at least guarantee you a spot at your state college, maybe even a scholarship or two.

And speaking of scholarships - you need money for college. Lots and lots of money. More money than your parents could have ever possibly saved - and that's if your parents are in the top 10% of wage earners. You're going to be taking out loans, maybe spending a significant part of your adult life paying back those loans.

Why would you do this? You don't want to have a menial job and live in squalor do you?

Meanwhile while killing themselves to get into college they're watching billionaires literally buy the government and pass the laws they want passed. They watch politicians gerrymander so that the majority doesn't actually have a say. They watch a moral minority strip them of every personal liberty they have and tell them how to live their lives.

Oh, and all these assholes are completely destroying the Earth, and their future, without a care in the world for what will come after them. In fact they don't think there's going to be a future because Jesus Christ is going to float down on a cloud and save them all and leave your sorry ass behind to suffer.

And we're wondering, actually wondering, why an entire generation is depressed and apathetic and looking at the older generations with derision.

Meanwhile the depression will continue until they rise up and burn the place down. That is if they're not so downtrodden they can't even lift their heads any longer.

But yeah, let's blame smartphones instead.

You don't just develop existential dread about climate change out of nowhere. First comes awareness, in this case the younger generation grew up being educated about climate change. Then you get exacerbation/increased attention - in this case social media and traditional media which have fuelled doomsday rhetoric and alarmism in general. Not to say that it isn't a big issue, it's massive; but doesn't help that we're feeding young minds with constant negative stimuli about how we're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about the problem.

Replacing applause with Jazz Hands was a remarkably big topic a few years ago.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4512283/jazz-hands-to-replace-cla...

For one example.

I don't think it ever got to the point of "we aren't ever allowed to clap at events", but it certainly seems like there were people who were pushing for that

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect.

A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.