> worse now than they were prior to the internet?
a lot of overlapping factors
like being able to realize how messed up the world is, or how bad your own situation and future chances are can have a huge negative impact for a child which doesn't really have has much power (or at least it seems so for the child) to change anything until it's too late
at the same time while there are a lot of support structures in the internet and I have meet people which likely wouldn't be alive today without that there are also many bad places and people in the internet
and the way TockTock (and similar but lesser degree YouTube) work can easily lead to a situation where people can intentionally target young people, most times without any consequences or risk for themself
additionally there are factors unrelated to the internet but more related to the fact that "the west" moved from a economical boom time to a sequence of one down turn after another with few good long term outlooks
For example when I grew up with the feelings that I can make mistakes, especially in my youth, and have chances to recover. Even if I had messed up to a point of not geting a school degree the outlook was still one where I could recover from it if I put effort in.
But when I speak with kits today they often say they get the feeling they aren't allowed to do any mistakes, they have no second and third chances, no time to experiment, and hardly any chances to recover. They have the feeling that even if they don't mess up in the internet they might be punished for small mistakes they did in their youth years later.
This puts a _lot_ of pressure on them.
Then their is how poisons the climate change debate is for children, on one hand you have the people which just don't take it serious at all, but even a small child can relatively easily research that that is pretty much nonsense. But on the other side you often have people which go into extremes like "humans will die out", "it's already nearly to late", "if we don't act now we are all domed". Which is also somewhat nonsensical as while climate change will most likely make the quality of live for humans in general way way worse the chance for direct extinction is limited (sadly not non-existing due to hard to estimate chain effect, and many especially cost cities and even some flat countries will most likely not survive if we look at it realistically). That is depressing, but that isn't what makes the debate poisonous. What makes it poisonous is that you get told you can change it by "being a better human and not doing this or that". Except that this is pretty much a lie. For one especially if you are less wealthy you often don't have a realistic choice in many cases. For the other a lot of problem areas for climate pollution are not in the reach of what some normal person can effect through their buying decisions, even if most do so. But telling someone "they" can change it while it pretty obvious doesn't seem to work and looks pretty hopless is _extreamly_ poisonous to the mental state of a person if they believe it and care about the outcome, especially if they are young and inexperienced.
So even more pressure, perceived dark future and hopelessness.
Then us potentially heading into another cold war or WW3 probably isn't helping either.
Sometimes not knowing can be bliss.
But even without access to a phone can a child still grow up in a innocent world today?